[HN Gopher] Cormac McCarthy has died
___________________________________________________________________
Cormac McCarthy has died
Author : benbreen
Score : 360 points
Date : 2023-06-13 20:00 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| arandomsapien wrote:
| I came across his work far too late and am catching up, having
| only read The Road Blood Meridian, and No Country for Old Men so
| far. I've never read an author who can paint such a vivid picture
| in my mind with so few words. I wasn't much of a fiction reader
| prior to picking up his work, and it's certainly reignited a love
| of reading for me.
|
| His books don't resonate with a good number of friends, and I can
| understand why. But for me it's a strange mix of dark and
| comforting, with words that make my neurons dance like they're
| listening to jazz.
| tmountain wrote:
| The Road is really good and a quick read. I read it in one
| sitting, and really loved it. Check out Sutree for something
| completely different but really well rendered. McCarthy is one
| of my favorite authors. He gave us so many gifts.
| drc500free wrote:
| The border trilogy (All The Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities
| of the Plain) is understated compared to many of his other
| books, but gets to something about young men becoming who they
| are that I haven't found elsewhere.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| I just finished The Road last week. It was worth reading.
|
| By sheer coincidence, the e-book version is currently on sale (at
| least I sure _hope_ it 's coincidental):
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Road-Vintage-International-Cormac-McC...
| secret-noun wrote:
| https://archive.ph/eWeoO
| ErikAugust wrote:
| No paywall: https://trimread.org/articles/38980
| voisin wrote:
| Man, this is crushing news. He was uniquely capable of capturing
| the worst of the human experience in the most beautiful manner.
|
| "Once there were brook trouts in the streams in the mountains.
| You could see them standing in the amber current where the white
| edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of
| moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their
| backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in
| its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put
| back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived
| all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery."
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| RIP. One of the modern literary giants. The Road remains one of
| the most harrowing books I've ever read, and Blood Meridian, the
| most disturbingly beautiful.
| haroldp wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230613194612/https://www.nytim...
| tehnub wrote:
| One of my favorite quotes from Suttree:
|
| He looked at a world of incredible loveliness. Old distaff Celt's
| blood in some back chamber of his brain moved him to discourse
| with the birches, with the oaks. A cool green fire kept breaking
| in the woods and he could hear the footsteps of the dead.
| Everything had fallen from him. He scarce could tell where his
| being ended or the world began nor did he care. He lay on his
| back in the gravel, the earth's core sucking his bones, a
| moment's giddy vertigo with this illusion of falling outward
| through blue and windy space, over the offside of the planet,
| hurtling through the high thin cirrus.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| I always heard the "Big 4" (white guys) were John Updike,
| McCarthy, Don DeLillo, and Philip Roth. I think somebody like,
| the disgraced, Harold Bloom at one point said they were the last
| 'great', living American Authors.
|
| To my surprise, Don DeLillo is still alive.
| peruvian wrote:
| Bloom considered McCarthy the best living American author and
| Blood Meridian one of the best American novels, right up there
| with Moby Dick in terms of importance.
| cgh wrote:
| Bloom isn't a fan of Pynchon? Not sure how you could exclude
| him from such a list.
| tptacek wrote:
| Interesting fact about McCarthy: he had a sort of residency, I
| think pretty recently, despite his fame! as a copyeditor for
| science papers at the Santa Fe Institute. Here's a thread about a
| Nature piece with his advice for science writers:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30611829
|
| _Edit_
|
| Meant to link the HN thread, not the original source.
| unignorant wrote:
| I spent a summer at the Santa Fe Institute in 2010 and can say
| that McCarthy certainly spent a lot of time there. I'm not sure
| he was a copyeditor, exactly, but SFI is a nice place to hang
| out for any sort of creative work -- beautiful building and
| landscape, and very open and collaborative atmosphere.
|
| The institute is on the top of a big hill and I'll always
| remember how he gave me a lift one day as I was walking up.
| javajosh wrote:
| It costs $30 to read that article. Here is a summary from
| https://kottke.org/19/09/advice-from-cormac-mccarthy-on-writ...
|
| > Use minimalism to achieve clarity. While you are writing, ask
| yourself: is it possible to preserve my original message
| without that punctuation mark, that word, that sentence, that
| paragraph or that section? Remove extra words or commas
| whenever you can.
|
| > Inject questions and less-formal language to break up tone
| and maintain a friendly feeling. Colloquial expressions can be
| good for this, but they shouldn't be too narrowly tied to a
| region. Similarly, use a personal tone because it can help to
| engage a reader. Impersonal, passive text doesn't fool anyone
| into thinking you're being objective: "Earth is the centre of
| this Solar System" isn't any more objective or factual than "We
| are at the centre of our Solar System."
|
| > Finally, try to write the best version of your paper: the one
| that you like. You can't please an anonymous reader, but you
| should be able to please yourself. Your paper -- you hope -- is
| for posterity. Remember how you first read the papers that
| inspired you while you enjoy the process of writing your own.
|
| EDIT: you posted the wrong link, I was trying to help YOU, and
| the readers of your comment. You removed the original nature
| link, and then post a condescending reply to me. It's insulting
| and makes me think less of you and I now deeply regret trying
| to help.
| tptacek wrote:
| The original is on sci-hub under its DOI, of course.
|
| _Later_
|
| (I wrote "of course" here, as a sort of clumsy
| acknowledgement that I'm not posting an actual sci-hub link,
| not as any sort of commentary on the preceding comment ---
| that comment was appreciated, as I'd originally posted the
| wrong link, to the paywalled Nature story and not the HN
| thread. Sorry if it reads any other way!)
| [deleted]
| the_af wrote:
| Everyone is praising McCarthy and in particular mentioning how
| The Road impacted them, so allow me to go against the grain here.
|
| First, I do like downbeat, apocalyptic fiction. I sometimes enjoy
| reading fiction that evokes anguish or that portrays failures.
| Kazuo Ishiguro is one of my favorite English language writers.
|
| But... I didn't like "The Road" _at all_. I think I get the
| point, but to me it was essentially "apocalypse porn". It was
| about pointlessly and joylessly describing a dying, hopeless
| world, but in a way that wasn't interesting to read. I didn't
| even like how it was written, after a while I started counting
| how many times McCarthy saw fit to write "the last of [food]".
| "They ate the last of the biscuits". "They ate the last of the
| beans". Etc, etc.
|
| I'm sorry but I cannot find better words for this, The Road felt
| like "hopelessness porn".
|
| I expect people won't agree with me. So be it.
| zwieback wrote:
| I couldn't get into The Road either and I know others that feel
| the same. I've always wanted to try a different McCarthy but
| haven't yet, maybe this will give me the final impetus.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| I preferred blood meridian. McCarthy, and especially The Road,
| is definitely a continuation of the hemingway style, it's not
| for everyone. I find that the bluntness of the prose can hide
| some very beautiful insights he has though.
| the_af wrote:
| Interesting. I actually like Hemingway! For example, I
| consider "The Killers" a masterpiece: blunt, short, well-
| written, the dialogue is mundane but interesting, and nothing
| heroic happens. I don't know if I could stand a full novel in
| this style though.
|
| To me, McCarthy in the "The Road" was the boring kind of
| depressing.
| ali_m wrote:
| I think there's a beauty in the bleakness. Some of the
| descriptions are just so vivid, like a charcoal sketch.
|
| > He came forward, holding his belt by one hand. The holes in
| it marked the progress of his emaciation and the leather at one
| side had a lacquered look to it where he was used to stropping
| the blade of his knife. He stepped down into the roadcut and he
| looked at the gun and he looked at the boy. Eyes collared in
| cups of grime and deeply sunk. Like an animal inside a skull
| looking out the eyeholes. He wore a beard that had been cut
| square across the bottom with shears and he had a tattoo of a
| bird on his neck done by someone with an illformed notion of
| their appearance. He was lean, wiry, rachitic. Dressed in a
| pair of filthy blue coveralls and a black billcap with the logo
| of some vanished enterprise embroidered across the front of it.
|
| The line about how the "holes in [his belt] marked the progress
| of his emaciation" is seared into my brain forever.
| sinemetu11 wrote:
| Blood Meridian.
| magpi3 wrote:
| He never explains what happens, but The Road stuck with me
| because IMO it depicted how fragile everything we have is and
| the hellscape we would be inviting if civilization were to
| collapse.
|
| Since he wrote it this has been done to death by numerous
| writers (including comic books), but at the time it felt fresh,
| and I vividly remember wanting to curl into a ball on my bed in
| horror at some of the depictions in the book, not just because
| they were horrible, but because I thought: "Yup. That's what
| would happen alright."
| tosser0001 wrote:
| I've read a bunch of his books and The Road is the only one I
| know of that actually ends with a glimmer of hope.
| retinaros wrote:
| I read all of his books and tbh the road is a minor work of
| him. a small book that is easy to enter into and tell a story
| to a lot of people.
|
| blood meridian, sutree, the border trilogy are not that. they
| are work of art where words are crafted in ways that go beyond
| the pages. it is really the work of a master like very few
| writers ever did in history. a small excerpt of blood meridian.
| with so many little words, ..
|
| << And by and by they came to a place where the road was
| darkened in a deep wood and in this place the old man killed
| the traveler. He killed him with a rock and he took his clothes
| and he took his watch and his money and he buried him in a
| shallow grave by the side of the road. Then he went home.. The
| harness maker lived until his son was grown and never did
| anyone harm again. As he lay dying he called the son to him and
| told him what he had done. And the son said that he forgave him
| if it was his to do so and the old man said that it was his to
| do so and then he died. But the boy was not sorry for he was
| jealous of the dead man and before he went away he visited that
| place and cast away the rocks and dug up the bones and
| scattered them in the forest and then he went away. He went
| away to the west and he himself became a killer of men. >>
| nielsbot wrote:
| In Memoriam
|
| "Yelping With Cormac: Ritual Roasters"
| https://yelpingwithcormac.tumblr.com/post/10442344603/ritual...
|
| Always gives me a chuckle
| candlemas wrote:
| I think you're supposed to follow the unofficial Hacker News
| death announcement title format of "[name of person] has died".
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?q=has+died
| cypherpunks01 wrote:
| "Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden."
|
| --Cormac McCarthy, The Road
| bklyn11201 wrote:
| Read The Border Trilogy first (a coming-of-age story set on the
| US-Mexico border): * All the Pretty Horses
| * The Crossing * Cities of the Plain
|
| Then Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men.
| cgh wrote:
| Calling the Border Trilogy a coming-of-age story is...one way
| to look at it for sure, given how it all ends. I love "The
| Crossing", top three McCarthy for me (the others being "Blood
| Meridian" of course and "Child of God").
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| I would second that, and add Suttree towards the end. I
| personally found The Road a little awkward, it felt
| unfortunately like an experiment in the SF / post-apocalyptic
| genre that was less successful than his surreal westerns.
| tmountain wrote:
| And if you still want more westerns after that, Lonesome Dove
| and Paradise Sky. Neither are McCarthy, but they're both
| amazing and will resonate with the same audience.
| cwdegidio wrote:
| I grew up in Ohio. I moved west the year I turned 30. I always
| felt like the West never made sense to me. Through his words, I
| feel like I got some understanding. Fantastic writer and a
| definite loss to American prose.
| jebarker wrote:
| What aspects of the West didn't make sense to you?
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| Growing up in Ohio as well, I was fortunate to encounter in
| high school Ursula Le Guin's short story "Buffalo Gals, Won't
| You Come Out Tonight" which helped me feel like I understood it
| better. After spending more time in the West and Southwest,
| those feelings were confirmed.
| oli5679 wrote:
| Cormac McCarthy - The Road
|
| "Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You
| could see them standing in the amber current where the white
| edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of
| moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their
| backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in
| its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put
| back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived
| all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery."
| gabaix wrote:
| The epilogue of The Road shows its purpose. Make us
| appreciative of today's nature beauty.
| rbtprograms wrote:
| McCarthy was one of my bigger introductions to what I could call
| a more "adult" form of literature. He was one of my favorite
| novelists when I was in my late teens and early 20's, and I
| believe him to be a master of setting a tone in a novel. Truly
| will never forget the first time I read Blood Meridian.
| smarri wrote:
| My favourite author, Blood Meridian was like nothing I ever had
| read before. Rest in peace.
| austinprete wrote:
| Since I haven't seen mention of it yet, let me recommend one of
| his (seemingly) lesser known works: The Sunset Limited.
|
| It's a play of 2 characters and 1 setting, and has an (IMO very
| good) HBO adaption starring Samuel L. Jackson and Tommy Lee
| Jones.
|
| Like most of his work, it's an existential contemplation of sorts
| and perhaps raises more questions than it answers. But I find
| myself going back to it a lot, maybe as a divining rod for my own
| meaning to life and death.
|
| RIP, Cormac.
| boredumb wrote:
| Feel silly but I didn't know what Darker America was. Maybe i'm
| in the minority but The Road, No Country for Old Men and Blood
| Meridian seem to be massively more popular so it seems a bit odd
| for the title to mention what I perceive as a lesser known book.
| ethanbond wrote:
| I believe that's a descriptor of his works, not a title of one.
| boredumb wrote:
| Thank you, I just spent 5 minutes trying to find the book
| anywhere on line and was starting to feel a bit nuts.
| nostromo95 wrote:
| You might be a non-native speaker, but the title is trying to
| say his works _evoke_ a darker America rather than that being a
| work he 's written.
| boredumb wrote:
| I assumed with Darker being capitalized it was a title.
| Perhaps the NYTimes editors are no longer native english
| speakers?
| FemmeAndroid wrote:
| It's part of the title of the article, which is in
| titlecase. That's why 'Novelist,' 'is,' and 'dead' are
| capitalized.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| edit: I'm wrong, disregard.
|
| I mean, they capitalized "is" too. Sloppy work, 0/10.
| rphv wrote:
| "Is" is a verb, so it should always be capitalized in
| title case.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Huh! I've apparently been getting this wrong for _years_.
| moultano wrote:
| That's how titles of news articles are typically
| capitalized. The only lowercase words are those that are
| grammatical connectors.
| AA-BA-94-2A-56 wrote:
| This is a culture shock for me because when I studied
| journalism in Australia I was taught to only capitalise
| the first letter and proper nouns.
|
| Example from ABC News AU:
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-14/missing-
| australian-hi...
|
| > Brisbane woman Julia-Mary Lane found dead in Canadian
| wilderness in 'unfortunate hiking accident'
| applepizza wrote:
| They are referring to his little known novel "Darker America,
| Is dead at 89"
| AJRF wrote:
| God I will miss his writing. I finished (and adored) The
| Passenger a few weeks ago. Rest In Piece.
|
| This is a nice interview;
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrUy1Vn2KdI
| karaterobot wrote:
| Why not read _Stella Maris_? I 'm reading _The Passenger_ right
| now, and enjoying it.
| ryanfreeborn wrote:
| Some of my favorite quotes, from my favorite McCarthy book, Blood
| Meridian:
|
| War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The
| ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.
|
| --
|
| Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without
| my consent.
|
| --
|
| In the days to come they would ride up through a country where
| the rocks would cook the flesh from your hand and where other
| than rock nothing was. They rode in a narrow enfilade along a
| trail strewn with the dry round turds of goats and they rode with
| their faces averted from the rock wall and the bake-oven air
| which it rebated, the slant black shapes of the mounted men
| stenciled across the stone with a definition austere and
| implacable like shapes capable of violating their covenant with
| the flesh that authored them and continuing autonomous across the
| naked rock without reference to sun or man or god.
|
| --
|
| They rode on and the sun in the east flushed pale streaks of
| light and then a deeper run of color like blood seeping up in
| sudden reaches flaring planewise and where the earth drained up
| into the sky at the edge of creation the top of the sun rose out
| of nothing like the head of a great red phallus until it cleared
| the unseen rim and sat squat and pulsing and malevolent behind
| them. The shadows of the smallest stones lay like pencil lines
| across the sand and the shapes of the men and their mounts
| advanced elongate before them like strands of the night from
| which they'd ridden, like tentacles to bind them to the darkness
| yet to come.
| ali_m wrote:
| And they are dancing, the board floor slamming under the
| jackboots and the fiddlers grinning hideously over their canted
| pieces. Towering over them all is the judge and he is naked
| dancing, his small feet lively and quick and now in doubletime
| and bowing to the ladies, huge and pale and hairless, like an
| enormous infant. He never sleeps, he says. He says he'll never
| die. He bows to the fiddlers and sashays backwards and throws
| back his head and laughs deep in his throat and he is a great
| favorite, the judge. He wafts his hat and the lunar dome of his
| skull passes palely under the lamps and he swings about and
| takes possession of one of the fiddles and he pirouettes and
| makes a pass, two passes, dancing and fiddling at once. His
| feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he
| will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a
| great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing,
| dancing. He says that he will never die.
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| This knowledge exists without my consent.
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| As others have mentioned here, John Hillcoat (director of the
| film adaptation of "The Road") is taking a crack at filming the
| "unfilmable" "Blood Meridian".
|
| I'm stoked to see how he handles BM, especially who he casts as
| Judge Holden. I feel like Philip Seymour Hoffman would have been
| perfect for the role, but I'm confident Hillcoat will find
| someone equal to the task.
|
| My favorite Judge quote from BM:
|
| "This is an orchestration for an event. For a dance, in fact. The
| participants will be apprised of their roles at the proper time.
| For now it is enough that they have arrived. As the dance is the
| thing with which we are concerned, and contains complete within
| itself its own arrangement and history and finale, there is no
| necessity that the dancers contain these things within themselves
| as well. In any event, the history of all is not the history of
| each, nor indeed the sum of those histories, and none here can
| finally comprehend the reason for his presence, for he has no way
| of knowing even in what the event consists. In fact, were he to
| know, he might well absent himself, and you can see that that
| cannot be any part of the plan, if plan there be."
|
| RIP.
| voisin wrote:
| Tangential: check out "Yelping with Cormac", a tumblr that I
| think did a great job of capturing his style with humorous
| results.
| ageisopolis wrote:
| One of the greatest authors of the postmodern era if not the
| greatest. Blood Meridian is that "great american novel" in my
| mind. RIP
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| For me, McCarthy is among a few authors ( Sherman Alexie, Edward
| Abbey, Octavia Butler, etc) who truly broke the Northeastern
| cultural stranglehold on American literature. His voice is
| brutally and uncompromisingly continental.
| sharadov wrote:
| RIP McCarthy The Road was a hard book to read - sparing with
| words but yet very effective at describing the dystopian
| landscape and the grueling journey that father and son are on. I
| could not stop thinking about it for weeks after having read it -
| had a profound effect on me.
| tehnub wrote:
| I only started reading his books within the last year, but
| McCarthy quickly became one of my favorite authors. Suttree in
| particular I think is quite wonderful. I also immensely enjoyed
| the Passenger and have been thinking about it for months. Allow
| me to quote some of the late critic Roger Ebert's remarks about
| him, which had an influence on me to pick up a McCarthy book:
|
| At first when I could not speak, I could not read easily, because
| sedation had undermined my attention span. I was depressed. I
| could turn on the TV, but why? My wife brought a wonderful DVD
| player to my hospital room, but I could not make myself watch
| movies. My life was stale and profitless. I would spend hours in
| a murky stupor. Knowing I had always been reading a book, my
| concerned wife began reading to me: Jane Austen, Charles Dickens.
|
| Curiously, my love of reading finally returned after I picked up
| Cormac McCarthy's Suttree, a book I had already read not long
| before my first surgery. Now I read it two more times. I was not
| "reading the same book." I was reentering the same experience,
| the same occult and visionary prose, the life of Suttree so
| urgently evoked. As rarely before, a book became tactile to me.
| When Suttree on his houseboat pulled a cord and brought up a
| bottle of orange soda pop from the cool river, I savored it. I
| could no longer taste. I tasted it more sharply than any soda
| I've ever really had. When Suttree stopped at the bus station for
| a grilled cheese, I ate it, and the pickle, and drank the black
| coffee. I began to live through this desperate man's sad life.
| https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/i-think-im-musing-my-...
|
| McCarthy, the heir of Faulkner, who mines the Southwest and
| Mexico for the way they can break your heart before they kill
| you. McCarthy is best known for his Border Trilogy, about men,
| horses, pain and loyalty; All the Pretty Horses was directed by
| Billy Bob Thornton. McCarthy's best book is said to be Blood
| Meridian, which Harold Bloom said he hated so much for its
| violence he threw it across the room twice, and then read it,
| declared it a masterpiece, and wrote the introduction for the
| Modern Library edition. My own favorite is Suttree, with its
| closely-woven mosaic of unusual and unknown words and its
| heartbreaking story. It's about a man fallen from grace who lives
| in a houseboat, catches catfish for a living, has hallucinatory
| alcoholic adventures and episodes of sentiment, pity and loyalty.
| https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/coen-country
|
| As McCarthy does with the Judge, the hairless exterminator in his
| "Blood Meridian", and as in his "Suttree," especially in the
| scene where [...], the movie demonstrates how pitiful ordinary
| human feelings are in the face of implacable injustice.
| https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/no-country-for-old-men-20...
| Quequau wrote:
| Cormac McCarthy was an optimist.
| cbfrench wrote:
| Being a native East Tennessean, I've always had a slight
| preference for Cormac's Appalachian novels, perhaps in part
| because the people (at least some of them...) and locations
| seemed familiar to me. What a loss.
|
| I was pleased to see that the local NBC affiliate had made the
| announcement of his passing[0] the top story, but I was
| especially gratified that it describes him as "the author of
| Suttree, The Road, Child of God and several other novels." It's
| probably the only obit that will lead the list of novels with
| Suttree and relegate Blood Meridian to "several other novels,"
| haha.
|
| [0] https://www.wbir.com/article/news/local/cormac-mccarthy-
| dies...
| turrican wrote:
| I wasn't aware he wrote books based in Appalachia! Do you have
| a recommendation?
| colinflane wrote:
| Suttree is maybe my favorite of all his novels. If, as others
| here have suggested, you regard Blood Meridian an epic.
| Suttree is a picaresque, like reading Pickwick Papers on
| salvia.
| thereticent wrote:
| Rest in peace.
|
| I had a harebrained fantasy of taking a sabbatical to do a
| visiting fellowship at the Santa Fe Institute while he was there.
| I figured he would like talking brain-behavioral science and I
| would like hearing anything he had to say, plus would have gotten
| to talk with mathematicians and other technical experts with a
| visionary tinge. I never did it (too early in my career to try),
| but it was fun to imagine.
|
| My spouse got me his final novel(s), which he had the prescience
| to announce as such, and I almost started reading them a few days
| ago. Now I know it will be a memorial read, also content that he
| assumed it mostly would be.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| Oh god no. What a sad sad day.
| memling wrote:
| I read _Stella Maris_ just after reading a bio of Godel and
| history of the Vienna Circle. Serendipitous to come across it,
| and would recommend it.
|
| _The Road_...I was warned, but not prepared.
| alangibson wrote:
| I read The Road a couple of months after my first kid was born.
| I don't think I ever really mentally recovered.
| cypherpunks01 wrote:
| I listened to The Road on audiobook while falling asleep,
| over a week or so. Amazing book, but not a recommended
| setting! Don't think I've recovered yet either.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| Goin on ahead and fixin to make a fire. RIP.
| kalverra wrote:
| Well that's a real bummer, one of my top 3 authors, and the only
| one that was still alive.
| briga wrote:
| Wow, The Passenger really was his last. He never compromised, he
| was true to his creative vision right up until the end. Truly one
| of the greats
| dieze wrote:
| Actually Stella Maris was published after The Passenger
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Not unexpected, and he had a long life well used, but this is
| still such a loss to the world.
|
| Personally, the Border Trilogy and The Road are among my most
| favourite novels.
|
| RIP
| ericboggs wrote:
| I read "The Road" in a single sitting one night while my wife was
| working a late shift. I laid in bed staring at the ceiling all
| night.
| celticninja wrote:
| It's a very good book that I will never read again.
| tnorthcutt wrote:
| Same here, I think. I read it before I had a son; I'm not
| sure I could manage to finish it now that I do.
| jfengel wrote:
| It was, I'm told, a very good book that I noped out of about
| ten pages in.
|
| I made it that far before becoming incredibly annoyed at the
| way literature critics were praising his new invention of
| post-apocalyptic stories which nobody had ever read before
| ever.
|
| Also, if I remember correctly, he felt that the rules of
| punctuation didn't apply to him. Maybe that paid off if I'd
| read more than ten pages.
|
| I don't doubt that he was a true giant. But even setting
| aside these purely meta-textual gripes, it's just not a story
| I want to hear. If I want to be depressed and angry, I'll
| read Hacker News.
| lelandfe wrote:
| There are many well-respected authors who flout typical
| grammar. Robert Caro writes sentences as long as whole
| pages.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Don't blame him for being praised by critics, I don't
| believe he's the one who claimed to have invented post-
| apocalyptic fiction.
|
| I get the punctuation issue, but I think his writing is
| proof that you don't always need to follow the rules from
| elementary school. He was so meticulous that, even without
| commas, all his sentences remained clear, and the effect it
| had was--for most readers anyway--to make the meaning
| somehow clearer, and certainly more powerful.
| jfengel wrote:
| Honestly, I should have led with the last thing. The real
| reason I didn't want to read it is that it was violent
| and unpleasant. There are many people who find value in
| such things. I'm not among them.
| tehnub wrote:
| I haven't read it myself, but I've seen many report that it
| was uplifting to them. Amid the utter horror and hopeless
| bleakness a parent does everything they can to protect
| their child.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| I did the same, read it in one (or maybe two) days.
|
| In retrospect, I'm conflicted. In some way, it seems too
| straightforward ("The Road" title fits well) dystopia.
| Distilled, masterfully executed, but somehow ... trivial? Maybe
| it's the "Seinfeld is unfunny" trope where it can become
| obvious only after experiencing it.
| kjs3 wrote:
| I didn't read it in one go. I had to put it down a couple of
| times. Haunting doesn't cover it.
| bena wrote:
| I've only watched the movie. But after having watched it, I
| facetiously recommend that you only watch it if you are
| currently happy. Because damn, is it just the biggest fucking
| downer. It will make you more depressed after having watched
| it. So if you watch it while already depressed, I can't imagine
| the depths it will bring you to.
|
| It's a good movie, and I'm sure a good book (consider it thrown
| on the backlog), but damn, so effectively bleak.
| bmj wrote:
| The movie does away with the ambiguity at the end of the
| book, in an effort to have a vaguely "happy ending."
|
| The best adaption of McCarthy's work to the screen is No
| Country For Old Men. The Coen brothers seem to "get" McCarthy
| better than others.
| leokennis wrote:
| I read this book when my second son was just born. I cannot
| recommend reading a book so bleak and soul crushing and
| unforgiving as The Road while your mind is at its softest and
| most protective. To feel so hopeless and inadequate as a
| father...I would not wish it on even the foulest villain in the
| world.
| wigster wrote:
| i started it just as my first child was born. i quickly
| stopped and never wanted to go back.
| Xenoamorphous wrote:
| Is that where the movie with Viggo Mortensen came from? I
| didn't know it was based on a book, the movie was soul
| crushing.
| ewjt wrote:
| It is the only book I wish I could forget completely.
|
| Serious advice: think twice before reading The Road if you're
| susceptible to doom and gloom about the human race.
| bamfly wrote:
| Damn. I must have exceptionally dark taste in media,
| because I've definitely got a few "well, that was good, but
| I kinda wish I hadn't read/watched it" things in my
| history, and _The Road_ wasn 't even close to qualifying.
| I'd say the film _Threads_ hit me harder, to pick something
| with similar setting and circumstances, though that 's
| still not quite in that category.
|
| ( _It Comes at Night_ is probably my #1 in that category
| for film, and I guess Watts ' _Blindsight_ in books--both
| messed me up for days after, the former with some
| depressive nihilism, the latter with days of fairly intense
| derealization that weren 't too fun--and I'm not normally
| especially prone to either of those, I don't think)
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| _Blindsight_ is a masterpiece about intelligence without
| consciousness. De-linking those ideas can be seriously
| jarring for humans, because we usually consider them two
| sides of the same coin.
|
| Plus one of the more normal characters investigating the
| phenomenon just happens to be a vampire who--surprisingly
| enough--is neither formulaic nor boring.
| ali_m wrote:
| No, you have to carry the fire
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Yes. If you enjoyed it, a film adaptation for another of
| McCarthy's novels, Blood Meridian was recently green lit.
|
| https://deadline.com/2023/04/new-regency-cormac-mccarthys-
| bl...
| runevault wrote:
| The fact Cormac was working on the screenplay himself... I
| wonder how that impacts this effort.
| suction wrote:
| [dead]
| jebarker wrote:
| I cannot imagine how this is going to work.
| mahathu wrote:
| I will never remember this Yelp Review a fan of his wrote:
|
| Three stars.
|
| See that false burrito. See it swaddled in tinfoil on the desk in
| the bowels of that great tower, a bundle of meat and sauce in a
| place long ago ceded to silicone and copper. The stooped man
| eating that peasant food as if in consuming it he can escape to a
| farmfield in a verdant valley and look down and see blood running
| from his blisters and say, yes this is work. This is work.
| Instead his hands are clawlike and ruined by the keyboard and the
| mouse for he is a thing of bone and sinew in a sprawling
| contraption electric and of man's creation but not of man at all.
| And were he to saw his breast open with that plastic knife and
| soak the carpet black with his hot blood and were he to look
| ceilingward like some stigmatic enraptured and with the bellows
| of his lungs let forth a soaring wail in that subbasement his
| screams would be swallowed by the acoustic panels and repulsed by
| the good steel door as if he had made no sound and spilled no
| blood at all.
|
| https://yelpingwithcormac.tumblr.com/post/15243208646/chipot...
| [deleted]
| jnsie wrote:
| I was not ready for this...such a huge loss.
| bitcurious wrote:
| The Road is one of the most haunting books I've ever read. Highly
| recommend.
|
| Warning though - it broke a game my friends play "how would you
| survive X apocalypse?" My answer for many switched to "wouldn't
| want to."
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| I know its bad form to speak ill of the dead but -
|
| A friend gave me a copy of "Child of God" amd frankly it was the
| most disgusting, dark, unrewarding, unethical, uninspired,
| uniteresting, poorly written books ive ever read.
|
| I was flat out offended by the book and repeatedly had to set it
| down and fume about how unnecessarily disgusting he was being. I
| never finished it. I got the impression that cormac was a
| thoroughly disturbed individual with a macabre fascination with
| the most fucked up 0.00001% of humanity. To make matters worth he
| cant write worth a damn.
|
| I will say his metaphors can be quite beautiful hut they often
| make no sense grammatically.
|
| Tldr : Cormac Mccarthy is not for me.
| serf wrote:
| >I got the impression that cormac was a thoroughly disturbed
| individual with a macabre fascination with the most fucked up
| 0.00001% of humanity.
|
| you should separate yourself from that notion.
|
| it's true that authors can be damaged individuals with little
| personal hope, but some of the most macabre things ever written
| have been conjured by perfectly normal/well-functioning/happy
| individuals who enjoy fairly well-balanced lives -- it's simply
| not a good indicator of the person behind the pen.
|
| as for the grammatic non-sense (to which I agree can be exactly
| that, non-sense) I always read it as if it were sort of styled
| similarly to the concept of 'beat poetry'. Grammar and syntax
| goes out the door for prose/beauty/imagery and style.
| suction wrote:
| [dead]
| tmountain wrote:
| Saying he can't write worth a damn is an objectively false
| statement. His works are studied and loved by the literary
| vanguard around the world.
|
| You didn't like the book? Fine, but attacking his capabilities
| as a writer is ridiculous. He's one of the greatest authors in
| a generation.
| gerry_shaw wrote:
| Your review is almost spot on for me. I'm agreeing with it all
| along with the exception that I really like his writing and,
| well, I would say "enjoy" his novels, I do respect and value
| the time spent reading them.
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| Cormac and the main character was a child of God, much like you
| or I.
| alangibson wrote:
| Upvoted because being turned off my McCarthy is not an
| unreasonable reaction.
|
| Do yourself a favor and read Blood Meridian. It's been said
| many times that you are not the same person when you're done
| reading it. I fully agree.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I find his exploration of dark matters to be uniquely
| stimulating and useful in a variety of thought experiments.
|
| Take The Road, for example. The notion of assessing the
| probabilities that you'll have enough ammunition to either kill
| multiple assailants, or alternatively, need to keep the
| ammunition to kill yourself and your son _seems_ sickening and
| pointless to explore to some people. Taken seriously and with
| an open mind, it can invoke serious contemplation of your
| values, what life means to you, what compassion can really
| mean, how you take what you have for granted, and more.
|
| As awful as it is to consider, there are real people who have
| had to make these decisions. That there can be a state of
| existence in this world where these are pressing matters is
| simultaneously bewildering and disgusting, yet eye-opening in
| ways I consider important to living better even outside of that
| context.
|
| The relentless and ruthless tunnel of gloom and suffering in
| that book is a useful tool to remind yourself in a vivid way:
| It's all still here. I'm alive. The trees are green, the rain
| is clean, the grains are growing for a fall harvest I can still
| reasonably expect will arrive -- life is pretty good. And yet
| life can get so much worse. Perhaps I should value this moment
| so much more than I was prior to these thoughts.
|
| Cormac took the very real, very disgusting parts of humanity
| and wove horrifying tapestries from it. But they're not purely
| for the sake of shock and disgust. The contrast of what he
| depicts -- held up to most readers' realities -- provides a
| heightened sense of the inverse of what he describes, allowing
| you to realize much better how beautiful the good parts of
| humanity are. Left to our own imaginations, most of us are not
| only unlikely to wade into that darkness, but we also lack the
| sheer depth and breath of skill he has in bringing it to life.
| What he offers is a sort of simulation of something otherwise
| inaccessible to most of us.
|
| I'd make the case that without this exploration, our perception
| of life can be duller. I'd never want that dullness to be
| sharpened by real experience though; I'd much rather brush
| against that reality in the form of a story.
|
| Human senses are calibrated by relative experience. Whether it
| be taste, sight, smell, touch, or even emotion: you won't
| recognize what feels good or what is better without
| experiencing what's worse in some way or another. The harrowing
| experience of imagining the vulnerability and suffering of
| loved ones or yourself might actually be an excellent tool for
| recalibrating and hardening your desire to see people safe and
| thriving. It may reestablish how crucial it is not to let the
| world descend into what Cormac describes. It can open your mind
| to possibilities you hadn't considered in ways that aren't
| strictly hypothetical or for the sake of pure masochism.
| MikeBVaughn wrote:
| "I will say his metaphors can be quite beautiful hut they often
| make no sense grammatically."
|
| Question 1: Example, please?
|
| Question 1.5: In what way does the example not make sense
| grammatically?
|
| Question 2.0-2.(n): To what degree does grammar 'matter'? Is
| conformance to some prescriptive view of grammar essential to
| 'good' writing? What is the function of grammar - precision and
| disambiguation? Are there contexts in which grammar can or
| should be subservient to other linguistic effects, such as
| prosody? Are there other phenomenological effects of reading to
| which grammar may or may not be relevant?
|
| An exercise for the motivated reader: Read 'A Carafe that is a
| Blind Glass' by Gertrude Stein. What does it feel like? What
| does it evoke? What are we doing mentally when we read it? What
| exactly _are_ we doing when we read?
| bamfly wrote:
| > Question 2.0-2.(n): To what degree does grammar 'matter'?
| Is conformance to some prescriptive view of grammar essential
| to 'good' writing?
|
| To be fair--his writing's a _lot_ more challenging than most.
| Even most other literary writing. Even most other literary
| writing that 's widely regarded as challenging. Editing it to
| conform to language & grammatical norms would definitely make
| it a lot easier to read.
|
| > What is the function of grammar - precision and
| disambiguation? Are there contexts in which grammar can or
| should be subservient to other linguistic effects, such as
| prosody? Are there other phenomenological effects of reading
| to which grammar may or may not be relevant?
|
| And this is the "on the other hand": on the other hand--and
| most unusually--reigning in that deviation from norms, at
| all, would, nonetheless, make his writing _worse_. Some
| writing can tolerate bending even the more well-considered
| and empathetic of writing rules--his required breaking them.
| Demanded it, and demanded a whole other set of rules of his
| own making, exactly as a poem may break the rules of prose
| writing, while strictly following a whole other set of rules,
| all to good effect.
| voisin wrote:
| > I was flat out offended by the book and repeatedly had to set
| it down and fume about how unnecessarily disgusting he was
| being.
|
| Ok, but can you see any beauty in the fact that he wrote words
| that evoked such a response? How much do you read on a daily
| basis that evokes absolutely nothing and passes without memory?
| Read some of his other stuff if you didn't like this particular
| novel.
| justin66 wrote:
| > I know its bad form to speak ill of the dead but -
|
| In defense of an otherwise entirely useless comment, you
| weren't really speaking ill of the dead, you were speaking ill
| of his work.
|
| > To make matters worth he cant write worth a damn.
|
| OK tough guy.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Not liking a book isn't speaking ill of the dead.
|
| But...
|
| > I was flat out offended by the book
|
| That was entirely up to you. That was a decision you made and
| blamed on someone else. I feel like that is something important
| to consider with your first sentence.
| asdasd213123 wrote:
| [flagged]
| stvltvs wrote:
| There's early McCarthy and then there's late McCarthy. The
| difference is stark. You should try one of his later books.
|
| I read "Suttree", and it was a mixed bag for me. I loved "All
| the Pretty Horses" and "The Road".
| scranglis wrote:
| In light of the LLM break throughs in the last couple of years,
| I've been returning his speculative essay about the source of
| symbolic thought every few months: https://nautil.us/the-kekul-
| problem-236574/
| projectileboy wrote:
| It's not often that someone passes who is legitimately a giant,
| someone whose impact will be felt generations from now. A sad
| day.
| __abc wrote:
| Fudge, I loved that guy and his work. I still remember how fun it
| was to binge The Road in a single day. I don't think I left my
| couch from the early morning on through to the late evening. Such
| a compelling and gripping writer.
| krylon wrote:
| I read The Road while doing a lengthy daily commute via train,
| leading through a kind of lush rural area in western Germany. I
| vividly remember the stark contrast between the bleak world
| described in the novel and the vibrant, colorful abundance of
| life outside the window when I came up for air. It was a very
| unreal experience, switching back and forth between these two
| realities.
|
| Blood Meridian was another monstrosity that lured me into a very
| dark inner space. I think it expresses the USA's relationship to
| violence better than anything else I have read, fiction or non-
| fiction. But there is a lot more going on at the same time, and I
| don't think I ever fully explored that. It didn't help that for a
| relatively short novel, it's so exhausting to read, both
| intellectually and emotionally.
| voisin wrote:
| His famous "Legion of Horribles" quote below. I often think of
| "death hilarious":
|
| "A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in
| costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream
| with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform
| still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain
| dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe
| hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a
| bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or
| rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in
| a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in
| the armor of a spanish conquistador, the breastplate and
| pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in
| another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with
| their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they
| trailed upon the ground and their horse's ears and tails worked
| with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole
| head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy
| and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns,
| death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding
| down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than
| the brimstone land of christian reckoning, screeching and
| yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in
| regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip
| jerks and drools.
|
| Oh my god, said the sergeant."
| trefoiled wrote:
| As fantastical as this passage may sound, most of the details
| McCarthy provides are historically accurate, and based on a
| particular event: The Great Raid of 1840 [1]. A thousand
| Comanche warriors conducted an extremely deep raid into
| Southeast Texas, where they sacked the port of Linnville. An
| exceptionally large amount of trade goods were present in the
| port that day, including clothes bound for various settlements
| across the Texas frontier. The bits about umbrellas, stovepipe
| hats, and even the wedding veil come directly from eyewitnesses
| to the raid. The bit about a Comanche warrior wearing the armor
| of a conquistador is also real [2]. The Comanche were known for
| being exceptionally flamboyant, prizing extravagant clothing
| dyed in vibrant colors. It must have had quite a psychological
| effect on their enemies.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Raid_of_1840
|
| [2]
| https://www.google.com/books/edition/Comanches/Cqh8qSexvU4C?...
| mooreds wrote:
| If you are interested in learning more about Comanches, can't
| recommend "The Comanche Empire" highly enough:
| https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300151176/the-
| comanche-e...
| dvt wrote:
| I read The Road years ago, but I was probably too young to fully
| understand it; more recently, I read Blood Meridian a few months
| ago for my book club. Few novels have had me think about them as
| much (Dostoevsky's Demons and Melville's Moby Dick come to mind).
| McCarthy was an absolute American treasure.
|
| Rest in peace. His poetic Blood Meridian epilogue really stuck
| with me:
|
| "In the dawn there is a man progressing over the plain by means
| of holes which he is making in the ground. He uses an implement
| with two handles and he chucks it into the hole and he enkindles
| the stone in the hole with his steel hole by hole striking the
| fire out of the rock which God has put there. On the plain behind
| him are the wanderers in search of bones and those who do not
| search and they move haltingly in the light like mechanisms whose
| movements are monitored with escapement and pallet so that they
| appear restrained by a prudence or reflectiveness which has no
| inner reality and they cross in their progress one by one that
| track of holes that runs to the rim of the visible ground and
| which seems less the pursuit of some continuance than the
| verification of a principle, a validation of sequence and
| causality as if each round and perfect hole owed its existence to
| the one before it there on that prairie upon which are the bones
| and the gatherers of bones and those who do not gather. He
| strikes fire in the hole and draws out his steel. Then they all
| move on again."
| Solvency wrote:
| Why do you suppose Blood Meridian hasn't been put to film yet?
| dmbche wrote:
| From my reading and working in editing movies:
|
| The point of the book is not at all the visual, most of it is
| very subtle. One commentary that I heard that was very astute
| pointed out that many parts of the book are specifically not
| detailed, one big example being that we rarely if ever
| witness the Kid killing or partaking in the murder/general
| viciousness of the gang.
|
| This means that a large part of the book is emulated in your
| brain while reading - did you infer that the kid is doing all
| this, and is just as bad as them? Is he an observer, like
| you, and doesn't leave because he doesn't know better? Does
| he actively try to avoid unnecessary violence?
|
| Your reading of these things will affect your reading of
| further parts - like the accusations of Holden, saying that
| the Kid was always a traitor to the spirit of the gang, which
| are not specific enough to be factual, but you absolutely
| know what he means while reading (depending on how you
| characterised the Kid).
|
| All this means that any one expression of the story would
| betray the oeuvre (in my mind), which aims to get you in the
| boots of these horrible men and understand that they are part
| of you (between other things).
|
| The stark writing and purposeful lack of factual descriptions
| of some key points make Blood Meridian a very evocative work,
| rather than descriptive. Half of it is and remains in your
| mind, and that's simply not what movies do.
|
| All this to say - you can do a movie showing what happens in
| the book, and it would be good! But it would contain very
| little of why the book is so beloved and respected.
| maherbeg wrote:
| I feel like it would do better as a limited series ideally on
| HBO.
| zerbinxx wrote:
| Idk, I feel like HBO (or any mainstream tele studio) might
| butcher it by trying to hamfistedly make it a revisionist
| Western along the lines of "White Man Bad" without catching
| the actual point about evil being inherent in everything.
| Thats undoubtedly a part of the reason as to why it hasn't
| made it to screen yet - it's not a story that fits nicely
| into the sort of Hollywood trope oriented storytelling that
| dominates mainstream TV.
| petsfed wrote:
| Agreed. Its not even that a "white man bad" reading of
| Blood Meridian is _wrong_ per se, its just woefully
| incomplete. It 'd be like if Apocalypse Now was just John
| Wick in the jungle, or Blade Runner was just a police
| procedural with flying cars. Like, yes, that is the
| skeleton on which the piece is hung, but it is not at all
| what makes the piece great.
| idlewords wrote:
| The musical numbers are notoriously hard to stage
| Tao3300 wrote:
| You just need a few fiddlers for the big dance scene.
| mrbombastic wrote:
| Can't wait until "No Country for Old Men" hits Broadway
| alpineidyll3 wrote:
| Who would you cast as the judge?
| dmbche wrote:
| Having just seen someone mention Phillip Seymour Hoffman, I
| am drooling imagining what that would have looked like.
| akiselev wrote:
| De-aged Clancy Brown or Michael Ironside.
| googlryas wrote:
| Kane - aka Glenn Thomas Jacobs.
|
| 7'0, 330 lbs, light complexion, looks good hairless, has
| acting experience: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kane_(wres
| tler)#/media/File:Th...
| defen wrote:
| Plus he's the mayor of Knoxville, McCarthy's old
| hometown.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| While he might look right, there's a lot more to the
| judge than looks. I'm unfamiliar with his acting
| experience but i think the movie will 100% fall flat if
| the judge isn't right. I'm not sure kane has the range
| tehnub wrote:
| WSJ: People have said "Blood Meridian" is unfilmable because
| of the sheer darkness and violence of the story.
|
| CM: That's all crap. The fact that's it's a bleak and bloody
| story has nothing to do with whether or not you can put it on
| the screen. That's not the issue. The issue is it would be
| very difficult to do and would require someone with a
| bountiful imagination and a lot of balls. But the payoff
| could be extraordinary.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704576204574529.
| ..
| dvt wrote:
| It's extremely violent, borderline-surreal in some places,
| excruciatingly slow in others (by design), occasionally has
| two or three levels of story-within-a-story. Unlike some of
| his other novels, it's more of an epic than a story, which is
| usually very hard to put on film. The closest I can think of
| is something like Ben-Hur or Apocalypse Now (which adapted
| Conrad's Heart of Darkness); both were famously plagued by
| production issues.
| [deleted]
| poisonarena wrote:
| Because nobody could handle the judge, that, and would take
| such a particular style of photography to capture the prose.
| I think mostly because of the complex characters like the
| judge, and the violence.
| mmanfrin wrote:
| Phillip Seymour Hoffman would have, he truly would have
| been perfect.
|
| The best suggestion I've heard for someone living is Vince
| D'Onofrio but I don't know if he has the total range
| needed.
| voisin wrote:
| Marlon Brando from Apocalypse Now would have killed it as
| Judge Holden.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Too mumbly. One of the things that makes the Judge so
| terrifying is how articulate and eloquent he is.
| lordfrito wrote:
| Marlon Brando would have been amazing as the Judge.
| kgwgk wrote:
| It's coming. Or at least it was coming. The adaptation was
| probably far from finished and may be abandoned now.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36316524
| porphyra wrote:
| Is it merely a coincidence that Judge Holden was described
| as "face destitute of hair" and the director, John
| Hillcoat, is also bald and devoid of both eyebrows and
| facial hair?
| subsubzero wrote:
| Looks like they are finally working on a film version as of
| April 2023:
|
| > it was announced in April 2023 that New Regency is set to
| produce a feature film based on the novel, with McCarthy and
| his son serving as executive producers and John Hillcoat
| serving as director.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Meridian
| atombender wrote:
| Hillcoat made The Proposition, which is a very McCartyesque
| film in its bleakness and violence. It's a great movie,
| written by and scored by Nick Cave.
|
| I thought his adaptation of The Road was fine (though maybe
| a book that doesn't need an adaptation), and he hasn't done
| anything interesting since then, in my opinion. But Blood
| Meridian may be better material for him.
| johnvaluk wrote:
| Whenever someone wishes for a film adaptation of Blood
| Meridian, I recommend The Proposition. I'll be amazed if
| any Blood Meridian movie is as good.
| rurp wrote:
| I think some books just don't adapt to movies well. Cloud
| Atlas is one of my favorite books and I was shocked to learn
| it was being made into a movie, it just didn't seem like the
| right format. Despite a lot of talent and money going into
| it, the film didn't turn out that great and was probably an
| impossible task.
| ftio wrote:
| I choose to read this as describing a frustrating round of
| golf.
| oAlbe wrote:
| At risk of sounding stupid in public, what does that epilogue
| mean? I've read it several times now, and aside from being
| surprised at how fluid it still reads despite the parsimonious
| use of punctuation, I really can't figure out what it's talking
| about.
| williamcotton wrote:
| I've always interpreted it as post holes as they fence in and
| close the Wild West.
|
| _He uses an implement with two handles and he chucks it into
| the hole and he enkindles the stone in the hole with his
| steel hole by hole striking the fire out of the rock which
| God has put there_
|
| A post hole digger has two handles. When you're using it in
| rocky ground you hit rocks and make sparks.
|
| Picture:
|
| https://images.homedepot-
| static.com/productImages/ed49f7f1-a...
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| Yeah, the interpretation of that scene as an elegy of the
| end of the "wild West" through fencing, feels obvious if
| the reader has read what McCarthy wrote next after _Blood
| Meridian_ : the Border Trilogy, where some 20th-century
| Texas romantics are already dealing with that fencing-off.
| dvt wrote:
| Not stupid at all! There's a long tradition of figuring out
| what it _means_ (just google "Blood Meridian epilogue"), but
| the short answer is that McCarthy was probably playing around
| with ideas, having a bit of fun, waxing poetic. But there's
| some elements in the passage about determinism, causality,
| exploitation, the man with the instrument being a "pioneer"
| of the American West, the holes being railroad tracks, or
| fence posts, or mine stake poles (referencing the imminent
| gold rush), etc.
|
| Like like with all poetry, it's a joy to think about and
| dissect.
| mcbutterbunz wrote:
| I'm not a strong reader and Blood Meridian took me a few
| times to read and appreciate. I just remember thinking how
| crazy it was that almost the entire page was a single run-
| on sentence. I really liked the book but it was difficult
| for me to read and understand.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| If you like that kind of writing, you would enjoy "Autumn
| of the Patriarch". Probably Marquez's best prose work.
| l33tbro wrote:
| Some say it's more like approaching poetry than prose
| with his work. There is certainly causality and narrative
| development in his writing, but he often uses his
| magisterial command of language to impart a cosmic
| dimension to the simplest of instances or utterances.
| zerbinxx wrote:
| There a couple themes in this particular passage that really
| come through to me: steel/fire/stone, the holes in the earth
| being a "path", the wanderers following a command they can't
| comprehend. To me it evokes it's a commentary on the weary
| fatalism of westward expansion, the grim
| meaninglessness/banality of evil of the nascent industrial
| revolution. I really love the idea of those exploring the
| west as a gang of bone-collectors, which tracks with BM's
| ghastly but realistic scalp economy.
| whiddershins wrote:
| The man is digging post holes, which means he is putting up a
| fence.
|
| By putting up a fence he alters so many things about the
| land, in a profound way, and the others who occupy that land
| have a relationship and reaction to this fence.
|
| Edit: maybe it isn't a fence. Could be set up for a railway?
| Or something else like early poles for wires for
| communication?
|
| I've read a lot of McCarthy but not Blood Meridian
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I'm sure it's something horrible and violent, like the rest
| of that book. I go back and read the ending (in addition to
| the epilogue) periodically trying to convince myself of one
| particular version of the ending and main character, or
| another.
| korse wrote:
| Haven't read McCarthy, however it sounds like a pretty bleak
| take on westward expansion of the United States across the
| North American continent / high plains. The hole, steel and
| fire metaphor brings to mind the process by which rail lines,
| telegraph runs and extractive industries are established.
| Those seeking bones brings to mind the search for grounds in
| which to establish extractive industries concerned with oil
| and some chemical precursors.
|
| Then the rest follow blindly not truly knowing why and
| getting stuck with the destruction/dregs/etc.
|
| If that is what is going on, I can't really argue about it
| however I'll take the more joyous propaganda tyvm.
| narrator wrote:
| I'm confused why The Road is said to be such great literature.
| Half the book is " Kid: Daddy, I'm scared. Dad: Don't be
| scared. " What's really funny is how it has become an all
| purpose meme for a bad future if we don't go along with
| whatever the latest political program is.
|
| Klaus Schwab even references it in his recent book "The Grand
| Narrative" as an alternative future that will come to pass if
| we don't do everything right even though the future disaster,
| from the hints given in The Road, is clearly not climate
| change.
| williamcotton wrote:
| Do yourself a favor and read that prose out loud to yourself.
| It has amazing rhythm and flow! How he was able to do this for
| page after page is just astonishing.
| squeegee_scream wrote:
| https://readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com/
|
| > READING MCCARTHY is a podcast devoted to the consideration and
| discussion of the works of one of our greatest American writers,
| Cormac McCarthy. Each episode will call upon different well-known
| Cormackian readers and scholars to help us explore different
| works and various essential aspects of McCarthy's writing.(Note
| these episodes try to offer accessible literary criticism and may
| contain spoilers from different McCarthy works.)
| 2devnull wrote:
| CAPS MATTER1
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| Punctuation sentence structure not.
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