I finished reading this last night, and I'm still quite stunned...In fact, this might be my new favorite book. Has anybody else read it?
I finished reading this last night, and I'm still quite stunned...In fact, this might be my new favorite book. Has anybody else read it?
Hell is other people.
~Jean-Paul Sartre, "No Exit"
The most violent and desolate book I ever read. The violence has a point (as all McCarthy's violence does), and so does the desolation. The hallucinatory end of the book required repeated re-reading for me to come to any understanding at all.
This is not where I would advise anyone to begin reading Cormac McCarthy, but eventually one needs to get there.
Aluno
An absolutely stunning book. Perhaps the greatest American novel since Faulkner. Incredibly violent... yet bearing with this a visionary splendor that reminds me of passages of Moby Dick.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
Wow, that is some statement. I loved the two novels of McCarthy that I have read, but i haven't read this one. I will have to get it.Originally Posted by stlukesguild
LET THERE BE LIGHT
"Love follows knowledge." – St. Catherine of Siena
My literature blog: http://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot.com/
I was just in Borders yesterday and in one hand I had Blood Meridian and in the other I had The Naked and the Dead.I ended up choosing Mailer,but this thread is making me want to go back to the book store immediately.
Poor choice, Ry. Mailer is soooo over rated.
LET THERE BE LIGHT
"Love follows knowledge." – St. Catherine of Siena
My literature blog: http://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot.com/
Virgil... The greatest compliments that I have come across concerning Blood Meridian have to be by Harold Bloom... and are essentially behind my decision to read the book when I did. Bloom calls some of the visionary passages Shakespearean and suggests that Judge Holden is perhaps the most powerful and frightful villain since MacBeth. Considering the fact that Shakespeare is almost God to Bloom... not a comparison he is likely to make lightly... I knew I had to read it. Judge Holden is undoubtedly an incredible and disturbing figure... a brilliant demon... and I mean "demon" in the worst sense of the word: someone larger than life... evil personified... There are few books that so stunned me.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
he is a recipient of the Worst Sex Scene in LiteraturePoor choice, Ry. Mailer is soooo over rated.
I think I'll have to check this one out someday, maybe summer; particularly with that Harold Bloom recommendation.
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into the mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.
- John Berryman
thanks StLukes. Now I really have to read the book.
LET THERE BE LIGHT
"Love follows knowledge." – St. Catherine of Siena
My literature blog: http://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot.com/
While considering The Judge, consider also the relationship of the Kid to the Judge, and especially the last chapter.
Aluno
I've read Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West, about a year ago. It certainly left an impression in my mind, considering I can still see the graphic brutality of the novel in my mind's eye. Graphic brutality that was artistically crafted, I may add. I have to re-read it.
I also have to read more McCarthy.
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players
I read Blood Meridean about seven years ago for my first class in college. That same course, we read Lolita, and Great Apes. I still have my copy of Lolita. I've read more Nabokov. The other two I sold back when I was done with them. I do not understand what people see in McCarthy. For me, he's just alright, better than average. I will say this for him, it was probably the most violent book I've read, if that counts for anything.
I love McCarthy. He is phenominal. I read No Country and most of The Road, which is incredible, but I haven't gotten around to this one. IT IS on The List. One day...
"Memory believes before knowing remembers."
--Faulkner
I finished with the The Road earlier this week and it is all right, nothing too special about it, just an extremely gloomy and gray book. Nothing works like extreme of everything in this age! I have Blood Meridian waiting on my shelf which is next after I finish with Kafka on the Shore which is very different from the rough-hewn McCarthy stuff.
"The farther he goes the more good it does me. I don’t want philosophies, tracts, dogmas, creeds, ways out, truths, answers, nothing from the bargain basement. He is the most courageous, remorseless writer going and the more he grinds my nose in the sh1t the more I am grateful to him..."
-- Harold Pinter on Samuel Beckett
I finished The Road last night.
(POSSIBLE SPOILER)
The book as a whole didn't quite live up to the hype for me,but the final scene where the son is talking to the father before he dies was very powerful I thought.I just imagined if I was in that situation,with my father slowly going,what would I say or do? Imagining such a moment is very difficult.McCarthy definitely has a great command over language,which makes his prose very beautiful.However,the story was very gloomy,and failed to uplift me in the end.
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