what are you reading now?
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Cormac McCarthy's writing style has become steadily more pared ever since Blood Meridian really, starting with the Borders trilogy (of which 'The Crossing' is definitely the best IMHO) through to 'No country for old men' and 'The Road'.
His pre-Blood Meridian stuff is pretty hard-going, but the language is amazing. I've read all his other stuff, but I've never managed to get past the first few pages of 'Suttree' without getting a head-ache.
Looking forward to the Coen's adaptation of NCFOM though. It seems like a natural choice for them after Fargo and Blood Simple.
His pre-Blood Meridian stuff is pretty hard-going, but the language is amazing. I've read all his other stuff, but I've never managed to get past the first few pages of 'Suttree' without getting a head-ache.
Looking forward to the Coen's adaptation of NCFOM though. It seems like a natural choice for them after Fargo and Blood Simple.
crackerjack
Well-known member
Saw it ther other week and it's brilliant. Played totally straight (bar a few quirky camera angles) - their best since Fargo, easy. The Spanish geezer playing psycho killer has been giving me nightmares.
slim jenkins
El Hombre Invisible
I watched the preview on YouTube yesterday and it looks as good as I want it to be - the 'Spanish geezer' does look and sound terrifying. The combo of the Coens and McCarthy is a marriege made in heaven for me. As someone's already said, 'The Road' is a kind of streamlining of all his previous prose, although I love the Old Testament excessive blood'n'guts of Blood Meridian in places. Top writer.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Is the Coens' film out yet then? Seems to have been delayed for a while. Can't wait to see this now.
There's been talk for years now about filming Blood Meridian, but it'll probably never happen. If someone actually pulled this off it would have to be one of the most dark and violent movies ever made (would be cool if Earth's 'Hex...' album was the soundtrack though).
McCarthy is an awesome writer. I can't imagine reading anything as powerful as Blood Meridian again. My favourite book of all time, hands down. The road came out hot on the heels of NCFOM.He seems to be speeding up his output in his old age, hence the ultra pared down style he's developed I suppose. His settings are moving forward in time with each novel too, from his earlier historical novels, to The Road being his first to be set in the future. Pretty strange career trajectory when you think about it...
There's been talk for years now about filming Blood Meridian, but it'll probably never happen. If someone actually pulled this off it would have to be one of the most dark and violent movies ever made (would be cool if Earth's 'Hex...' album was the soundtrack though).
McCarthy is an awesome writer. I can't imagine reading anything as powerful as Blood Meridian again. My favourite book of all time, hands down. The road came out hot on the heels of NCFOM.He seems to be speeding up his output in his old age, hence the ultra pared down style he's developed I suppose. His settings are moving forward in time with each novel too, from his earlier historical novels, to The Road being his first to be set in the future. Pretty strange career trajectory when you think about it...
slim jenkins
El Hombre Invisible
It's due out mid-January. It'll be the first film to draw me into a cinema in a long time...basically because other people insist on going whilst I'm there...and talking...and using mobiles...
and anyway I'm not much interested in modern cinema.
In a way, The Road would be a fitting end to McCarthy's career, don't you think? Not wishing a tragic demise upon him, of course, but having won the big book prize, found the essence of his style and created an end-of-the-road scenario for mankind...where else can he go? If I were him I'd retire on a ranch and feel smug...go hunting, fishing etc...leave the Shakespeare Squad basically.
I'd like to see Eastwood film Blood Meridian...
and anyway I'm not much interested in modern cinema.In a way, The Road would be a fitting end to McCarthy's career, don't you think? Not wishing a tragic demise upon him, of course, but having won the big book prize, found the essence of his style and created an end-of-the-road scenario for mankind...where else can he go? If I were him I'd retire on a ranch and feel smug...go hunting, fishing etc...leave the Shakespeare Squad basically.
I'd like to see Eastwood film Blood Meridian...
IdleRich
IdleRich
Wikipedia says it will (though not with Clint Eastwood), I've heard that elsewhere as well
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Meridian
I've just started reading Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, seems like fun so far.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I'm on vol 2 of his Baroque cycle, and it's rattling along at a fair old pace.
One of the bits that made me laugh is early on in this book, where one of the characters, a galley slave, has been given up for dead but later recovers, and his owner is brutally punished by his boss for this oversight. The recovered slave says to one of his oar-mates "So I guess making false insurance claims on dead slaves must be quite commonplace, huh?", to which the other slave responds "Oh you've no idea, some slave-owners are completely unethical!".
empty mirror
remember the jackalope
i am just starting on Mann's The Magic Mountain (Woods Translation) and i am completely engrossed. perfect subject matter for a Tarkovsky film. the reader loses all sense of time and orientation as the protagonist acclimates to life in a sanatorium. i am trying to keep up with what seems like an inordinate number of characters, i may have to start keeping a list. fantastic read so far.
i just finished Don DeLillo's Libra, a fictionalized account of lee harvey oswald's life leading up to the JFK assassination. i had given up on it once before and resolved to give it another go after an interval of a couple years. great book. the event seems both inevitable and aleatory. the morning after finishing the novel, i watched the murder of LHO by jack ruby, and the numerous videos of JFK's assassination (i hadn't realized there were so many). chilling stuff. i would rate this above Cosmopolis and White Noise, but just short of Underworld. (watching a production of Sondheim's Assassins renewed my interest in this book, by the way)
also reading Charles Olson's Maximus. discussion of poetry is permitted here, i hope?
i just finished Don DeLillo's Libra, a fictionalized account of lee harvey oswald's life leading up to the JFK assassination. i had given up on it once before and resolved to give it another go after an interval of a couple years. great book. the event seems both inevitable and aleatory. the morning after finishing the novel, i watched the murder of LHO by jack ruby, and the numerous videos of JFK's assassination (i hadn't realized there were so many). chilling stuff. i would rate this above Cosmopolis and White Noise, but just short of Underworld. (watching a production of Sondheim's Assassins renewed my interest in this book, by the way)
also reading Charles Olson's Maximus. discussion of poetry is permitted here, i hope?
jenks
thread death
David Foster Wallace's Consider The Lobster - a collection of non-fiction pieces. Very good but not a touch on A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. He writes about the porn industry, talk radio, Kafka and most successfully the 200 campaign trail - in particular the McCain caravan - apposite at present!
Am also reading a collection of Hardy poetry, partly on the back of a nice moment in The History Boys where they analyse Drummer Hodge.
I am almost finished Timoleon Vieta, Come Home by Dan Rhodes - a clever story about a dissolute anglo camped out in the hills of italy and his affection for his dog. A kind of po-mo Lassie in effect.
Am also reading a collection of Hardy poetry, partly on the back of a nice moment in The History Boys where they analyse Drummer Hodge.
I am almost finished Timoleon Vieta, Come Home by Dan Rhodes - a clever story about a dissolute anglo camped out in the hills of italy and his affection for his dog. A kind of po-mo Lassie in effect.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Watched this over the holidays (the film not the play) and I was really disappointed having heard so much about it. I just couldn't see what all the fuss was about. Some have suggested that a lot is lost in the translation to the screen though. What was it I missed?
I just started reading Giles Goat-Boy yesterday, only got to read for about ten minutes but it made me laugh a couple of times so that's a good start.
ha ha england...
um, i am reading Blindness by Jose Saramago, b/c a guy who walks his dog near my work recommended it... it's actually quite good... actually reminds me a little of Cormac McCarthy, that sort of blunt look at the horribly fantastic... add a pinch of magical realism tho... not quite as stripped down, but with that same looking into the abyss and not flinching sort of vibe... tho perhaps i will feel different when i am deeper into it...
jenks
thread death
The film isn't really worth seeing as a film - it is really a play in front of a camera, if that makes sense.
I saw the original production in London and found it very moving ( however at this stage I should issue a caveat - I am a teacher who feels a bit like the Griffiths character at times!). I can see the play becoming a standard a level text of the future because it happens to be full of 'debates' - something exam boards love. I also had thhe good fortune to meet bennet once and ask him about the advice the main character gives to a new teacher - he says in effect, they suck you dry and leave nothing for yourself, he tells the new guy to get out while he can. Advice i have given to all but the most committed of trainee teachers!
I am not averse to mini essays appearing in the middle of writing and i think the Drummer Hodge moment is a case in point. i think it reveals soemthing of the characters, as well as allowing the writer his moment of erudition.
jenks
thread death
i suppose the most obvious fact is that as a film it didn't really exploit any cinematic devices. You can do this on stage because we expect flat backgrounds and people talking to each other importantly.
The stage show did use music - particularly The Headmaster Ritual by The Smiths - at moments where scenery was being moved.
Also we expect plays to take place in a relatively small number of locations and whilst films can do this I think it can make it appear very static and that is death to filmic success.
Also the elegiac requiem can be 'staged' in the theatre and not feel too out of place whereas on film it just feels too unbelievable. Also i think the theatrical precedents of Miller's Death of a Salesman make more sense in the original version and forced in the film.
The stage show did use music - particularly The Headmaster Ritual by The Smiths - at moments where scenery was being moved.
Also we expect plays to take place in a relatively small number of locations and whilst films can do this I think it can make it appear very static and that is death to filmic success.
Also the elegiac requiem can be 'staged' in the theatre and not feel too out of place whereas on film it just feels too unbelievable. Also i think the theatrical precedents of Miller's Death of a Salesman make more sense in the original version and forced in the film.
IdleRich
IdleRich
I don't think that this is necessarily a problem. 12 Angry Men all takes place in one scene and Glengarry Glen Ross is obviously a play adapted to the screen but they are both brilliant. It was the story that I couldn't get into in The History Boys, what was the point of it? When I finished I thought... "oh".
I know Griffiths was in the stage play, were any of the other actors in the stage play?
jenks
thread death
It was the original cast in its entirety.
I agree about the films you cite, it can work.
I suppose it's a play about different kinds of knowledge and how we negotiate our way through when choices between pragmaticism and idealism collide. However, i think it is also about how academic study is too often becoming controversialism and journalism, particularly on television.
It's also a dig at schools becoming exam factories and slaves to league tables.
Maybe the fact that I am a teacher and it is a play about teaching and it comes from roughly the same political angle as myself means that I enjoyed it as a confirmation of my own feelings as much as challenging them?
Anyway, Year 10 awaits. John Clare's Remembrances.
I agree about the films you cite, it can work.
I suppose it's a play about different kinds of knowledge and how we negotiate our way through when choices between pragmaticism and idealism collide. However, i think it is also about how academic study is too often becoming controversialism and journalism, particularly on television.
It's also a dig at schools becoming exam factories and slaves to league tables.
Maybe the fact that I am a teacher and it is a play about teaching and it comes from roughly the same political angle as myself means that I enjoyed it as a confirmation of my own feelings as much as challenging them?
Anyway, Year 10 awaits. John Clare's Remembrances.