/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12156849]

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy is a book that has been on my to-read for a very long time. Finally, I picked it up at the library -- no, it's not because I recently played "Red Dead Redemption 2 (I haven't) -- and was excited to start it, which today I did. Wow. I spent a good hour trying to read the first 15 or 20 pages. I had to keep going back to reread passages multiple times to understand what was going on. It was a good 20 minutes before I realized there was actually dialogue between characters occurring (as opposed to some weird inner or narrator dialogue) because there were no quotation marks. Hell, no apostrophes or few commas.

Maybe, I'm not terribly intelligent (despite my years of schooling) but I am struggling with this book more so than I can recall ever struggling with any other fiction novel. Am I missing something? I really want to read this book, but I cannot seem to break through his writing style.

Can someone help me out here? Any tips? Am I approaching his writing from the wrong perspective? Or should I give up and stick to John Grisham novels? (As an aside, I hate John Grisham.)

[Anonymous No.12156882]

>>12156849
I mean, this is the kind of book where you need to be conscious about what you're reading, you need to be awake, it's not a book for drones, m8. It's sort of like a game. Like that Cortázar story "Miss Cora". All you need to do is to make sense of what you're actually reading, not just going automatically like you're reading a newspaper. I also had my issues with it at first, but I ended up liking it. It's a book for active readers.

[Anonymous No.12156918]

>>12156849
He has an unusually terse style, it takes some getting used to. But his imagery is second to none. Read this shit and tell me you can't imagine exactly what it looks like. It's like looking at a painting, except in words.

[Anonymous No.12156956]

I got 300 pages in and gave up on it. I understand what he’s doing, but fuck it’s dull. No one, not even the kid has anything resembling a personality. It’s just they go somewhere, something terrible happens, then go somewhere else on repeat. I didn’t finish it so maybe all the good stuff is in the second half. Maybe I’ll give it another try eventually. I dunno.

[Anonymous No.12156958]

>>12156849
If you don’t want to spend a lot of time reading and rereading to parse the plot, you need to dabble in some modernist literature.

[Anonymous No.12156964]

>>12156849
As far as difficulty McCarthy is like a discount Faulkner

[Anonymous No.12156973]

>>12156956
It's only 350 pages why wouldn't you just finish it

[Anonymous No.12156976]

>>12156964
Cormac is like a mystical Faulkner.

[Anonymous No.12156989]

You're just not used to it, that's ok. It's a pretty tough work and there's a lot of repetition.

It's also really reference heavy and he's trying to write it like the old testament in style so give it a go with that in mind.

[Anonymous No.12156996]

>>12156973
I bought the ebook and it said it was 600 pages. Ebooks page numbers change depending on your text size. Either way I got half way through and said fuck it. Now I’m reading Slaughterhouse Five.

[Anonymous No.12157003]

>>12156964
Faulkner had a much more digressive style, along with neverending runon sentences. McCarthy has the opposite problem. He uses a lot of short, descriptive sentences juxtaposed together, making it hard to see if you're not following it closely.

[Anonymous No.12157024]

>>12157003

He uses a ton of run ons in Blood Meridian iirc.

[Anonymous No.12157027]

>>12156996

I'm only about 40% of the way through it but what the fuck, if you've stuck through the prose this far, how can you quit now?

>>12156849

Prose is like painting and especially with McCarthy you either like it or don't

Read a little bit about his ethos and self imposed writing rules. Sometimes he has very big things happen in very sparse detail. You're really supposed to chew slowly on the prose.

[Anonymous No.12157048]

>>12156918

Was always my favorite graph in The Road.

Thanks anon.

[Anonymous No.12157051]

>>12156976
>>12156964
they have completely different writing styles, you have no idea what you're talking about

[Anonymous No.12157061]

>>12156849
Takes time to get used to his style but when you do it goes faster.
You'll eventually get a handle on the dialog thing, once you know he doesn't use quotes you'll be alert to it.
For understanding events, he's a very visual writer, and sometimes just describes how something looks without saying "what" it is, so try to really draw a mental picture.
Also know that not every scene or chapter is of critical plot importance. A huge amount is ambiance, repeating motifs, references, and so on.
I didn't finish it on my first, or second attempt. On my third it really clicked.

[Anonymous No.12157065]

>>12156956
>I got 300 pages in and gave up on it
so this is /lit/

[Anonymous No.12157099]

>>12157024
He uses a few that everyone remembers, like the page long description of the apache war band, but in general there's variety. Like in that example above from the Road, "Yellow leaves." Full sentence

[Anonymous No.12157114]

>>12156964
He's like Faulkner but with stories you actually give a shit about.

[Anonymous No.12157115]

Ah, blood meridian, monsieur?

[Anonymous No.12157117]

>>12157065
>actually reading
That's isn't /lit/

[Anonymous No.12157164]

I literally just gave it a shot myself... and remembered why i dont like his novels. Read the road but gave up of BM about a quarter of the way through. He just vomits his mind on paper. Plot dialogue and all. Cant stand it

[Anonymous No.12157194]

>>12157164
Blood Meridian has a really weird plot for sure, the main character is in the background for like the middle 75% of the book. Is the plot killing it for you or more the style?

[Anonymous No.12157416]

>>12156849
Return this book to the library ASAP and move on to something worthwhile. Life is too short for this drivel. (I made it to @ 65% and quit. Believe me, I tried).

[Anonymous No.12157419]

>Corncob "Tortilla" YeCarthy
SHIGGYDIGGY

[Anonymous No.12157810]

>>12157051
Are you retarded? Have you read both of them? Faulkner's influence on McCarthy is extremely obvious and has been so from his first novel.

[Anonymous No.12158308]

>>12156849
I was actually planning on picking that up tomorrow funny enough, mostly thanks to a /k/ recommendation thread. Seems like it might be neat.

[Anonymous No.12158660]

>>12156849
OP, try reading other Cormac McCarthy books first. Blood Meridian really is jumping in at the deep end.

If you're new to McCarthy, his lack of punctuation and prose can sometimes be daunting, but if you start with books like The Road, No Country For Old Men, Outer Dark or Child of God (Child of God might not be the best place to start but it's where I started with him and it had me hooked), you'll get used to him pretty quickly.

Try Blood Meridian after that, but also keep in mind it's an ambiguous slow burner that focuses a lot on the desolation and sparsity of the old West with a lot of character actions and motivations being questionable and unusual (especially The Judge and "The Man" at the end). It's often a heavily debated book often regarded as a classic so if you still struggle to understand it then, that's all fine, just make sure that if you finish it to try and look into some information on the book to help further your understanding. I'm about prepped for my second read of Blood Meridian.

[Anonymous No.12158668]

>>12156956
> gave up 300 pages into a book that's only 330 pages

what was anon's end game here

[Anonymous No.12158669]

>>12157416
>durr it don't get it
>it must be bad

[Anonymous No.12158672]

>>12158660
>start with his two worst books
Okay

[Anonymous No.12158698]

>>12158672
Whichever books you consider his "two worst" are also likely to be two of his most accessible, and a bad Cormac McCarthy book is still better than most of the contemporary literature out there nowadays in my opinion.

You could contribute more than just contrarianism, we're not going anywhere.

[Anonymous No.12159813]

>>12156849
I'm with you, OP. I can't read this book - the writing style is horrible. Plus the storyline is pretty boring.

[Anonymous No.12159873]

>>12156849
dumbass lol

[Anonymous No.12159875]

I found the style to be incredibly beautiful to be honest famalams

[Anonymous No.12160332]

>>12158672
Wrong-amundo pea-brain.

Gang horses their way across Tex-Mex.
-Describe cacti and rocks and sky and earth using 40 pages.
-Kill some native injuns or spics brutally
-Describe cacti and rocks and sky and earth using 40 pages.
-Find some native injuns or spics hung upside down, mutilated and brutally murdered.
-Describe cacti and rocks and sky and earth using 40 pages.
-Find some native injuns or spics.... etc.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

[Anonymous No.12160368]

>>12156849
Thanks for posting solid content.

Read slowly, limit any distractions (ear plugs, pomodoro), journal as you read. That's helped me exponentially.

[Anonymous No.12161122]

>>12157027
>Prose is like painting and especially with McCarthy you either like it or don't
I respectfully disagree, with a handful of exceptions I thought that prose that did more than just say what was happening was unnecessary until I read Lolita

[Anonymous No.12161181]

Any ESLs in here? Is this even penetrable for a non native speaker?

[Anonymous No.12161183]

Can people post more screencapped highlights from the book?

[Anonymous No.12161279]

Ah the daily blood meridian thread. This place never fucking changes.

[Anonymous No.12161362]

>>12161183
>more
That highlighted passage in >>12156918 isn't from Blood Meridian

[Anonymous No.12161451]

>>12161183

[Anonymous No.12161464]

>>12161279
Pa. Why are eggs breakfast?

What.

You can put bacon on lunch.

Ye.

But if you put eggs on stuff it becomes breakfast?

The man spat and said the eggs are not for this world or from this world they come from the chicken but the chicken knows it not.

He wiped his chin and spat.

[Anonymous No.12161542]

>>12161464

Don’t forget the tortillas and beans.

[Anonymous No.12161605]

>>12161181
If your native language is Spanish then yes.

[Anonymous No.12161614]

>>12161183

[Anonymous No.12161622]

>>12161183
>They wandered the borderland for weeks seeking some sign of the Apache. Deployed upon that plain they moved in a constant elision, ordained agents of the actual dividing out the world which they encountered and leaving what had been and what would never be alike extinguished on the ground behind them. Spectre horsemen, pale with dust, anonymous in the crenellated heat. Above all else they appeared wholly at venture, primal, provisional, devoid of order. Like beings provoked out of the absolute rock and set nameless and at no remove from their own loomings to wander ravenous and doomed and mute as gorgons shambling the brutal wastes of Gondwanaland in a time before nomenclature was and each was all

[Anonymous No.12161633]

>>12156964
McCarthy is far better than Faulkner. We just don't recognize him as such because Faulkner came first.

[Anonymous No.12161729]

>>12156849
Embarrassing purple-prose tripe stuffed with indulgent macho ""themes""

[Anonymous No.12161906]

You will love this book if you want to hear a rocky desert explained for 100 pages.

[Anonymous No.12162230]

>>12156849
I understand exactly what you're talking about - reading the story for the first time took me a long time
but when I re-read it, I was shocked by how vividly the scenes of the story laid themselves out in my mind. I'd describe it as cinematic, only better.
as Bloom has said, the second reading is more important than the first

[Anonymous No.12162246]

>>12158672
they're not bad, they're just way more accessible than BM.

[Anonymous No.12162907]

>>12162230
bloom gave up on it twice, it was the third reading that he broke through

[Anonymous No.12163009]

>>12156849
First chapter in doesn't seem too bad honestly, sometimes certain lines require a re-read but it seems pretty easy to get through without getting completely lost if you're just paying attention.
Does it get worse later on?

[Anonymous No.12163119]

>>12163009
Nope, certain lines needing to be re-read is really as bad as it gets. I think a lot of people on /lit/ just jump into it because it's talked about so much here, and it does have a particular omnipotent impersonal voice and near lack of plot that combined with such stylized prose probably just dazzles and/or discourages people new to literature.

[Anonymous No.12163155]

>>12162907
embarrassing

[Anonymous No.12164001]

>>12162907
>Giving up on a book
I shiggy diggy
I'll admit I've read a few books that had me completely lost most of the time but I still powered through them, it feels weird to just stop a book halfway through.

[Anonymous No.12165074]

>>12157194
Style. I was hoping to get into the plot which i was... just his style is overbearing.

[Anonymous No.12165776]

>>12156996
>Slaughterhouse five
Try reading some reddit posts, they seem to be more your speed

[Anonymous No.12165808]

>>12156849
You're not alone in finding something written with punctuational minimalism hard to follow. I think anything that has to be re-read more than twice is completely unnecessary. It's funny because in interviews I'm pretty sure he said it was to make it "less cluttered" and an easier read, but it just became the complete opposite. I do agree that eventually, it becomes readable once you get used to the "style", but it's a completely useless style and a waste of time getting used to it as not many books are written like this anyways. I gave up halfway through because of this

[Anonymous No.12165821]

What the fuck was Holden's problem?

[Anonymous No.12165855]

I loved the road and hated blood meridian. anyone else?

[Anonymous No.12165867]

>>12156849
OP, unironically, from the way you write, you seem like a lovely person. Merry xmas mate

[Pseudo-Heraclitus No.12165967]

>>12165855
I gave up on McCarthy after the Road, then I read Blood Meridian and it changed my mind.

[Anonymous No.12165971]

>>12165821
More liek what the fuck was Glanton's problem?

Boo hoo I can't see my Wife and kids anymore so let me go butcher-scalp every random Mexican I come across.

[Anonymous No.12165973]

>>12165971
Glanton did nothing wrong

[Anonymous No.12166139]

I felt this same way with The sun also rises. And that book wasn't even long, plus it had legible punctuation. I just couldn't grasp it enough. reading 1 page took me like 20 minutes. Not to mention a wtf plot. sucks to find this out because I planned on reading this book next after what I'm reading now. Still it's better to know what I'm in for I suppose.

[Anonymous No.12166177]

>>12156849
Find an audiobook. There’s absolutely no shame in listening to McCarthy rather than reading him.

[Anonymous No.12166361]

>>12165971
Glanton did some fucked up things. Chief among them was probably whatever his deal with Holden was and tolerating Holden's (and later the nigger's) blatant pedophilia. His campaign against the Indians did make sense, he kind of just went crazy after awhile.

[Anonymous No.12166410]

>>12166361
>and later the nigger's
????

[Anonymous No.12166439]

>>12165967
The Road was written for the Oprah audience.

[Anonymous No.12166554]

>>12166410
After they've taken over the ferry, young girls are kept tied up to leashes naked. Glanton passes one outside the nigger's dwelling. This may be why Holden had such an interest in him throughout. Holden clearly has a thing for raping and killing kids throughout the book too. Also, wtf IS Holden?

[Anonymous No.12167461]

>>12156849
Shits weird. I’m not well read but I picked up on everything almost immediately. Didn’t know people were having trouble.

[Anonymous No.12167503]

>>12167461
Contrary to popular belief there's no real set kind of person who will "get" something, a very well read man whose gone over and analyzed all the classics in meticulous detail can not get a certain book, while someone who's much more of a casual reader will get it on their first read, and vice versa.
This stuff varies from person to person, it's not really an objective thing.

[Anonymous No.12167790]

>>12157114