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/lit/ - Literature

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File: 68 KB, 326x500, blood-meridian-cover-large.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2761821 No.2761821 [Reply] [Original]

Just finished reading this book, and it definitely deserves the praise it receives. What a fantastic book it was. The prose, despite being wearing sometimes, was overall pretty unique and incredible; the way he trivialized violence was specially interesting, since he was able, by doing it, to show it in all its horror and splendor without it becoming tiresome. Also, he created one of the single most impressive characters I've ever read, Judge Holden. I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said I found this to be a masterpiece of modern literature.

The ending, however, confused me a bit. It's not that I didn't like it - on the contrary, I don't think I'll be able to forget it any time soon - it's just that I felt that there was much more to it than I perceived. For instance, what was that last talk the Judge gave about dance? And what did the epilogue, with the man shooting fire in the holes on the ground, meant? What is your take on the ending, /lit/?

Also, McCarthy general, I guess. Any other book by him is as good as this one, or at least worth reading?

>> No.2761829

I am not exactly an expert on the ending, it has been a long time since I read it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgyZ4ia25gg
Check this out though. It is a Yale professor connecting the core of Blood Meridian to the Bible, Moby DIck and Paradise Lost.

Also the first McCarthy novel I ever read was Child of God, it is a really short and really good book.

>> No.2761833

>>2761829

Haha, I watched that yesterday little after I finished the book. I liked what she had to say, the comparisons with the other works were all pretty interesting. She didn't, however, explored the ending as much as I hoped, which is the part I'm most interested about.

Also, I'm gonna check on Child of God then, thanks for the recommendation.

>> No.2761854

Bump!

>> No.2761858

[Spoilers]

I think in the end, the Kid finally decides to take sides in the struggle between good and evil. He sides with good, but it is too little, too late. When he finally confronts the Judge, the Kid makes him sound stupid with his pithy, monosyllabic responses. The Judge is upset and insists on the importance of the dance. The Judge then asserts his dominance by anally raping him in the toilet.

[End of Spoilers]

Well, that's what I think happened. Yeah, it's a pretty intense book. The writing is stupendous and it makes reflect on human nature.

>> No.2761863

>>2761858
> this is my interpretation
> plot summary of spoiler filled ending

>> No.2761968
File: 31 KB, 490x322, 600full-irene-jacob.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2761968

Bump!

>> No.2761974

the judge was a ghost

>> No.2761977

No one really 'gets' the ending. It was clearly written to offer many interpretations but to kind of refuse them all.

I really have no clue about the epilogue. And what about those dead people the Kid meets. The last like 60 pages or so are so good but unlike anything I've read. Reading it puts you in a feverish delirium.

>> No.2761982

>>2761977

>The last like 60 pages or so are so good but unlike anything I've read.

I felt the exact same way.

>> No.2761986

Please stop posting the fucking Blood Meridian spoilers.

>> No.2761992

>>2761986
Why? If you see the image is Blood Meridian then move on if you haven't read it. Everyone but the Judge and the Kid dies.

>> No.2761993

>>2761992

Maybe the kid died in the end too, who knows.

>> No.2761998

>>2761993
Maybe, probably.

>> No.2762037

Bump!

>> No.2762237

Bump!

>> No.2762256

Why has no one mentioned harold bloom? After all, the only reason you read it in the first place is because harold bloom talked about it on youtube you faggots`

>> No.2762284

>>2761993

I think he died.

>> No.2762294

>>2762256

... What?

>> No.2762319

I think the dance is, to put it bluntly, life. But not the life we want it to be, but what it really is: the violence, the ruthlessness. The dancers are those like the Judge, who adapt to the "true" order of the universe. In the end he's dancing because his philosophy wins over the Kid's, and everything he represents will never die.

I used to think the Judge killed the Kid, but I believe it wasn't just murder but some sort of consumat annihilation: flesh, soul, ideals, all gone. Devoured by the infinite blackness that is war.

The epilogue is much simpler... it's a guy making holes for posts, for telephones or electricity. It doesn't matter. What matters is that the old world is ending.

The one thing I admit I have no fucking clue on what the fuck was going on, was the "the eldress on the rocks" part at the end of the penultimate chapter. It baffled me the first time I read it, and to this day I can't make any sense ouf of it. And it's frustrating, like the answer must be something ridiculously obvious that's staring at and laughing in my face.

>> No.2762327
File: 225 KB, 1418x2157, 1942.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2762327

Suttree is well worth the read. It is my second favorite McCarthy novel, below Blood Meridian.

>> No.2762365

>>2762319
is that the kneeling lady who the kid touches and turns to dust? Just a body decomposed in to a dusty substance in the desert heat I guess.

>> No.2762379

>>2762365

Yes, but it's the timeline that doesn't really add up. The Kid stumbles upon the petinents in the mountains and watches them for a bit, then he goes somewhere else to sleep. The very next morning he wakes up, travels a bit on the horse, and finds the petinents. Only they've all been gutted and massacred. Then he sees the single body kneeling in the middle of the place and walks to it. Turns out it's a dried up corpse, and she's been there for years? Something doesn't quite add up to me for some reason.

>> No.2762419

>>2762319

OP here, thanks for posting, I really liked the idea that when the Judge says he will never die, he is not talking about himself, but about what he represents, his own personal, violent way of seeing life.

Also, I also thought the same thing as you about the Judge's "embracing" the Kid. it definitely seems that he completely consummated him, not just taking his life, but absolutely destroying the existence of the Kid.

>>2762327

Never heard about it, gonna take a look, thanks! Also, what about The Road? Is it among his best works or not?

>> No.2762421
File: 26 KB, 200x297, 200px-LarryMcMurtry_LonesomeDove.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2762421

I might look this book up, thanks for posting OP.

I haven't read anything by McCarthy, but if you're looking for another western book with equal (or greater)acclaim, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry is one of my all time favorite books.

>> No.2762422

>>2762319
This. The man is sinking post holes. He's striking out the fire god put into the earth, ending the frontier by marking it off. Like the Judge and his book of sketches he is replacing the original article with a representation. Here's a fun link

http://rmmla.wsu.edu/ereview/60.1/articles/ellis.asp

>> No.2762463

>>2762422

Great link.

>> No.2762506
File: 100 KB, 500x365, CowboyHaircut.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2762506

I have read every book by Cormac McCarthy except for Outer Dark.
I'm 18 and I don't understand much of the message and symbolism. I seriously just like the stories, ha. That should tell you something about McCarthy. The man knows how to write for everyone.

>> No.2762507

I remember someone telling me about this western book where these guys go to this mountain pass to hunt buffalo or something and the pass gets snowed off trapping them there all winter and they go insane slaughtering all these buffalo, anyone know what I'm talking about?

>> No.2762517

cormac must be a knowledgeable dude, like all these in depth descriptions of survival techniques, technical names for shit that hasnt been used for hundreds of years, in the road it seemed like he knew a lot about boats too when the man goes in to the boat to loot shit, seems to know a lot about geology from the way he writes about landscapes and the environment in blood meridian too, wish i knew all that cool shit.

>> No.2762581

>>2762506
Dude, do yourself a favor and read Outer Dark as soon as you can.

>> No.2762611

Blood Meridian is the most powerful book I've ever read. I want to do a comic book adaptation of it.

On the ending:

I think The Judge (gnostic demon/God) doesn't kill the Kid, or even physically inhabit the same room with him in the Jakes in the end. I believe the Kid takes his own life.

The holes in the ground are either telegraph poles or graves.

>>2762517
He hangs out at the Santa Fe Institute with a bunch of game theorists, scientists and mad geniuses thinking about the world. He has infinite resources.

>> No.2762637

>>2761992
the ex-priest might not have died.

>> No.2762638

>>2762637
Pretty sure he's gut shot or something and dies.

>> No.2762647

That cover is painful to look at.

>> No.2762669

>>2762517

you should hear him go on about horses >All The Pretty Horses

and guns >No Country For Old Men

he does with demonstrating his general ideas what Shakespeare did with his poetry, totally fuck your brain up with the most base thoughts of existence, though I find him tedious more often than not, especially the Border Crossing Trilogy

>> No.2762716

The Kid dies from rape, right? I mean, the Judge is raping and killing kiddies all through the novel.

Also, I love how the Judge is both human and not, or rather, McCarthy wants that ambiguity. He's a giant hairless pale guy, speaks any language and everyone in the Gang has met him at some point in their life before joining up.

> yfw The Judge was just sitting there in the desert, waiting for you

>> No.2762748

>>2762716
I don't think he was raped, personally. I think he took his own life. When I first read people took that final passage as a rape I was pretty surprised.

>> No.2762751

"Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent." - The Judge

>> No.2762759

>>2762748
Why the fuck would the KID, now called The Man, kill himself? He's standing up to the Judge. Naw, he got raped and murdered by the massive Judge. It wouldn't make sense for the kid to just kill himself. No, no, no. It's just a horror (after all the horror we've witnessed in the book) that is too horrific to describe. It's basically the one act that McCarthy says "too violent."

>> No.2762768

>>2762759
I don't really feel like The Kid is in a good place at any point in the novel, personally. I think everything overwhelmed him and he killed himself. I don't believe the Judge was physically in the room with him. Why would the Judge kill him? because he had ''clemency'' for the Indian? Revenge? He certainly wasn't an innocent child, he wasn't a mexican baby in some town. Did it say it was too violent, or was it just too awful?

That or The Kid undertook some metaphysical change consider what The Judge was and/or wasn't. I just think the rape ending is underwhelming considering the rest of the book.

>> No.2762770

I think I may be the only one who didn't like this book.

I must read it again.

>> No.2762802

"And here is the judge dancing, and you get the refrain that 'He never sleeps, he says. He says he'll never die.'"

"The judge himself is a figure for the artist. He's a music maker. He's a performer, a dancer, in this passage, but the assertion is that he will last forever. And the only way, I think, to understand that, is to see him as a literary character. Very self-consciously in this moment, that like Milton's Satan, he's a character that will live in the tradition, that will never die out in the imagination of readers. It's a remarkably ambitious claim to make for your own character. But when you read it with that passage I just read, about the impossibility of dividing him back into his origins, you begin to see McCarthy's literary ambition, and that is to add to the tradition in a significant way."

>> No.2762898

>>2762802

Interesting interpretation.

>> No.2762938

The prose, my god, the prose.

>> No.2762942

>>2762898
taken from open yale lecture THE AMERICAN NOVEL SINCE 1945
WITH AMY HUNGERFORD transcript. Its all online for free if you want to check out the entire lecture. There are other courses too including INTRODUCTION TO THEORY OF LITERATURE
WITH PAUL H. FRY

>> No.2763216

>>2762748
I don't think he killed himself, the judge was in there with him, it seems implied that the judge was doing something horrible to the kid

I felt that he was disemboweling him or someting similar, the rape theories seem plausible too. I think a lot of the ending about the dance and stuff has to do with the epilouge with the guy and the holes.

In any case I'm complelled after this to read McCarthys entire ouver now.

>> No.2763285

I'm currently rereading this book for the third time. At the part where the kid is marching with the filibusters down to mexico. It doesn't really pick up until he gets recruited by the glanton gang.

>> No.2763287

>>2761821
>For instance, what was that last talk the Judge gave about dance?

The dance is war and violence. Survival of the fittest, darwinist sort of thing. Remember that earlier in the book the Judge declares that war is God.

>And what did the epilogue, with the man shooting fire in the holes on the ground, meant?

It means that eventually the Judge will be defeated and that there's still hope. I personally think that the judge is the devil, and the ending parallels the book of revelation in the bible, where the devil is finally defeated once and for all.

>> No.2763295

>>2762419
The judge is immortal at least to weapons and aging/disease. How did you miss that? It was 20 years since the kid met the judge and their reunion, but the judge didn't age a day. The judge can also appear wherever he wants, like when he appears in the middle of the desert, alone, when he first joins the glanton gang. Not to mention he's a master of every kind of craft(such as chemistry or geology) he puts his mind to, and knows every language. Its clear to me that he's some sort of superhuman entity.

>> No.2763305

>>2763216
we see babies getting dashed against rocks in this book and nobody bats an eyelash. But the men that find the kid in the outhouse, its even too much for them to bear. Then we see the judge naked, dancing, and fiddling like its his greatest victory. I think he raped the kid and killed him in a pretty horrible way. The kid was the only one that didn't submit to the judges will keep in mind.

>> No.2763336
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2763336

The book is about the corporate myth of sun safety. The Judge has beautiful smooth baby skin and is walking around naked all the time and almost never wears a hat yet he never gets sunburnt or gets melanomas or nothin'.

>> No.2763343

So am I the only one who liked All the Pretty Horses more than this?

>> No.2763361

>>2763336
>He set by the little mud cap and laved water over his burnt and peeling skull and over his face and he drank again and sat in the sand. He looked up at his old companions. His mouth was cracked and his tongue swollen.

>"burnt and peeling skull"
>deal with it pleb

>> No.2763385

>>2763343
Yes. Yes you are.

>> No.2763517
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2763517

>>2762422
That cocksucker writer sure does like the word 'antinomean.' Goddamn.

>> No.2765172

>>2763343
The only Cormac McCarthy books you're allowed to like more than this one are Suttree, Outer Dark, and The Crossing. You're wrong in every case except for maybe Suttree, but it's allowed.

>> No.2765187

>>2763343
Nope. All the Pretty Horses was amazing. The whole border trilogy is his best work.

suck my dick bloom

>> No.2765209

>>2762256
Wrong. Harold Bloom's a pretentious git. I read Cormac McCarthy because The Road was on Oprah's Book Club.