I honestly can't decide whether or not the writing in this is good or terrible.
Is this on purpose?
>Is this on purpose?
Well, that is the gorillion dollar question, is it not?
>falling for authorial intent meme
>falling for corncobs yecarthy's hackery
wew
>>8025854
It is indeed on purpose.
>>8025854
>The jagged mountains were pure blue in the dawn and everywhere birds twittered and the sun when it rose caught the moon in the west so that they lay opposed to each other across the earth, the sun whitehot and the moon a pale replica, as if they were the ends of a common bore beyond whose terminals burned worlds past all reckoning.
it's good flam
>>8025854
corncob doesn't "like" punctuation--calls it "style"
>>8025945
Got a hard-on from that. Need to read thia bool again.
Here ya go, OP!
>FIND THE RIGHT WORD FAST!
>Clear guidance on word choice
>Easy-to-use alphabetical order
>Most word choices - over 150,000
>>8025977
Did you honestly have trouble with this book's vocabulary? Jesus christ anon.
>He rode on his decrepit mule into the red sunset and he looked at the red mountain in the distance and he dismounted in the village and he hit a child over the head with his club and then he raped its eyesocket and then he said God is hell and then he leaned forward and spat
I personally enjoy Cormac's style. It is similar to Faulkner's, however, Cormac perfected the art and leaves Falukner looking like an adolescent
>>8025854
damn son you got meme'd too?
fucking /lit
tricking people into reading this here genre trash garbanzo.
It's called style OP
If you can't decide whether it's good or terrible, and instead rely on others to judge the books quality for you, you are the one who is terrible.
>>8026387
Writing like an inept idiot isn't a style.
When you reuse the same narrative voice over and over again in each of your books, it no longer becomes a style: more of a mental condition.
>>8025854
Was writing a book with a thesaurus combined with the intelligence of an American 6th grader on purpose?
Yes, only because it couldn't be helped. McCarthy is shit.
>mfw plebs don't understand the vast web of historical, religious, and occult references that permeate Blood Meridian, perfectly capturing the bloody history of the southwest and establishing it as one of the great novels of American literature
>>8025945
My favorite is
>In a night so beclamored with the jackal-yapping of coyotes and the cries of owls the howl of that old dog wolf was the one sound they knew to issue from its right form, a solitary lobo, perhaps gray at the muzzle, hung like a marionette from the moon with his long mouth gibbering.
It also comes right after the Judge's lecture on geology, which is my favorite scene.
>>8026441
>tee hee hee what am i referencing now??? xDDD
Method of the pseud.
>>8026457
weak bait
>>8026483
Stay mad, pseud
>>8026488
gimme an alternative moron
ah, blood meridian, monsieur? that novel is the sark and chaparral of literature, the filament whereon rode the remuda of highbrow, corraled out of some destitute hacienda upon the arroya, quirting and splurting with main and with pyrolatrous coagulate of lobated grandiloquence. our eyes rode over the pages, monsieur, of that slatribed azotea like argonauts of suttee, juzgados of swole, bights and systoles of walleyed and tyrolean and carbolic and tectite and scurvid and querent and creosote and scapular malpais and shellalagh. we scalped, monsieur, the gantlet of its esker and led our naked bodies into the rebozos of its mennonite and siliceous fauna, wallowing in the jasper and the carnelian like archimandrites, teamsters, combers of cassinette scoria, centroids of holothurian chancre, with pizzles of enfiladed indigo panic grass in the saltbush of our vigas, true commodores of the written page, rebuses, monsieur, we were the mygale spiders too and the devonian and debouched pulque that settled on the frizzen studebakers, listening the wolves howling in the desert while we saw the judge rise out of a thicket of corbelled arches, whinstone, cairn, cholla, lemurs, femurs, leantos, moonblanched nacre, uncottered fistulas of groaning osnaburg and kelp, isomers of fluepipe and halms awap of griddle, guisado, pelancillo.
>>8026888
Clearly you've only ever browsed shit boards if you think spoonfeeding is acceptable here.
>>8026441
your insinuation that "pleb"ness, if it even has meaning as a distinction, is marked primarily by an unfamiliarity with the author's referenced facts, factoids, and sociohistorical structures and currents is one I reject on principle, and as part of a vain attempt to appear exclusive and "in-the-know" without having demonstrated any such knowledge beyond posturing summary
>>8026908
>all this fucking punctuation
>>8026908
i dont know who wrote this but I do know he sucks his own penis dry every night
>>8025854
>At dusk they halted and built a fire and roasted the deer. The night was much enclosed about them and there were no stars. To the north they could see other fires that burned red and sullen along the invisible ridges. They ate and moved on, leaving the fire on the ground behind them, and as they rode up into the mountains this fire seemed to become altered of its location, now here, now there, drawing away, or shifting unaccountably along the flank of their movement. Like some ignis fatuus belated upon the road behind them which all could see and of which none spoke. For this will to deceive that is in things luminous may manifest itself likewise in retrospect and so by sleight of some fixed part of a journey already accomplished may also post men to fraudulent destinies.
>>8025945
I'm reading it right now and this part was really striking to me, too
>>8025955
what's a bool?
>>8026441
>those few times he uses geological eras as adjectives
Most of the words I was unfamiliar with were geologic terms. I liked the description, but I think Faulkner's leagues better than him in terms of description.
I'm currently reading Light in August and while Faulkner still uses complex words at times I admire how he's able to describe character so effectively.
Blood Meridian's still good, though.
>>8025854
I adore his writing, I don't think the story could have been written in any other prose style
>>8026415
says the person who cannot understand the "inept idiots" words
classic example of projecting, my friends
>>8026442
It is beyond me how readers can take this kind of writing seriously. Is it meant to sound caricatural, a parody of itself? Perhaps it is and I'm missing the point entirely. Because if it's not, I'm certainly not feeling the pathos and awe I figure it is supposed to be infused with.
I think McCarthy meant to propel his sublime asimptotically towards where it slips into the ridicule, but not quite touching that line, and it certainly is brave of him to have tried. I think he falls short though; or perhaps falls long. He slips beyond the ridge and there's no coming back for him, not easily at least.
But then again I haven't read the book, so what do I know? My shallow judgement is based on such quotes encountered here and there. I'll get to this book one of these days (read: these years). Meanwhile, feel free to set me right.
>>8025904
>Judge is meant to look like a giant baby
>This thing
>They rode for days through the rain and they rode through rain and hail and rain again. In that gray storm light they crossed a flooded plain with the footed shapes of the horses reflected in the water among clouds and mountains and the riders slumped forward and rightly skeptic of the shimmering cities on the distant shore of that sea whereon they trod miraculous. They climbed up through rolling grasslands where small birds shied away chittering down the wind and a buzzard labored up from among bones with wings that went whoop whoop whoop like a child's toy swung on a string and in the long red sunset the sheets of water on the plain below them lay like tidepools of primal blood.
Yes. It's very good
>>8027868
you can't be serious
>>8025989
You're new here, but have been lurking intensely those 7 days.
>>8027798
It's because you're a numb retard, anon.
>>8025945
>across the earth, the sun whitehot
Is that a comma I see there boy
>>8027888
>muh sentence structure
>muh conventions
That's some seriously good writing, pleb. Just because the sentences are long and don't use commas doesn't mean its bad.
>>8025909
wew laddy
>>8027798
You cannot even write an internet post clearly. What the fuck are you even saying? You havent read the book either. Why did you bother posting this?
>>8029491
>a sentence disregarding all of the rules that makes it a sentence doesn't make it a bad sentence
???
>>8025945
This is beautiful.
>>8025854
Your writing is not good but not really terrible.
My guess is it's somewhat on purpose but you probably couldn't do much better.
You'd think /lit/ would like Blood Meridian more, being full of devils who spend their time making sure nobody else understands or learns anything.
>>8032988
Yours is just shit.
>>8033553
It's words on top of shit. Camouflage makes a difference.
Would now be a good time to remind everyone that taste is subjective, or do we need to pretend to have some level of objectivity about this business for a little while longer?
>>8033738
>le everyone is equal xDDD
Kill yourself
>>8033849
>LE I AM LE BEST OPINION BECAUSE I KEN GREENTEXT
>>8033993
How ironic.
What should I read to prep myself for BM? Just finished The Road and Child of God to familiarize myself with his prose and dry humor.
>>8035440
>prep myself for BM?
Have you tried Metamucil?
>>8035440
I mean if you want to study the novel seriously the bible, paradise lost, moby dick, the inferno, all of the greeks, enlightment philosophy, mystic texts (idk any of the top of my head) and gnostic texts. But you don't need to do any of that you're good. Mccarthy writes subtle encyclopedic books.
>>8030127
>surrealist painters should follow anatomy and perspective
>>8025854
It's referencing The Bible and Paradise Lost for a lot of its language.
>>8035450
This too.
>>8035457
>surrealist painters are good
>>8035506
Yea haha I forgot maybe the most important one
>>8035440
By reading those two you're going in with a better foundation than most. There are some references to other canon shit that you'll inevitably miss, but all meme books do that.
>>8026427
you should read backwards into suttree, he's done a lot less refining there, I don't think it's nearly as good Blood Meridian, but some people like it, some people compare it to Joyce I guess
>>8027866
His baby look comes from being Bald, like a giant baby. I always pictured him as pic related, mostly muscle as well, with a slight bit of pudge.
This is a perfect depiction I think.
>>8026944
I kept thinking, "okay this is pretty funny, but these words have to be made up"
then I'd read another sentence, looking up the words
"hahah, okay, but he can't keep this up for as long as this goes on, at some point this just disintegrates into a greater nonsense than it already is"
then I'd read another sentence, looking up the words
"hahah, okay, but he can't keep this up for as long as this goes on, at some point this just disintegrates into a greater nonsense than it already is"
then I'd read another sentence, looking up the words
"hahah, okay, but he can't keep this up for as long as this goes on, at some point this just disintegrates into a greater nonsense than it already is"
then I'd read another sentence, looking up the words
"hahah, okay, but he can't keep this up for as long as this goes on, at some point this just disintegrates into a greater nonsense than it already is"
I really ccan't imagine people being this estranged by Blood Meridian, I mean that was funny, but come on, I mean come on, I MEAN come on...
>“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 wedding veil and some in headgear or 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 horses' 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.”
Fucking terrifying and visceral. If I could draw I would make a big painting of that scene.
All that imagery.
>>8025854
The book is considered a masterpiece by top literary minds like Bloom, Donoghue, Steiner, Banville, Lish. Not to mention countless authors. You are surely entitled to your opinion but really when it's you vs the collective sharps, maybe the problem rests on your hunched forward shoulders?
>>8035655
one. fucking. sentence.
>They wandered the borderland for weeks seeking some sign of the Apache. Deployed upon that plain they moved in a constant elision, ordained agents of the actual dividing out the world which they encountered and leaving what had been and what would never be alike extinguished on the ground behind them. Spectre horsemen, pale with dust, anonymous in the crenellated heat. Above all else they appeared wholly at venture, primal, provisional, devoid of order. Like beings provoked out of the absolute rock and set nameless and at no remove from their own loomings to wander ravenous and doomed and mute as gorgons shambling the brutal wastes of Gondwanaland in a time before nomenclature was and each was all.
>>8035684
Appeal to authority -----> discarded.
>>8035684
Not an argument.
>>8035703
>This fallacy is committed when the person in question is not a legitimate authority on the subject
>>8035713
Show us your qualifications then, buddy.
>>8035613
what an ugly, digital drawing. but yeah, that's him.
>>8035715
Nah man I'm saying that's really fucking good.
>>8026415
if you think blood meridian reads like it was written by an inept idiot
>>8035440
just go for it
once you get through the first 50 pages, the rest will fly by
save all that other stuff for your second reading
>>8035655
know what's even more amazing about that sentence
motherfucker wrote that shit in one draft
no edits, no revisions, the copy is completely clean
anyone who says mccarthy lacks talent can suck on that
>>8035701
Too many commas and what's with the short sentences? What is this, fucking Hemingway?
Is there a better Wild West book?
>Those constant points about how the very place is violent and dangerous to man to the point of destroying him
>Between the horrible dust and dryness there are countless areas of beautiful flowers and even forest.
>>8035698
It's done so well though, to emphasise the horde descending upon them and how fucked they are in that instant.
It's prose used effectively. If it was chock full of punctuation and chopped into separate sentences it'd lose it's exigence.
>>8025945
I don't really like this that much
