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21844945 No.21844945 [Reply] [Original]

I just finished Blood Meridian. It was amazing. I'm shook. I listened to some commentary on it from The Partially Examined Life Podcast, and it was really good. What other commentary/analysis/stuff should I check out?

>> No.21844972

i enjoyed this one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgyZ4ia25gg

>> No.21845718

>>21844945
This illustration always makes me think of the Judge as akin to the monster in that one Aardman animation short where a bunch of rich people are at some gala and the monster keeps growing and growing until he explodes.

>> No.21847307

>>21844945
The Reading McCarthy podcast and the Yale American Novel Since 1945 lecture

>> No.21847315

>>21847307
>>21844972
I haven't watched the yale lecture for the book, but if the lecture for Wise Blood is any indication of quality you can safely skip it

>> No.21847330

>>21847315
The Wise Blood lecture is the worst of the series i/m/o

>> No.21847342

>>21844945
I also finished this recently but I wasn't as impressed as you. It was pretty good but I found McCarthy's flatness took away from the grandiose magnificence I was expecting when I first heard about it.

>> No.21847484

>>21847342
The flatness reveals profundity the more time passes, granted the book occupies your thoughts.

>> No.21847494

I recommend this strongly:
https://youtu.be/RhXcjsGrb6M

Not the most thorough, but Kelly James is one of the best McCarthy scholars, and especially a Blood meridian scholar. Get everything he has written/published on the book.

>> No.21847498

>>21844945
Read Outer Dark. It's like a prototype tiny version, especially with the vague supernatural antagonist element.

>> No.21847701

>>21844945
Why are there so many scary drawings of this guy? Is the book somehow popular with people who draw fan-art or is there an industry of publications commissioning artists to draw the scary judge?

>> No.21847733

>>21844945
hey, also finished this yesterday. it was a really fun read, the prose was beautiful and i liked following the glanton gang around reading about their acts of violence. i put it off since it was supposed to be difficult to read because both the violence and the prose and as an ESL i thought it would be too hard for me but no, it really wasn't too bad. i didn't really understand what happend in the epilogue though, any anon want to offer share his thoughts on that?

also, was the guy pissing outside in the end the kid/man?

>> No.21847737

>>21847701
And they always make him look comically evil. In my mind's eye he looked more like a being of pure bulking retard strength who did what he wanted, not just a M*rvel villain, more like a goofy WWE character.

>> No.21848460

>>21844945
Is the judge still alive? What's he up to?

>> No.21850014

I'm going through it again. Why dose the violent racist rapist gang love Black Jackson so much?
The Judge personally goes back to get him.

Also realized that anyone who left the gang the Judge had killed.

>> No.21850046

>>21844972
when she argues that the kid never showed mercy toward anyone who wasn't a member of the gang she forgot to mention that the man tries to save a woman who is already dead when he finds her right before the confrontation with elrod. pretty big hole in her interpretarion, i think.
>he carries a bible he can't read because it's meta
that's also pretty dumb. him carrying the scapular to feel connected to toadvine and brown and the bible to feel connected to tobin makes a lot more practical sense.

>> No.21850060

>>21844945
The kid is actually the yid and the judge is actually antisemitism

>> No.21850068

>>21850046
She was way more concern about literary refrences in the book than any of the themes or meaning in the book.

>> No.21850069

>>21850014
Black Jackson made the final move on white Jackson, likely more willing to commit violence first

>> No.21850077

>>21850014
they're just casually racist. anyone's allowed if you think killing is badass. they have mexicans and indians in their ranks to you you know.
>The Judge personally goes back to get him.
after the tarot scene the judge loves him. don't ask me what it means, i don't think anyone knows. there's actually a weird moment when glanton gets back to the ferry from san diego and the judge and jackson are together wearing matching outfits made of reeds or some shit and no one ever mentions it.
>>21844945
notes on blood meridian and books made of books (the latter only after reading most of mccarthy's output)

>> No.21850093

>>21850077
has anyone shoved that tarot card scene through a translator and a card explainer?

>> No.21850107

>>21850093
there's an essay about it in notes on blood meridian you should check out, i'd only butcher it.

>> No.21850120

redditmac mcreddity's reddit meredditian

>> No.21850757

It's weird how the kid was entirely absent from the middle part of the book and somehow the judge comes after him in the last third as "You were the only one who XYZ". Felt out of left field to me.

>> No.21850793

>>21850093
That is not how you interpret cards. The Judge either sees what would be clear to anyone or an interpretation all his own, meant only for him.

>> No.21851205

>>21850757
the opening line instructs us to "see the child". in the last chapter the judge asks the man if he thought by not speaking he would not be seen. the implication i think is that during the gang's most depraved moments, even if he's participating, he's silently judging everyone, and he's not in the narrative because he doesn't want to be there in that place at that time.

>> No.21851864

>>21850014
>violent rapist gang
It's pretty simple anon, adding a nigger would only increase their wherewithal to commit such heinous acts. A nigger may see violence or rape where a white man wouldn't think of it.

>> No.21851916

>Long ago was the then beginning to seem like now as now is but the setting out on a new but still undefined way. That now the one once seen from far away is our destiny no matter what else may happen to us. It is the present past of which our features our opinions are made. We are half it and we care nothing about the rest of it. We can see far enough ahead for the rest of us to be implicit in the surroundings that twilight is.
What was the Judge getting at here?

>> No.21852719
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21852719

>>21851916
Talking about how you can't have a full perception of time?
you can tell the present from the past but not the future, and we care more about the future than the present.

>> No.21852898
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21852898

>>21847701
I feel like this one is the most aesthetic and stylized, without being too over the top. the shading is at least believable and makes it seem like its just the bad light angle

>> No.21852901
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21852901

>>21852898
however this is what I imagine when reading, at least something like it. bit of a mix of the two

>> No.21853035

>>21852898
>>21852901
they go too hard on the menace he's supposed to be child like with small eyes hand and feet, and they never describe him as fat

>> No.21853054

>>21852719
it's a fake quote genius

>> No.21853064

>>21853035
>they never describe him as fat
surely he is or everyone wouldn't remember him the same

>> No.21853109

>>21852901
>>21852898
I worked with a 6'8 strong-as-an-ox Irish farmer who had complete alopecia and a similar jovial-to-serious manner and "wiser than his station" amount of knowledge as the Judge. It's been impossible for me to imagine the Judge as anyone since that guy since I spent a lot of time with him.

>> No.21853251

>>21850014
>The Judge personally goes back to get him.
He actually does this for a totally crazy schizo reason. During the fortune telling section Black Jackson pulls The Fool, and the Judge divines this as meaning "with his fate goes the fate of us all". The Judge going out of his way to personally save Black Jackson when he disappears shows that The Judge is actually pretty superstitious, believing that something bad happening to Black Jackson might mean something bad happening to him, and this reveals that he really isn't the almighty omniscient figure people make him out to be. Later it turns out the tarot fortune was actually accurate, since Jackson is the first to die in the River Boat raid. The Judge even goes out of his way (again) to adopt the troglodyte man as a sort of symbolic replacement "Fool" for Jackson.

>> No.21853294

>>21853251
>The Judge even goes out of his way (again) to adopt the troglodyte man as a sort of symbolic replacement "Fool" for Jackson.
he just keeps him around for laughs man. he turned him into the police as tobin gone mad in the desert is my headcanon personally.

>> No.21853306

No. I will not read blood meridian again. I have too many other books.

>> No.21853356

>>21853306
They rode on.

>> No.21853946

>>21844945
I love McCarthy's prose. Any resources where I can learn more about his particular writing style?

>> No.21853990

Im about to give this a read again. Have not read it since 2017.

>> No.21854091

>>21853946
'Cormac McCarthy and the ethics of reading'

>> No.21854149

>>21854091
Thank you for the resource anon