Rolling Obituary Thread 2023

Prince of the City is a terrific movie, kind of a heartbreaker and a few truly devastating exchanges. He really gave it his all in that film.

Cormac

BREAKING NEWS: Cormac McCarthy, a preeminent voice in American literature over the better part of the past half-century, died today at his home in Santa Fe, N.M., his publisher, Knopf, confirmed. He was 89. Full obit to follow.

— Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) June 13, 2023

Damn, well I was glad he was able to knock out a couple of final books recently

89's not bad.

Damn, hell of a run though.

McCarthy is easy to parody, and he was not always great. But when he was, boy was he. Special shout-out from the Knoxville fan base — Suttree is the best book anyone's ever written about the city, and most likely the best anyone will.

oh man i missed the treat williams news. he's incredible in "smooth talk" with laura dern.

rip to a master. time to finally pull suttree off the shelf

rip legend

blood meridian took me 3 attempts but once i got it, goddamn that thing will be printed on my brain forever

and i love the border trilogy

haven’t read everything but what i read, stayed with me

My wife and I organized a complete public read-through of Suttree back in 2017. We had people sign up to read about 5-10 pages each, and we did it at or near sites specific to the book. Took place over three days, it was so much fun. And if you ever struggle with the prose on the page, try reading it out loud. It's a blast.

RIP to the prose master, special shout-out to his borderline horror novels Outer Dark and Child of God as they don't get enough attention. Blood Meridian is, as ever, glaring at me from the shelf and daring me to re-read. Seems as good a time as ever.

Never read anything pre-BM but I read everything else up through The Road, though I admit the excerpts (and reviews) of the two latest books were not enticing.

I’ve only read no country which was ok but didn’t wow me prose wise but I gather that’s kind of the consensus

I had a lot of trouble with Williams in Prince in the City -- clemenza otm about his being too Method-y -- but he's much better in Smooth Talk.

Suttree the one that opens with the kid fucking the watermelon? That was my favorite of the ones I read. Blood Meridian was beautiful but just unrelenting. I think I read All The Pretty Horses and maybe one of the other border novels. Fantastic writer but huge bummer tbh.

RIP of course not trying to be disrespectful sorry.

Child of God is my favorite -- just wonderful opening sentences. Big ups to Suttree, Blood Meridian, The Road too. Easy to parody as a writer, including by McCarthy himself: No Country for Old Men one of the better recent examples of meh novel but good film.

probably a basic opinion but "all the pretty horses" was my favorite of the ones i've read because it was not unrelentingly grim. incredible writer obv, rip

The screenplay of The Counselor betrays no interest in what other people would consider to be a movie. Aside from a few moments, Ridley Scott was in no way up for bringing it to life. Very few could have.

Suttree the one that opens with the kid fucking the watermelon?

"He's damn near screwed the whole patch."

I haven't read all McCarthy's books, but I think Suttree is the funniest. (Granted, "funniest Cormac McCarthy book" is kind of like "funniest Burzum album.")

And yeah, Blood Meridian, I read that while I was living in NYC and I'd be reading it on the subway or bus and feel grimy and weird, like, what if the people around me knew what's on this page? Great book, but whooee.

The screenplay of The Counselor betrays no interest in what other people would consider to be a movie. Aside from a few moments, Ridley Scott was in no way up for bringing it to life. Very few could have.

Strongly disagree. It's one of the lesser Scott brother's best movies, and the director's cut is the version to see.

If you want to know more about Cormac — and especially Cormac and Knoxville — this is one of my favorite articles we ran in the late, lamented alt-weekly where I was editor at the time. Written by one of the best writers I've ever worked with (himself since departed, a casualty of a lifestyle that often veered too close to Suttree territory). I love how in the piece he absorbs McCarthy's writing and is obviously riffing on it, but not in an embarrassing way.

https://monkeyfire.com/mpol/dir_zine/dir_2001/1109/t_cover.html

I just finished Killers of the Flower Moon and the scale of the murder and conniving evil that was carried out against the Osage springs to mind as what McCarthy, with his feverish language, was trying to depict about America.

Yeah one of the most unnerving things about Blood Meridian was reading afterward how much of it draws from documented facts.

a wonderful ode to Suttree here by Jim White the musician & author (tipsy you might enjoy this)

https://web.archive.org/web/20130525144629/http://maintainradiosilence.com/the-bottom

I remember it! I actually used to get my hair cut by the cranky old barber in that piece until he said a couple of racist things while I was in there. (Haircuts were terrible too, but at least they were cheap.)

LOL!

Man.

blood meridian took me 3 attempts but once i got it, goddamn that thing will be printed on my brain forever

and i love the border trilogy

yep

I remember it! I actually used to get my hair cut by the cranky old barber in that piece until he said a couple of racist things while I was in there. (Haircuts were terrible too, but at least they were cheap.)

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra),

so is racism

One of my favorite NPR voices, Wade Goodwin

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/08/1167837454/wade-goodwyn-npr-correspondent-dies

So was Walter! I think he’d been keeping his combs in the same jar of suspect greenish disinfectant for years.

(x post)

RIP Cormac

For more Counselor discourse, there’s:

The Counselor = Cormac McCarthy + Ridley Scott + (Fassbender + Pitt + Cruz + Bardem et al)

The director’s cut is better, though I noticed it also keeps in a racist joke or two cut from release (and coming from the Brad Pitt character who would credibly tell them).

I've never actually seen The Counselor, but we have a DVD of it we picked up for a dollar at AmVets. Maybe time to watch it!

Here's my only Cormac McCarthy story: I know someone who worked at The Strand bookstore. Once, he spotted McCarthy there, grabbed one of his books from the shelves, and asked if he might sign it. McCarthy smiled and politely said that only his kids have signed copies of his books

— Luke Epplin (@LukeEpplin) June 13, 2023

OK I'm gonna do a little brag here — nobody break into my house please. I'm friends with Cormac's brother and his wife from when they lived in Knoxville — they moved to Santa Fe to live near Cormac some years ago — and since they couldn't make it to our wedding reception, they sent us a signed copy of Suttree. I don't know how they finagled it out of him or if he even knew they were giving it away, but it's in a slip cover on our bookshelf. My wife and I have always joked that we definitely can't split up because we'd never agree on custody of the book.

Reminds me of that possibly apocryphal anecdote about Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick splitting up and neither giving an inch about giving up their copy of Henry Adams' The History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

xpost holy shit tipsy that is cool as hell!

Strand story is cool but needs more Tom Verlaine to really make it work.

excellent story

Just got done with the Treat Williams episode from 2019 of the Gilbert Gottfried podcast and it's highly recommended if you haven't heard it before or haven't in awhile. Lots of stuff about Prince of The City and Hair, plenty of other great/fun stories etc.

I'm sure I'm not the only person in the world who has never read Cormac McCarthy but would like to thank him for a certain movie.

Actually just got out that signed book and I'd forgotten it's actually signed TO us by name, which is even sweeter. (And twice as much means nobody can ever sell it, which I guess I'll have to impress on my children at some point lol.)

Apparently McCarthy was working on a Blood Meridian screenplay at the time of his death, to be directed by John Hillcoat. Starring Dave Bautista as the Judge, I hope.

Wasn't Billy Bob Thornton trying to get a Blood Meridian movie off the ground for years? So don't hold your breath.

lots have tried, even James Franco, I think a version may be in development right now.

This isn't the first I've heard of the Hillcoat version. He directed the movie of The Road.

blood meridian is notoriously unfilmable, there's always a version at some stage of development hell over the past 30 years or so