/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.4536677]

I just finished pic related and I don't know what to think.

I read that one critic stated that it escapes interpretation and I think that puts it nicely. I mean, throughout the text I had felt that Holden was somewhat "satanic" in how he was contrasted with the expriest but... I don't know what else to say really. Much of his dialogue also just seemed like gobbledygook, obscurantist bs.

Great book though, once I got familiar with Mccarthy's weird prose.

What does /lit/ think?

[Anonymous No.4536910]

Where the Mccarthy-fags at? Chime in pls.

[Anonymous No.4536933]

>I read that one critic stated that it escapes interpretation and I think that puts it nicely.

The typified mediocrity of these "Blood Meridian" threads is officially annoying now.

[Anonymous No.4537027]

>>4536677
Well, Holden couldn't fuck that prostitute because deep down he is just a sweet kid. The novel is about the awkward pangs of adolescence and youthful passion but its' saving grace is the wisdom earned at journey's end. To rephrase, Holden is a great character because he has the trappings of ur dad under all that childish uncertainty.

[Anonymous No.4537083]

>>4536677

Look up "Yale Blood Meridian" on Youtube if you're really stuck for interpretation, people on /lit/ bitch about it for some strange reason but I think it's an excellent lecture.

The book is very heavy on allusions and commentary on the use of allusions. It's necessary to have read the works McCarthy was referencing to truly understand the book.

It also explores morality. Most people reading it see the kid as a sympathetic character, if only because they're so used to the protagonist filling that role. Some people will argue that the reader entirely projects that sympathetic element onto the kid, citing the fact that the only time he's seen doing anything selfless is to aid a band of murderers. I understand that but disagree with it for a few reasons. I won't go to far into it but it's generally agreed that morality is a major topic in the book.

Overall I think it's excellent contemporary literature and easily one of my personal favorites.

[Anonymous No.4538292]

>>4537027
what was the wisdom that Holden learned? dead serious i just want to hear how you'd put it

[Anonymous No.4538313]

>>4536677
>it escapes interpretation

I guess this is what you say about shit that everyone worships. Nothing escapes the "good and bad" and nothing escapes interpretation.

The only thing that escaped was your balls.

[pic unrelated No.4538688]

>>4537083

People bitch about it because shes this prude bitchy female instructor who HATES the book, but makes her class read it anyways.

she admits she had trouble reading it her self, and had to put it down 3 times

so yeah. of course /lit/ didnt like her.

Equally, she sounds awful, and her speaking voice is just obnoxious beyond description.

But I agree with the information she presents for the most part.

she insists that

>judge holden is satan
>the story is bildungsroman
>lots of other shit just watch the damn lecture on youtube ffs it will give you a better response than really any one here can or will.

[Anonymous No.4538735]

>inb4
>anyone who has read the book will realise that this copypasta is a painstaking assembly of all of mccarthy's strained thesaurus-infused prowse
>ah monsieur
ah, blood meridian, monsieur? that novel is the sark an chaparral of literature, the filament whereon rode the remuda of highbrow, corraled out of some destitute hacienda upon the arroya, quirting with main and with pyrolatrous coagulate of lobated grandiloquence. our eyes rode over the pages, monsieur, of that slatribbed azotea like Argonauts of suttee, juzgados of swole, bights and systoles of walleyed and tyrolean and carbolic and tectite and scurvid and querent and creosote and scapular malpais and shellalagh. we scalped, monsieur, the gantlet of its esker and led our naked bodies into the rebozos of its mennonite and siliceous fauna, wallowing in the jasper and the carnelian like archimandrites, teamsters, combers of cassinette scoria, centroids of holothurian chancre, with pizzles of enfiladed indigo panicgrass in the saltbush of our vigas, true commodores of the written page, rebuses, monsieur, we were the mygale spiders too and the devonian and debouched pulque that settled on the frizzen studebakers, listening the lobos howling in the desert while we saw the Judge rise out of a thicket of corbelled arches, whinstone, cairn, cholla, lemurs, femurs, leantos, moonblanched nacre, uncottered fistulas of groaning osnaburg and kelp, isomers of fluepipe and halms awap of griddle, guisado, pelancillo.

[Anonymous No.4538919]

>>4538688
Completely different anon here, absolutely agree that this 'lecturer' is pure shit. How can you teach literature at Yale and have this annoying voice and way of talking..

[Anonymous No.4538945]

whic version of dostoyevskys 'crime & punsihsment' is the best? There are so many to pick from

[Anonymous No.4539984]

>>4537027
He was just another phony.

[Anonymous No.4539991]

>>4537083
>morality
or the lack there of, the epigram is key to understanding

[Anonymous No.4540210]

>>4538688
Her analysis of BM's homage to other works; Paradise Lost and Moby dick is fine, but I really struggle to accept her view that the final lines were the culmination of McCarthy's view that his book will never die, his characters will be immortal, because BM is greater than all that came before it.

[Anonymous No.4540215]

>>4538735
>that whole post

Great satire, I laughed hard.

[Anonymous No.4540217]

>>4538945
P&V. Always P&V

[Anonymous No.4540235]

>>4538735
>understand very few of those words
I bow to your incredible vocabulary-penis Monsieur-Guy.

[Anonymous No.4540248]

Gentlemen,

Need I remind all of you that the work has been Properly Analyzed by the Greatest Literary Thinker of the 20th Century?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cuccco2umo

Having brought your attention to this, no further attempts at "analysis" is necessary on your parts. Please, all of you, cease posting. Thank you.

[Anonymous No.4540295]

>>4540248
did bloom always have that fucking look on his face

I'm imagining a small Jewish boy in the Bronx with that face and it's killing me

[Anonymous No.4540304]

>>4540295

PROFESSOR Harold *B*loom has most likely had this look since emerging from the womb, yes. It is simply the look of a Man who must Constantly endure the Mediocrity around him. The very act of Existing in a world of "cheesed burgers" and Gerald Potter is simply painful to such an Astute mind.

[Kentucky No.4540337]

>>4540304
>>4540295
>>4540248
He looks exactly like Van Dyke Parks does he not.

Being an effete hyperliterate will cause these contortions, it seems.

[Anonymous No.4540366]

>>4540337

This "Van" character is not as Ruggedly Handsome but I suppose there is some Superficial resemblance perhaps.

[Anonymous No.4540409]

>tfw you'll never take a course taught by Harold Bloom
>you'll never read as much as Bloom either

And thus my self-loathing only worsens.

[Anonymous No.4540414]

>>4536677
couldn't stand the prose and this was why I didn't enjoy it much. this combined with the verbose and over-descriptions on nothing important was so deterring it wasn't enjoyable.

>b-but the judge! what a character
he's sooooo evil oh noes!

[Anonymous No.4540435]

>>4540409
>implying fulfilling either of those feels would make you like yourself more
>implying you should like yourself more
>implying should

[Anonymous No.4540437]

>>4540409

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTuiQ4Jt168

Harold Bloom loves you, anon.

[Anonymous No.4540441]

>>4540414
I was just going to move it on and chalk it up to a difference in taste but then you did this little number:

>>b-but the judge! what a character
>he's sooooo evil oh noes!

And now I'm convinced you're an idiot and that I'm wasting my time posting on a board that attracts people like you.

[Anonymous No.4540444]

>>4540437
it's comfy as fuck listening to bloom talk

[Anonymous No.4540460]

The only way to get a meaningful amount out of Blood Meridian is to also read Moby Dick.

[Anonymous No.4540487]

>>4540437

Holy cow... I feel such admiration and respect for bloom, a reverence if you will. This was one of the most affecting monologues I've ever heard and it was improvised in an interview setting...what a remarkable man..his words ring true, now more than ever, and what he says about us "going down" if what he represents becomes obsolete is ever-true, and I see its ill effects proliferating in our culture every day.

[Anonymous No.4540508]

>>4540487

Agreed. People can laugh about his facial expressions and accuse him of that Ivory Tower bullshit but it cannot be denied that the man comes from an extremely important tradition. We really should read for its own sake and not try to shackle literature with a plethora of contemporary -isms.

[Anonymous No.4540536]

>>4540508
True. We need champions of the canon and perhaps more importantly, of having standards in literature and the humanities. Look to social media, for instance, and the type of work that is congratulated by our peers is overly-sentimental, unsophisticated stuff with no attention to any of the qualities that make great poetry. And don't even get me started on "Slam poetry".

[Anonymous No.4540642]

>>4540210
Welcome to academia, where Hamlet wanting to fuck Gertrude is proclaimed rather than critically argued.