Are there any Cormac McCarthy fans out there?

But Suttree is pretty engaging all the way through (maybe moreso because I lived in Knoxville when I read it and knew most of the places being described). Even if the 14th description of Suttree waking up encrusted in blood and vomit doesn't have quite the visceral power of the 1st one, I never really got tired of it. And Gene Harrogate is one of my favorite characters in recent American literature.

And then there's Blood Meridian. Well. Like I said, I just finished it, so I don't have much critical distance. But it's sure not like anything else I've ever read. Yes, it doesn't have a "story" in any conventional sense of the word -- it's just a litany of horrors, one after another after another after another. I've never read anything more violent. I can't even imagine anything more violent. I can certainly see why some people find it numbing. But it somehow didn't have that effect on me -- more like hypnotic. It's true enough that the ostensible protagonist ("the kid") is barely a character at all, but that's intentional -- even though he's part of the action, he's mostly there as a witness, a surrogate for the reader. He's Dante, basically. And the judge, it seems to me, is more or less McCarthy's surrogate, kind of a combination of Virgil and Satan. He leads the book through its assorted abominations, and commits the worst of them himself, but also provides a running commentary on them. At the end, when he confronts the kid in his jail cell and accuses him of never having fully joined in the killing party's blood bond -- of participating, but sitting in moral judgment at the same time -- he's basically indicting the reader: you've come all this way, and witnessed all this, and been thrilled by it even if you won't admit it, but also pretended to a sort of moral distance from it. I'm still working on a full interpretation of the book, but I think McCarthy's central argument has to do with knowledge and violence -- that there is an inherent violence in knowledge itself, that the urge to know is bound up with the urge to dominate and destroy (cf. the judge's cataloging of the entire world, "Anything that exists without my knowledge exists without my consent"). The judge (and the book) frames all of this in terms of literal war and bloodshed, but I don't think McCarthy is arguing simply for the inescapability of real violence -- I think he's suggesting that violence takes all kinds of forms. Anyway, I need to think about it some more. But I do think it's an arguably great book.

I also want to read some of his earlier Tennessee novels. I've been told Outer Dark and The Orchard Keeper are both pretty good.

cormac mccarthy is a stylist. he's an excellent stylist relative to ILX, a decent stylist relative to his success as a contemporary author, a terrible stylist if you take the comparisons to melville seriously.

that said, if you think writing is about anything other than style he's an awful awful awful writer. i don't think mccarthy makes it work - i think his readers make it work. basically if you get off on reading self-consciously boys own adventure you could get into this. maybe you've got a taste for quentin tarantino, too, but want a little more gravitas. ok, blood meridian is right up your alley.

further note: if you take any of his ideas seriously, if you allow yourself any self-identification with the figure of john grady riding off into the sunset at the end of ATPH, sort of like don quixote if you could picture him stripped of all humor, all vulnerability and nobility and humanity, you risk severely damaging your brain and becoming a desocialized fuck-up.

this is code for glorifying and romanticizing the conditions (the cult, really) of hetero white male isolation ... if you enjoy reification you will be happy to know that you will find yourself, as reader, grinding through endless references to leather and rawhide and denim and shaving and black coffee and whiskey and rusty metal, sort of like reading GQ or Esquire in those months when ralph lauren or tom ford are showing strong collections.

I've also read his play, I think its called the Stone Mason, which is absolutely different but interesting, if not quite whole-heartedly recommended.

Although I think vahid and others aren't wrong when they point out the 'boys own' quality of his work and the uncomfortable cultural proximity of fashionable Western wear to fashionable Western literature, I believe that McCarthy's best is a lot better than an issue of Esquire.

Is there any connection between McCarthy's border trilogy and Burroughs's western trilogy - which would seem to essentially explode said genre? Burroughs can be tiresome too, but at least he had a sense of humor. What about Gilbert Sorrentino's Gold Fools (which I've yet to read, but is sitting on my shelf)?

I saw one of McCarthy's plays last week at the Steppenwolf called The Sunset Ltd. I was less impressed by this than by his books. Part of this was the acting - there was a lot of line flubbing that was very obvious and painful in the tiny theater. There was also a lot of yelling, and I got a suffocating sense of being in a tiny room with two people I didn't like who were being very unpleasant, which might have been the intended effect but still, I can sit in a tiny room with people I don’t like being unpleasant to each other for free if I patronize the right bars or go visit my family. My favorite part of the entire play was the end, when one of the characters launched into a soliloquy about pain and death and the worthlessness of living and the dreadfulness of mankind which was lovely and lyrical and very similar to the style of his novels.

I realized then pretty much what steve ketchup says - I'm deeply impressed by his pyrotechnics. I don’t know about his books not having much substance, though. I thought Child of God had an incredible story, and I think Blood Meridian has a story, too, albeit a lofty, not necessarily plot-driven one.

I'm liking All The Pretty Horses. Don't find it to be a bore at all - fairly gripping, actually. Great dialogue - I enjoy that more than the poetic description really. So far I'd almost compare it to Jack London - fairly traditional adventure narrative but with finer writing.

He can be sorta tedious, no?

i'm three quarters or more through blood meridian, and if it didn't have cormac mccarthy's name on the cover then i could just as easily mistake it for one of my grandad's old western books i once found in a bag in the attic and read through one summer when i was about 15- the laboured prose style and the glee taken in the lurid violence reminds me of the 'edge' series of books in particular. i'm not at all sure where the critical acclaim has come from.

Cities on the Plain is fantastic.

don't get me wrong- i've enjoyed both of the books of his that i've read so far. in fact, i have no country for old men waiting and i'm looking forward to it, but, i dunno, he just seems to get an awful lot of credit for what he does.

i love blood meridian but vahid kinda has a point.

this is code for glorifying and romanticizing the conditions (the cult, really) of hetero white male isolation ... if you enjoy reification you will be happy to know that you will find yourself, as reader, grinding through endless references to leather and rawhide and denim and shaving and black coffee and whiskey and rusty metal, sort of like reading GQ or Esquire in those months when ralph lauren or tom ford are showing strong collections.

― vahid (vahid), Tuesday, March 23, 2004 6:28 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

love this, megaroffles.

i think of blood meridian as having a lot in common thematically with a history of violence (i mean you could even pretty much interchange their titles). they're both about the violence inherent to civilization or society or human relations or however narrowly you wanna draw the net. and not just that it's there, but that it's exciting and addictive and seductive. an old story i guess, but for me it works in the telling.

(it's also a real reactionary view of the world, and mccarthy is an unapologetic reactionary. which should make me sort of hate him, but doesn't.)

well i read no country for old men since and enjoyed it very much. blood meridian didn't get any better though, the stream-of-consciousness style just didn't bring me with it.

boy i really didn't like no country. i think it's the phoniest book of his i read. (didn't like the movie much either.)

i think i was just relieved to read something a little more pleasant than blood meridian, tbh

And I thought everyone else had read all of McC. I finished Blood Meridian in the last week or so and was on the yea side. Okay, I am susceptible to the romanticism of male isolation, but what goes on between me and the book I'm reading is my business, right.

It was a strange book: you know there's no story, and that it's really just a relentless machine repeating a stock set of 3 or 4 scenes, but I found it compulsive material. If anything I liked it more when it stuck to its unpicturesque picaresque than when it got all mytho-allegorical at the end with the judge and the retard. In one way, it felt less like reading and more like observing a wave of something like insects swarming over a field, destroying what came into their path, getting involved in inscrutable scrapes, etc. That makes me sound like a sci-fi fan, which I'm not intending, moreso nature doco. Which is perhaps more embarrassing than the violence/male isolation admission, but there you go.

Judging from the above, I think I'll go Suttree next. Not much mention here of The Road, which is a bit funny, no? (Not that I've read it either, but my wife had it on her bedside table and I'd sneak guilty peeks when she was out of the room. Well, they were less guilt than the revulsion/fascination thing)

When hes not getting bogged down in his weird little philosophical debates between characters (Blood Meridian and the coda of Cities of the Plain feature doozies) he often seems to me to be some sort of crazed genius. His writing - for atmosphere and description of action and landscape in particular - is unmatched in America today.

The chapter where they're trying to make gunpowder to fight off the Indians was pretty exciting, though.

if it didn't have cormac mccarthy's name on the cover then i could just as easily mistake it for one of my grandad's old western books

this boggles my mind. I mean, I've read enough Louis L'Amour (care of MY grandad) to know that Blood Meridian is leagues ahead of the average western potboiler. Ahead in terms of the writing and characterization. Whatever you want to say about the characters in Blood Meridian, almost wholly despicable human beings, at least they're not cookie cutter cowboys n indians. Also in terms of the storytelling, the approach is quite different. Blood Meridian is much more episodic and less propulsive than the average good guy/bad guy gunfight.

Do McCarthy fans like Hall's "Warlock"?

i loved loved loved Warlock

the "cookie cutter cowboys'n'indians" of a men's adventure novel probably have more resemblance to actual people living or dead than most of cormac mccarthy's characters.

yes, but i don't agree with the implied value judgment that realist characters are necessarily better.

"a men's adventure novel" = should be a movie title.

or a book by michael chabon

yes, but i don't agree with the implied value judgment that realist characters are necessarily better

that's an interesting line of argument

really

Pound's statement “fundamental accuracy of statement is the one sole morality of writing”

stolen from the raymond carver thread on ILE, for reference

In the moonlight she had innercourse with that goddamn Colt. Heard it from the next room. She yelled again WHO IS CRAZY YOU OR ME. In her lingerie she bought from the Sears down in Yuma when she was staying with her mother. I did not answer her.

I walked in and she removed that goddamn Colt from her interior and pointed it at my head her lip quivering. Why I did not answer her. Deputy, I don't know how but I got that goddamn Colt out of her hand and took it straight to the bathroom and dropped that goddamn Colt in the toilet. Shoulda flushed it. I had had enough of this woman tonight and her goddamn crotch holster, Deputy Zook, I can't take no more of that.

a-

My ex-wife used her vagina as a goddamn holster.

I misread this too quickly as "My ex-wife used her vagina as a goddamn lobster."

not a lot in it, to be fair

With a gun and a lobster, I'd say it was pretty crowded.

lol http://www.theparisreview.org/the-art-of-fiction-no-223-cormac-mccarthy

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/30/books/early-cormac-mccarthy-interviews-rediscovered.html

sorry, two new ones in the next eight weeks? wtf?

I know, right?

The Atlantic has said some things.

I went through a really intense McCarthy phase a few years back, centered most of all on Suttree but also on the horsey ones.

Dunno if I need this new material, given how much mayhem is already out there in the world. For me, C McC was partly an escapist reading experience. I could get lost in his louvhe world when my own life was basically pleasant. In times when life actively sucks, however, I am less interested in gritty fiction.

*louche

"I was planning on writing about a woman for 50 years. I will never be competent enough to do so, but at some point you have to try."

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/SB10001424052748704576204574529703577274572

James Wood: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/19/cormac-mccarthy-peers-into-the-abyss-the-passenger-stella-maris

Isn’t there a rumor he’s really right wing?

You're thinking of James Woods.

My brother (who has a predilection for long-winded writers) gave me Suttree and the Border Trilogy years ago. I thought the former was a well-crafted piece of Southern gothic. All the Pretty Horses was a good read, but I cannot get through the books after that no matter how hard I try, and I'm someone who will generally stick with a book. There is just something about McCarthy's writing that I find . . . precious? Too in love with itself? Bleak?

new one (the passenger at least) is a chill hangout book with some paranoid southern gothic dreamworld shit going on, also many scenes in notable new orleans restaurants and bars. haven't read stella maris yet. but the passenger is very good.

Finally messing around with chat GPT pic.twitter.com/GBfovHpxth

— Elliot (@BurrNotice) December 22, 2022

reminds me of https://yelpingwithcormac.tumblr.com/

e.g.

And so. The day came. The alguacil asked the boy what did he wish for a last meal. The boy asked for a bowl of pasta from Olive Garden. The alguacil considered this and finally agreed saying there was indeed an Olive Garden in the next town.

That evening a mozo came back into town leading a procession of men and burros. Panniers on the animals steaming like ungulate engines. The cloying aroma of pasta sauce. The loamy musk of breadsticks. The algaucil came to them. What was he to think of this?

And a man from the restaurant came forward and said they had brought pasta for the boy and that in the tradition of their restaurant the boy’s bowl would never be allowed to empty nor would he be want for breadsticks until such time as he was sated.

The algaucil was very angry. He shouted at the men and the burros and the mozo and all cowered but none would leave. For they knew as well as the algaucil of the law of that land. That the last meal could not be denied. And so the boy was served in his cell the unending pasta bowl. Attendants from the restaurant refilling the dish as it neared empty. A train of burros plodding from restaurant to jail and back to restaurant.

The boy’s day of execution came and went. A week passed. Then another. The algaucil fuming in his shabby office. The boy grew fat eating the pasta and the breadsticks.

On the hundredth day the alguacil walked to the jail and told the jailers to leave. And then he entered the cell where the boy lay eating and he unholstered his pistol and he told the boy he would shoot him if he ate any more pasta or breadsticks. And the boy lay there lacquered in sauce and bursting from his prison rags and closed his eyes as if to consider this ultimatum. He belched thunderously and was still. And so. The boy escaped the noose.

i think i am going to take a pass on this. i basically majored in quantum mechanics (we called it "physical chemistry") and i teach physics to high school kids now and i believe me i love physics (and chemistry)! i am not so great at math, i can manage calculus and linear algebra and euclidean geometry well, but that's easy stuff and besides i just use it to solve problems, which is pretty much what i use physics and chemistry for. i love the stuff, but largely because it's useful on a practical level, and sometimes when young people tell me they love physics and start babbling about quantum mechanics and the nature of reality i want to yell at them like yoda yells at luke in empire strikes back, but instead of saying "wars not make one great" i want to yell "math and science not make one smart" (of course neither does critical theory but that's a separate discussion)

i think the one part of my (long ago now) college education that i am still in awe of is what they call statistical mechanics, which is a fairly theoretical branch of thermodynamics and fluid mechanics (as opposed to the mechanical engineering side that's involved with making engines and plumbing work IRL) and it starts out with some very over-simplified suppositions about how things like atoms and molecules interact, and then solves some pretty hardcore calculus-based statistics problems, and magically comes out the other side with very useful conclusions about how large-scale matter (like, say, a liter of hot gas in a piston) will behave. and these conclusions are not only practical but easily confirmed with relatively simple experiments

and i guess the flipside of that is that i always cringe and want to die inside when some kook like deepak chopra takes something beautiful and practical like physics and uses it as a gross vehicle to advance his stupid half-baked hippy dippy ideas. i guess the thought of a writer i like doing the same thing is a bridge too far for me, even if he's using it as a vehicle to advance a nihilistic existential philosophy i largely agree with. i just don't have time for that!

this part of that new yorker review seems relevant to how i feel about how this stuff gets fetishized and reading it was probably the point where i realized i am not going to bother

But this only returns us to the problem. Why are Bobby and Alicia written up as mathematicians rather than, respectively, as a race-car driver and a violinist? If neither character can be caught in the act of uttering or creating an original mathematical idea, then, curiously enough, these are merely novels about the idea of mathematical ideas. Practically speaking, this means that Bobby and Alicia must sound like “geniuses” while delivering clever and diligently knowing reports (full of famous names, and so on) on twentieth-century developments in physics and mathematics aimed at ordinary, non-mathematical readers. These are novels in love with the idea of scientific and musical genius. And how do geniuses sound? They speak rapidly and gnomically, impatient with their sluggish interlocutors. They are willful, eccentric, solitary. They are in mental crisis, close to breakdown and suicide. They are imperious around success and failure: they announce that they stopped playing the violin because it was impossible to be in the world’s top ten. They are obsessed with intelligence, their own and other people’s. Of Robert Oppenheimer, Bobby says, “A lot of very smart people thought he was possibly the smartest man God ever made,” while Alicia says, “People who knew Einstein, Dirac, von Neumann, said that he was the smartest man they’d ever met.”

Do geniuses actually sound like this? Well, people who are fixated on the idea of genius perhaps sound like this.

i think that ny criticiam ia basically accurate, the siblings are cormackian superheroes for sure. but since the book is floaty and plotless it didn't bug me too much.

there's also a big piece in the xmas LRB but it's sadly by christian lorentzen

I thought the lrb piece was broadly fine (and not that big compared to eg ten pages on the history of Birmingham)?!

it's ok i guess but it's by christian lorentzen and i was reading it on my phone so it seemed big

by contrast ten pages on birmingham is not enough pages

The Birmingham piece was great don’t get me wrong. Would love to read cormac on Birmingham.

RIP. First time reading Blood Meridian I was in a queue at an airport and during the first battle scene my knees gave out on me. Time to read Suttree, I guess.

That's the one people have been mentioning a bit rn, so..

Big fan of the border trilogy. Incredible epilogue.

yes these are the ones

i think no country is great, a seventies airport novel that leaps off the page into the movie- i think its criticised for what it isnt, which is never valid ofc

I really liked NCFOM, maybe not quite as much as the film, but it's good stuff.

When death isn't enough to cancel the guy

look i'm not a big literary brain or a contributor to the new left review or anything, but i do think poverty *is* bad? no-one should *have* to eat only beans or bathe in lakes and if i was married to a v successful writer and having to do that i'd prob be a bit salty about it https://t.co/97oOnpadgA

— fish tit supremacy (@tubbsOreally) June 14, 2023

The very notion of artistic principles is passing along with writers like McCarthy.

oddly Pretty Horses was on tv last night. i don't remember having seen it before.

I never saw it but it was yet another one where people later griped that Weinstein butchered the director's cut.

I wish The Road was a better movie. The book remains my favorite of his.

Quite an arc.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/opinion/cormac-mccarthy-publishing.html

Did Suttree and Blood Meridian really go out of print before 1992 and get saved by All the Pretty Horses? I seem to recall buying and reading them before AtPH was published. Maybe they went back into publication immediately beforehand.

Shortly before, as in early in 1992.

Thinking there was a build-up, a run-up.

before 1992 blood meridian existed without my knowledge and therefore without my consent

Suttree had a nice yuppie Vintage Contemporaries edition in the mid/late 1980s.

Thanks! The ones I had were Vintage Internationals of a later, um, vintage, do u see? They had kind of a mostly black and white layout with some Guy Maddin smeared blur of a few other colors in the background overlaid by a kind of gold paint lettering design.

Which vintage did indeed seem to be early 1992.

The punctuation in Blood Meridian versus the punctuation in Absalom, Absalom! pic.twitter.com/bv0MjfwKNu

— Claudia Durastanti (@CDurastanti) June 14, 2023