Ok, I didn't enjoy The Road as a teenager. I thought it was lame.
I read No Country for Old Men for a class at some point and didn't like it either.
Before I discard McCarthy forever, I want to ask, is this book transcendent of his other books? If I hated those other two should I still try this?
>>7422209
i'm halfway through and im bored as shit.
>>7422209
It's like The Road, only edgier and with more archaic language
>>7422250
Modern reddit, /lit/
>>7422209
Read Suttree instead and realize why he is such constantly talked about here.
Then read Blood Meridian.
>>7422261
Modern tumblr, /pol/
>>7422209
>I didn't enjoy The Road as a teenager. I thought it was lame.
>I read No Country for Old Men for a class at some point and didn't like it either.
If you can't see the value in those two books literature may not be for you.
>>7422209
it's okay, The Road was bullshit anyway. fuck him. read something worthwhile. you don't have to force yourself to like anything.
>>7422209
Read Moby-Dick
>>7422303
+ Paradise Lost
And after reading it, watch the lecture series on YT.
>>7422315
Speaking of PL, should I pick up Paradise restored/other Milton?
>>7422209
i just started reading it yesterday and i'm halfway through. I think its good for what it is. a western i guess. its fast paced enough and has the bare minimum of what i need (senseless violence and arbitrarily detailed imagery) to keep reading instead of putting it down and masturbating.
>>7422295
I love BM, Suttree, and Child of God. Honestly Child of God may be my favorite. And there's no excuse to not give it a try, because it's not much of a time investment.
I found No Country and the Road disappointing
>>7422295
Those two really are enormous stinkers. My first was "The Road" and it just about put me off ever reading another McCarthy book, but in all seriousness his work usually isn't that bad. Suttree is a fine and gorgeous work.
No Country is pretty embarrassing. Just...don't judge McCarthy off those two.
No Country For Old Men is great for what it is which is a screenplay. y'all got memed by Charlie and the book publishers into buying "a novel"
I may be a dud, but reading BM is to watching paint dry as watching paint dry is to having sex on extacy.
>>7425805
I'm not expecting his book to be more than curious entertainment after reading the other two. Sue me.
>>7422513
yes,
paraise lost, regained
and samson agonistes
lots of books will have all three + his minor stuff
>>7422209
It's very good but you'll probably spend some amount of time googling words only to find out it means some kind of shrubbery or bird that isn't relevant to the narrative.
>>7422295
The Road was dumb bullshit. At least there was something to characterize the violence in No Country and Blood Meridian. In The Road all you get is Fallout 3-tier raider and cannibal faggotry, with a healthy dose of "LOL THE WORLD IS A COLD PLACE". It's entirely bland and uninspired, so much so that his prose alone can't help it.
>>7428035
>"LOL THE WORLD IS A COLD PLACE"
did you even read the book
>>7428045
Yes, and it's heavily coated in exactly that sentiment.
>Babies on spits
>Cannibal dungeon
>TWO BULLETS 1 4 U 1 4 ME
I could go on, but the point is that I'm expected to care about the man and the boy simply because they're related, and beyond that the book is almost exclusively wanking its own bleak atmosphere. An incredibly basic and typical premise with little setting apart from the most generic post apocalyptic scenario imaginable. If it was about a young adult girl falling in love with a young adult boy, everything but the prose itself could just as easily feature in a Stephanie Meyers novel.
>>7423421
>Honestly Child of God may be my favorite
I've read BM, Suttree and CoG.
CoG has none of the otherworldly scenes of BM nor the humor of Suttree .
Could you explain why you consider it above those two?
>>7428088
>everything but the prose itself
>he reads for plot
/lit/ is so embarrassingly plebeian these days
>it's boring
>the words are hard
>it's too edgy
>my feet hurt
>why is the scenery being described?
Blood meridian is what initially drew me to /lit/ after reading the above sentiments on reddit. The discussion quality has really dropped around here
>>7428829
>my feet hurt
I laffed.
Personally I don't see why people hate on The Road. I loved the shit out of it.
>>7422209
I don't usually like to read and I loved The Road.
I think there's definitely masculine Hemingway like elements in the simplicity of the story.
Definitely a "you get it or you don't" sort of deal. I think that's a lot of McCarthy's work.
Maybe it was my own difficulties with my father that helped me get into it.
>>7428088
the point of the road, and it was a very simple and blatant point, made as clearly as possible, was that the world can be a lovely place despite everything, and that no matter how shitty the world can get around you, love and hope can endure. so even in a cannibalistic wasteland, the simple love of a father and son can ensure and survive and carry on and goodness will survive in the harshest conditions
i have no idea how people miss this, it is so fucking in your face
>>7428088
>everything but the prose itself could just as easily feature in a Stephanie Meyers novel
Isn't that exactly the point? He never says what happened to make the world the way it is. He leaves everything about the plot and world incredibly vague. It's done like that on purpose to focus your attention on the relationship of the father and child.
>>7428459
Right, and the prose isn't even that good in The Road. Face it, you're sucking off McCarthy's easiest, most pandering novel.
i think the conclusion that we can draw from all of this is that The Road sucked. balls.
>>7428877
I liked it.
>Reads up to the part where they get attacked in the desert...
>bored
Into the trash it goes.
>>7428116
I think there is less otherworldlieness, but I don't think it's completely lacking. If you enjoy that aspect though, I would recommend Outer Dark, which I think has a lot of it in a smaller package.
The main thing about CoG for me is the prose. While I like the really obscure language that McCarthy uses in BM and Suttree, I just prefer the leaner, prose of CoG. I think in some ways it is better at communicating vivid images in a more economical way.
Being totally serious, one of my favorite McCarthy lines is
>Already green flies clambered over his dark and lumpy stool.
I just think that is great imagist writing. I like that the flies are described as green. I normally think of flies as black, but of course they are actually a darkly iridescent green or blue. I dunno. I just think CoG is his best book in terms of painting vivid images. (BM and Suttree are also great at this, I just think CoG is better. I'm sure a lot of people will disagree)
Also, I thought Child of God was pretty fucking funny, I dunno
>>7428858
>I don't like to read
>/lit/
What
>>7422209
It's breddy gud OP. Prepare your vocabulary's anus, however.
Cormac McCarthy is literally a case of the Emperor's New Clothes.
You can write anything in his style and it sounds portentous. His characters and setpieces are frequently just new interpretations of previous ones. This even goes for his screenplay, which IMO is a good illustration of the weaknesses of his writing style. He manages to maintain the illusion in a book because people go into it with this idea it's an amazingly deep novel and the prose is going to be incredible, but as soon as you divorce it from that context you realise how crap it is. Great prose stylists - Joyce, Nabokov. Prose stylists with a bullshit overrated rep - McCarthy.
Plus Carson McCullers and Annie Proulx have both done the whole sense of grim Southern inevitability better than he has since forever. I'm glad people are starting to turn off McCarthy a bit compared to how they were a few years ago, because the dude certainly does not deserve his Greatest Living American Writer tag. He deserved it even less so while James Salter was still alive.
>>7428867
I quite liked the Road and I think this is the reading most people walk away with. I don't disagree with it, but I think there is also a way in which you can read it as "the man" being fundamentally selfish and how he seems to be a microcosm of humanity's failure as a whole.
Sure he's not a straight up cannibal like some of the others we encounter, which is basically an extreme case of self-interest. However, I think the end of the book radically changed my opinion of him. The elderly couple who take in "the boy" are really proof that other good people exist in the world. Yet the man, who knew he was dying the whole time, believed he himself /and only him/ had been charged with a sort of "task by God" (McCarthy makes allusions to this throughout) to protect the boy. This is because he realizes he's done for no matter what, but the boy is really what gives him reason to push on.
So there's a way he's protecting the boy for his own sake, and when he finally dies the boy probably ends up better off with the elderly couple.
I haven't really thought this idea through, and I could probably expound on this as to how the failure of "the man" is actually the failure of Man but that was what I thought at the end of the book.
You can safely discard him forever. He's got a good feel for writing but he's bad with narrative structure, story cohesion and character development, you can almost feel his panic as you near the half-way point, then he panics and just starts looking for a way out, ruining his characters and story.
Read Suttree, you faggots.
>>7428867
>>7428868
I know what the point is, but that central point is a played out, tired, and shitty cliche, presented with a total lack of originality, with vaguely and poorly written characters that have no progression and that I'm expected to care about simply because they exist.
It's a J.K. Rowling tier novel that you can feel smart about reading because McCarthy is "le respected author" while blinding yourself to the fact that it's his shittiest book by a long shot.
>>7430945
>but that central point is a played out, tired, and shitty cliche, presented with a total lack of originality
I think it's like painting a white background to highlight what's in the foreground. Because it's not just a simple a boring apocalypse story. It is THE boring apocalypse story. With a regular end of the world scenario all they care about and masturbate over is how it happened and describe it in great detail. McCarthy leaves everything vague in that regard to show that it's only a backdrop for the real story. He doesn't even say the names of the characters.
>with vaguely and poorly written characters that have no progression and that I'm expected to care about simply because they exist.
I felt like there was a lot of interplay between the son and father. I definitely felt the characters change and I did care for them. I think a lot of that is what you read between the lines.
>It's a J.K. Rowling tier novel that you can feel smart
I feel like he took a shit-tier premise and ripped out all the bells and whistles (the bells and whistles being the only thing Rowling-ites care about or enjoy) and used it as a canvas to start a good book.
>>7428872
>the prose isn't even that good in The Road
pleb levels overwhelming
>>7422209
He enjoys his reputation in the literary world because of his literary references. He enjoys his reputation in the pleb world because of his edge. He's not good with characters or plot, and his prose is unoriginal. He's overrated.
>>7431548
>i like harry potter and he doesn't write like harry potter also he makes me feel dumb because he writes weird!!! mommy can you make him go away?
>>7431556
Why did you even write this?
>>7431565
>>7431525
It isn't, you autistic fanboy. It's pretentiously simplistic; an attempt at "stark" and "raw", that just ends up being bare and shitty.
>"OK"
>"OK"
>"OK?"
>"OK"
It's a piss-poor attempt at a minimalist style, prose-wise, and the rest of the elements going into it fare even worse. It's the Bioshock Infinite of books; made so that dumb people can feel smart for consuming it. It's like being proud that you can see the bottom of the kiddy pool from the surface.
>>7431596
kill urself my man
>>7431603
Nice response, good to see you put more thought into it than McCarthy put into his book
>>7431596
>fanboy
>pretentiously
>piss-poor attempt at a minimalist style
>minimalist
>McCarthy
>Bioshock Infinite
I like the part where he accuses McCarthy of being minimalist. I also like the part where he talks about prose and quotes dialogue.
Fucking redditors lmao
>>7422209
If you don't like other McCarthy you may have better luck with Suttree.
>>7431596
>McCarthy
>minimalist
get the fuck off of my board for the love of god
>>7422209
I think you got a bad first impression. Suttree, Child of God, and Blood Meridian are ones I'd definitely recommend. Like you said, No Country and The Road especially aren't up the standards of his other works.
>>7431596
To be fair, OP did read what many people consider his worst books. Blood Meridian is the polar opposite of minimalist for large portions.
>>7422209
It's literally Glanton spat: the novel. It's a turgid slog that is highly racist against first nation peoples
>>7431617
>>7431648
Is he wrong about the minimalism thing?
The Road lacked a lot of punctuation, I'm pretty sure he even described it as minimal himself in an interview.
Even the passages about the man and the boy are pretty distant.
Obviously at times he dips into heavier imagery, but The Road definitely had elements leaning towards minimalism.
>>7431703
>Is he wrong about the minimalism thing?
yes
> I'm pretty sure he even described it as minimal himself in an interview.
minimal isn't minimalist, but if he meant minimalist, he was wrong. i wouldn't take authors on their books all that seriously, a lot of them are clueless about what they're doing. the daemon and all that. look up hemingway interviews for a lol.
>>7431716
Interesting.
What is literary minimalism then?
I feel as though I have the wrong impression.
>>7431716
>yes
Explain how
>>7431724
Raymond Carver, or Bukowski or something like John Barth in The End of the Road. IMO, it needs an air of banality that McCarthy just can't muster up, besides the discipline not to indulge. No Country for Old Men is a lot closer a candidate than the road.
>>7431730
>wah wah spoonfeed me
>>7431754
Your replies haven't been much more than /lit/ memes thus far, so I thought I'd at least try asking your position and not assume that you're a complete McCocksucker. Sorry for taking your bait, I guess.
>>7431751
I can kind of see some vague parallels between some of Carver's writing and some of McCarthy.
I'm not very well-read on Carver, though, because I think he kind of sucks, honestly.
>>7431703
he uses minimal punctuation. Sometimes his sentences are short and structurally simple. But other times he uses archaic syntax, and his diction, especially in his Appalachian books and BM is not minimalist.
Typical 4chan contrarianism. As soon as this writer became loved here, it was destined to be hated.
>>7431923
>as soon
>implying /lit/ wasn't fapping over mccarthy four years ago
>implying the consensus in the thread is overall negative
>taking a pleb /op/ as /lit/'s spokesperson
wew lad
>>7431923
Nothing in the universe has a single consensus.
Grow up.
>>7431944
>Nothing in the universe has a single consensus.
Even that statement?
>>7431695
>DASS WUUUACIS!
Feel free to die any time
>>7430945
If you couldn't appreciate the relationship between the Man and his son and the way McCarthy portrayed their love for each other I feel bad for you.
>>7431695
>not recognizing the novel is a work of anti-revisionism toward the myth of the American West and not meant to portray reality
>getting upset over a ignoble portrayal of natives when almost every person in BM is an evil, savage piece of shit
>>7431695
The story is literally a bunch of people hunting other people for their scalps. What the fuck were you expecting?
