What do you guys think of this book? I'm in about 1/3 and so far I really like it. I know McCarthy's style of writing is basically Hemingway's but I feel like it's more appropriate for his books.
>"I know McCarthy's style of writing is basically Hemingway's"
You dun goofed
>I know McCarthy's style of writing is basically Hemingway's
What the fuck?
Favorite book of all time. Ultra fun. Ultra cool. Ultra violent. Ultra... literary??? Huh??? Yes. Even Harold Bloom recommends you read it. Be sure to bring a dictionary with you because Cormac's got a big vocabulary and he knows how to use it.
The Judge is the greatest villain of all time, with the most wicked lines uttered since Nolan's Joker. You're going to be quoting him for months after you finish the book.
Oh, and here's a little image I made <--- A tribute
>>7786868
he probably means minimalist in terms of punctuation and his straight to the point way of describing things
>>7786901
Suh dude
>>7786859
> McCarthy's style of writing is basically Hemingway's
are you sure you're reading Blood Meridian and not The Sun Also Rises
i think that you'll find the comparisons you're drawing that allow you to say "their style" is more appropriate for McCarthy are ones that shouldn't be drawn
>>7786901
>the most wicked lines uttered since Nolan's Joker
please die
Funny I was thinking about finally starting this for the first time.
>>7786915
Strap yourself in, and just remember to have fun. It's a wild ride.
>>7786901
>since Nolan's Joker
Uh... you do know that BM was written in 1924, right?
>>7786901
>this whole post
>>7786913
>please die
It was sarcasm bro.
>>7786903
>his straight to the point way of describing things
The dude will go on for literally paragraphs describing one single person or landscape. He is much more akin to Faulkner and Melville, who are both the antithesis of Hemingway. So he writes about masculine shit and uses punctuation sparingly? This in no way is indicative of a "Hemingway" style.
Every day, what thinks the LIT of the STONER, what thinks the LIT of the MERIDIAN, what thinks the LIT of the STRANGER, of the OBSTINATE, of the KAMARAZOVS. Every other day without fail.
>>7786922
Nolan is a 2010s director though and BM is from the 80s
>>7786928
Just fuck off.
I thought it was ok. The judge's speeches are captivating and the detached view of primal violence is very interesting, but half of the book is just "they walked through a barren ass desert for a long time. Also wolves were there probably".
>>7786901
We got a regular Sam Hyde in here, folks. Were you planning on doing this bit in front of your mirror but decided to leave it as a shitpost b-side?
everybody knows Moby Dick is one of the greatest english novels-- despite this, people on /lit/ overwhelmingly complain about the "whale-parts."
with Blood Meridian it's the same, only with "landscape-parts."
sorry i just realized that and wanted to post it
>>7786910
>simple story telling
You mean like the parts where he spends a paragraph-spanning sentence on an extremely grandiloquent description of some event or landscape, nesting in as many antiquated words and high concept Greek and Biblical allusions as he can?
McCarthy simplifies the fuck out of the grammar and sentence structure, sure, but his style is the furthest thing from minimalistic or "Iceberg Theory."
>>7787049
Just because they're great novels doesn't mean they're without imperfections. Something I don't see discussed here very often is the question of whether literature/good writing should be easy to read or very difficult. There's something to be said for writing in a way that quickly draws the reader in and moves them along, but there's also something for very technical/complex writing that conveys messages not possible through simple words.
>>7787070
I'm on board with this. Part of the appeal of Steinbeck, for instance, is the way he can spend pages describing a gully next to the road.
>>7786928
please die
>>7786932
yeah i think OP may have meant melville and said hemingway on accident
spoilers here OPso what exactly happened at the end? The kid gets a sloppy hug from the judge and walks away back into the wilderness, meanwhile the judge is dancing and claiming he will never die.
what does the phrase 'He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.' mean exactly? Was the judge just a personification of violence itself, the dance being life on earth and his never ceasing the idea that war is perpetual?
also if someone could fill me in on exactly what was happening in the epilogue I'd be obliged because there I was absolutely lost.
>>7787109
The kid got either murdered and/or raped. The Judge was probably the Devil.
>>7787167
/threadyou forgot the spoiler tag, newfriend
>>7787109
Well...I always thought that the Judge raped The Kid so hard that he died, and the two guys looking to buy the dead bear's pelt find his anally annihilated corpse in the outhouse. I'm unsure about the broader implications of the phrase you mentioned and the Judge's dancing. I took it to relate to the inescapability and utterly destructive nature of war and violence. Even though the Kid, unlike the rest of the Glanton Gang, is able to avoid being killed, he is ultimately destroyed by violence in the personified form of The Judge. Perhaps this indirect destruction The Kid faces is analogous to PTSD and other indirect sufferings caused by violence? What really fucks my head is the epilogue. I don't get that shit at all. All I could get from it was the hope inherit in expansion and "The American Dream", but it's deeper than that, I'm sure.
>>7787167
he was based off of Miltons Satan but that doesn't necessarily make him the devil himself.
>>7786859
Holy shit.
I read this book when I was like 13 and I've been trying to remember the name of it for years.
Absolutely loved it from what I remember.
Gonna try and get it this week. Thank you thank you thank you Anon!
>>7787308
The last act of violence comitted by the Judge is symbolic - something so violent and terrifying that even people who scalp, rape and kill on a daily basis must turn they heads away.
as for the epilogue - it shows some kind of continuity: maybe of war as it is a major theme of BM
>>7786859
Best comedy
>>7786901
dude cormac lmao
I LOVE this book. Here is some Fan Fiction of it I wrote. Disclaimer: I haven't actually read the book
The Judge smiled edgily. Big, bald, and naked, he struck fear into everyone he met. Because he was just... so evil and bad. But smart, too. He went to Harvard. He studied philology. "Ooo eee ooo eee ooo [cowboy movie sound effect]," he said, enormous penis falling out of a corpse.
"Please," cried the corpse's mother. "I'll do anything. Just don't eat my son."
"Anything?" said the Judge, grinning evilly. "Then... do the banana dance."
"No! No!"
>>7788027
but this is verbatim from the book
>>7786999
>this
>>7787049
I disagree; I loved Moby-Dick and hated Blood Meridian, although admittedly the landscape descriptions were not an issue.
>>7787109
>also if someone could fill me in on exactly what was happening in the epilogue I'd be obliged because there I was absolutely lost.
The epilogue stands as the only challenge to the Judge's views throughout the book.
It's simply a man punching holes in the ground to plant fence posts in. That's it. The Judge uses the universal forces of cause and effect to justify every horrific act the gang does through the book, and that war is the ultimate form of this series of cause and effect. He says the mind of men is simply another effect of the universe, and that free will doesn't exist. (Glanton privately disagrees with the Judge, as told in the 'Glanton at the campire' scene).
This fence, however, while certainly part of the same cause and effect chain, is fencing in the wild west. It's making the world safer, reducing the effects of war. It's the tiniest glimmer at the end of the dark tunnel that is rest of the book.
>>7788165
>â–¶
what is the point of the book then?
try to avoid spoilers
>>7786901
First time /lit/ launched my sides into orbit
this thread brought out some reclusive shitposting luminaries
>>7788256
He can't tell you because he has no thoughts of his own.
>>7790798
>no thoughts of his own.
Nice meme. I've been working 60 hour weeks, actually. Don't have the time always. >>7788175 is me as well, actually. All of it is 'thoughts of my own'
>>7788256
>what is the point of the book then?
The book is like a time machine. The point of the 'boring' parts (ie describing the desert they're walking through) is to give the reader the chance to actually FEEL what the men back then would have felt. Horrific violence, so strong that it eventually becomes numbing, followed by boredom and monotony, followed by beautiful sunsets in the landscape, etc.
McCarthy's use of language turns English itself into language as art.
The plot is secondary, and fairly simple.
tldr; the long descriptions of landscape is to give the reader a similar sensory experience that the characters are having.
>>7791652
really so you're saying the words are supposed to paint a picture
i finally understand......
>>7786901
Kekked
>>7791652
>I've been working 60 hour weeks
what a fucking company-man loser, have some balls for fuck's sake
>>7792117
Only on 4chan would someone get insulted for not being a worthless lazy fuck.
>>7792120
i sleep 56 hours a week why the fuck would i be awake just to work? call me lazy all you want but i don't live to work for someone else
>>7787034
Sam Hyde isn't nearly that funny or clever. If it was Sam Hyde-esque it'd have to be a bunch of fumbling around sentences with the flaccid humor of the uneducated trashy ultra-rights.
>>7786901
bait
>>7792152
thank you, jesus christ
>>7792120
>this is what capitalists really believe
>>7787308
>he doesnt know about gnostic acherons and the demiurge
>>7792183
Troll? Everyone's a capitalist in this day and age.
>>7786901
Mmmmmm.... Pasta.
>>7786859
i like david girlhole
>>7786901
Everyone not laughing at this is a tryhard.
Best post I've seen in a while
>>7786901
Fucking kek
>>7787049
Am I the only one that liked the "landscape-parts"?
>>7794359
Only fucking idiots don't like them.
People always talk about the violence but forget that the Glanton Gang went through borderline fantasy world landscapes.
>Gypsum lake giving the riders purple shadows
>The constant reference to distant mountains looking like some immeasurably giant creature appearing out of no-where.
>Riding on a flood plan and it appearing as if they were walking among the clouds.
>The solitary tree
>>7794539
I'm also aware I wrote like retard but I don't care the point still stands.
>>7794539
I actually felt the violence of the book to be one of the lesser important qualities. Yes it obviously was there, but generally it only took up a few paragraphs, and had little impact on the overall theme of the book.
The hellish and fantastical landscapes was much more evocative of it being a nightmarish odyssey, in the vein of the Inferno or the beginning of Paradise Lost. This imagery of lost and damn souls walking across a barren and alien landscape.
>>7786859
Just ordered it on amazon, what am I in for? Heard about it before, but mostly that it is a dark book
>>7794611
Beautiful long winding prose. Along with descriptions of landscapes and violence.
>>7786901
Dad get outta here!
>>7794615
What did you take away from the book?
>>7794622
That the old West wasn't nearly as glamorous or romantic as we like to think of it as. The men who "tamed" the West were very violent and dangerous people, and that the history of the United States is soaked in blood. Also that before it became civilized, the Western wilderness was a hellish, alien, and terrifying place to be.
However, in my view McCarthy isn't condemning this fact, he's merely stating it's truth and factuality. Eventually the violence died down and gave way to what we have now. To reject the heritage of violence it is to reject the current existence of the United States, and an offence in itself.
In terms of prose and reading itself, it reminded me of books like The Inferno and Heart of Darkness in that the landscapes and environment can have as much of an impact on the the book, as the actual characters and dialogue.
>>7786859
>I know McCarthy's style of writing is basically Hemingway's
You mean Melville+Faulkner right?
>>7786859
i just finished it, can someone explain to me the part towards the end when the arrow was removed from the kid and he sees the judge with another man, he explains what the judge is a judge of but i did'nt get it (maybe because english is not my first language)
thanks fags
>>7795629
Mind you the kid was high on drugs when that scene happened, so don't take it for the firm truth.
But in that scene a blacksmith is trying to make coins with the judge's face on it. Back before it became mere decoration, coins had a rulers face on it to prove the coin's, as a way of saying this ruler puts his reputation behind the coin having a certain precious metal value.
I always took that passage to mean or reference the judge's statement that god is war, and therefore the supreme ruler. And by creating coinage with his face upon in, implying that war is both the supreme ruler, and the thing that gives everything value.
>>7786859
>McCarthy's style of writing is basically Hemingway
Thanks. Now I can skip this author. Hemingway is by far the most overrated writer that is frequently revered on this board.
Had this assigned in high school, then had to have a Socratic seminar with 6 other kids in front of the class about it
didn't read it and could extrapolate everything that happened
Was this a mistake?
>>7795830
>Had this assigned in high school
What kind of teacher would assign this in high school?
>>7795818
except that op is completely incorrect. they are in fact opposite, purple prose vs pared down language.
>>7795836
One that was both well read and cruel
>>7786901
this is the neo/lit/ you chose
>>7791652
>to give the reader a similar sensory experience that the characters are having.
Wew thats genius, truly a one of a kind Writer
>>7787308
I thought the epilogue was purposely meant to fly in the face of the judge's last statement. That he, the representation of violence and war, will eventually die as the West gets fenced in.
>>7794643
>glamorous or romantic as we like to think of it as.
However it wasn't all dust bowls and tumble weed. There are a lot of scenes with the gang going through fields of various flowers and greenery.
>>7795700
Thanks man :))
