what are you reading now?

luka

luka

Well-known member
i read a book by cormac mccrathy. the road it was called. it was a bit shit, lik a book for children. i read it last week and i cant remember fuck all about it. i started reading cryptonomicon which is a nerd book but its started to piss me off so im not sure if i will finsih it. its quite dumb.
 
you

you

Well-known member
'Blood Meridian' is fantastic. So vivid, so violent. Who would play the judge in a film??? A bald 7 foot guy.... mmmmmm Marlon Brando could've. Maybe a taller, fatter Micky Rourke?
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Yes, I found Suttree to be totally impenetrable too. I've enjoyed quite a few of his novels but BM is by far and away the best.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
you said:
'Blood Meridian' is fantastic. So vivid, so violent. Who would play the judge in a film??? A bald 7 foot guy.... mmmmmm Marlon Brando could've. Maybe a taller, fatter Micky Rourke?
Click to expand...

I don't think it can be made into a film, the language of it is so crucial and only occasionally takes the form of dialogue between characters. Sometimes the self-conscious grandiosity of the language feels gratuitous, but more often than not I was amazed at how vividly he evoked landscapes and mood with his use of metaphor/adjectives etc. I don't think I really understood what it was 'about', but I was reading it more with an eye to experiencing/enjoying the atmosphere and poetry of it, since the last time I read a book was for an MA dissertation which involved annotating and analysing said book rigorously... which is enjoyable and enlightening but makes reading a very long slog.

I saw 'The Road' the other night and thought it was very good, but I haven't read the book. The dialogue to do with 'the light that burns inside ya' sounded quite cheesy to me, perhaps it works better embedded in the language of the book?

I think I'll read 'All the Pretty Horses' next, and maybe re-read 'Blood Meridian'.
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
No country for old men is great too. The Coen bros adaptation was very very faithful to the book as I remember it.

Agree that BM is pretty much unfilmable as a straight adaptation, but perhaps a great director could do something with it. Not really sure I'd want to see a film featuring graphic representations of the slaughter and scalping of entire native american villages though. Theres been talk of a film version for years but nothing has come of it yet.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Quite funny that after all the horrific violence against people that goes on I was almost uniquely disturbed by the indians tying live dogs to the bodies of two of the scalpers before throwing them in the fire. Like the bit in 'Independence Day' where its okay that everyone's incinerated because the cute dog gets away.

The violence in 'The Road' wasn't really shown but was possibly even more disturbing for that - the part where they discover to-be cannibalised people in the basement and then watch from a distance as fire-light comes from the windows and agonised screaming can be heard.

In both 'Blood Meridian' and the film of 'The Road' there's this immersion in a world of humans surviving like animals, but slaughtering each other with a uniquely human sadism, which feels contrived and mythic, but also extremely credible. I find it hard to work out McCarthy's attitude to violence from reading 'Blood Meridian', I suppose you are supposed to mistrust and reject all of the Judge's talk of 'the dance isn't the real dance without the sanctity of blood sacrifice' and so on, but the way its written does give violence a certain horrific gravitas/grandeur.
 
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slim jenkins

slim jenkins

El Hombre Invisible
BM is great...that Old Testament language and the description the the tribe, their adornments etc. Haven't read CM for ages, but The Road was fantastic, so if you've seen the film but not read the book, do so. I thought the film was rather boring. No Country, the book, is absolutely brilliant, captures what the film can't (through language, of course) the prose style being so distinct, but I love the film.

Just started Alistair Gray's 'Lanark', having read it in the 80s and loved it, thought I'd see how it stands up. At the time The Elite Cafe chimed very much with a couple of places I used to go to regularly being on the dole, spending all afternoon talking all that Jazz, Politics etc - there were no elite groups, however - just us deadbeats wondering what went wrong.
 
slim jenkins

slim jenkins

El Hombre Invisible
'It is a precise operation - It is difficult - It is dangerous - It is a new frontier and only the adventurous need apply - But it belongs to anyone who has the courage and know-how to enter - It belongs to you -'
- The Mayan Caper
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Corpsey said:
In both 'Blood Meridian' and the film of 'The Road' there's this immersion in a world of humans surviving like animals, but slaughtering each other with a uniquely human sadism, which feels contrived and mythic, but also extremely credible. I find it hard to work out McCarthy's attitude to violence from reading 'Blood Meridian', I suppose you are supposed to mistrust and reject all of the Judge's talk of 'the dance isn't the real dance without the sanctity of blood sacrifice' and so on, but the way its written does give violence a certain horrific gravitas/grandeur.
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I think Macarthy, in all his books really but especially Blood Meridian, had the bleakest possible view of human nature and its capacity for evil. The biblical language is therefore entirely appropriate. I occasionally have a look at a copy of the old testament at the catholic school where I work, and never fail to be surprised at the appalling level of merciless violence and revenge in it. Macarthy's use of that archaic language is a stroke of genius in that book, though it presents a very one sided and pessimistic view of humanity that I ultimately have to reject.
 
grizzleb

grizzleb

Well-known member
If anyone cares there's 2 (consecutive) lectures on Blood Meridian here.


Gives some good insights into the novel and some of the references and stuff I would never have noticed myself...

Lanark is pretty great, though I much preferred the Bildungsroman in the middle to the fantastical surrealistic bits, though Gray does pull it off with reasonable aplomb.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Benny B said:
I think Macarthy, in all his books really but especially Blood Meridian, had the bleakest possible view of human nature and its capacity for evil. The biblical language is therefore entirely appropriate. I occasionally have a look at a copy of the old testament at the catholic school where I work, and never fail to be surprised at the appalling level of merciless violence and revenge in it. Macarthy's use of that archaic language is a stroke of genius in that book, though it presents a very one sided and pessimistic view of humanity that I ultimately have to reject.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's entirely one sided, 'the kid' in 'Blood Meridian' develops morally over the course of the book, though almost invisibly, and there's examples of human kindness dotted throughout its narrative. What interests me is that the grand/archaic language he uses in 'B.M' seems applicable to the particular time/place he's describing, and while there's obviously a lot of distaste for the savagery of that era (granting that there's plenty of savagery in 'civilised' society) there's also a certain degree of romance to it... Perhaps that's just me being seduced by the language he uses, but isn't it interesting that the language of doom and pessimism IS so seductive? It's odd, on the one hand after reading it I feel blessed to live in a prosperous, relatively safe and secure society in which violence isn't the norm, but at the same time I also feel somewhat deprived. I read a quote from McCarthy the other day where he said that he didn't consider certain acclaimed writers real literature because they weren't concerned with death - for him, death is a topic which MUST be addressed in literature. And there's all that stuff in 'Blood Meridian' about how life is a game which only becomes meaningful when there is something truly important (i.e. a life) at stake... Again, those are the judge's words, so probably not to be taken at face value.

There's that line about them heading off 'infatuate and half-fond' towards the 'distant pandemonium' of the setting sun, too. As if the chaos and violence of their mission is both terrible and glorious. But then I wonder to what extent the language of 'Blood Meridian' becomes ironic, especially in those passages where the scalpers get drunk and act like complete animals... there's possibly a satirical side to it in spite of its gloom.

Apologies if this is incoherent I'm drunk.

I want to read it again now.
 
you

you

Well-known member
Just logged in and skimmed the last lots of posts but.....

Death is a massive topic for McCarthy, it's almost the epicentre of The Road in as many ways as Hope is. I remember reading Blood Meridian and cherishing every word, the prose is stunning in its range from visceral, violent hate fuelled nonsense to scenes of sublime bittersweet shit. Humans do a load of crap, this whole range is poignantly explored by McCarthy, this massive scale, the grand biblical style is apt....because at times we live up to this, there's a reason there are heros and and villains in hollywood blockbusters, one of these reasons is that they exist in real life, the massive violence of the bibles first book is there because that shits tru yo. McCarthy has the gift of an un-jaded un-cynical writer - to hope to explore these aspects of humanity for what they are in as dramatic or ( due to history ) classical manner as the text takes him.

Any tips on other books as massive and vibrant and downright biblical as Blood Meridian ( by other authors )??

God I've missed this thread.
 
G

Gregor XIII

Well-known member
Perhaps Witz by Joshua Cohen? It's definately massive, it's filled with biblical references, and it has a huge deadcount. Someday, all the jews of the world drop dead, except for the firstborn sons. The final survivor, Benjamin ben Israeli, born a full grown man with a beard and glasses, is hunted by the government, for not being jewish enough to be the only jew left. I've only gotten 150 pages into it, then it got stolen, but it was great. Very dark, very funny. Very long sentences, with a lot of references to jewish culture, I've been told, though that completely flew over my head...
 
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