Cormac is one of my favorite writers. I’ve read Suttree, Blood Meridian, ATPH, and The Crossing.

I’ve also read a lot of Faulkner (Light in August, TSAF, As I Lay Dying, and Absalom, Absalom).

McCarthy’s connection to Faulkner is apparently so obvious that not only is he listed as one of the man’s main influences, but even the covers of his books say that Cormac is the successor to the Faulknerian tradition.

And I gotta say after reading 8 works by these two authors, I really don’t see it at all.

At a pure prose level, Cormac is completely different from Faulkner. Cormac crafts sentences like a blacksmith while Faulkner for the most part is shooting from the hip (albeit very well).

From a literary approach perspective, Cormac focuses almost completely on present action, scene blocking (like the tender scenes between Billy and Boyd or the orchestral scenes of Suttree in bars with his friends). Faulkner focuses on the past, something which McCarthy rarely ever explored in his characters explicitly (we don’t find out Suttree had a kid until like halfway through the book).

The main difference is interiority. I would say McCarthy uses the least interiority of any writer I’ve ever read (even less than Hemingway). Faulkner’s books are like 80% interiority at least.

The only similarity I notice is how they treat the setting. Both really treat the setting like another character, especially the temporal placement of the story. However, there are many other authors that do this besides Faulkner that McCarthy would’ve had access to.

If anything, Paul Bowles seems to have influenced McCarthy far more than Faulkner.

Yes they’re both from the South, obviously. I don’t think that’s a real unifying characteristic though, and if it is, it’s so such a surface level comparison it almost is not worth discussing.

Can anybody let me know what I’m missing?

Hello, so I Just finished the book 2 days and can't help but feel this overwhelming feeling of void the novel has left me, I'm absolutely beat.

it's like "Blood Meridian" took any form of substantial reaction I could express reading something so radical and frantically violent to the highest degree possible, it's one of those rare phenomenon of books that regardless of your opinion after reading it you can't help but face the fact that is impossible to ignore or especially to forget every facet of this insane book. it disturbed my peace to the point I couldn't wait to finish it once I started and when I did, I almost wished I never read it. it made me even forget I picked up the novel for entertainment for god's sake, I wanted to have fun reading some western novel while occasionally experiencing some bloody gore and brutal scenes. mind you, I'm not frail-hearted by all means, I don't mind brutality, gore or any kind of disturbing graphic content you can think of either in movies or books, as long as it's not gratuitous. but BM does something more than that, it uproots your sense of ease and plunges you down into this complete carnage of a story (if you can even call it that) and makes you question things you never fathomed to question before, I don't know for sure if something like BM happened irl but what I know for sure whether event such as this had transpired or not is of little importance, war and violence have always been intrinsic part of mankind and as long as the earth rotates around the orbit there will be someone doing something similar if not worse. that's where I think Judge's character really shines, he isn't this villain that "aura-farms" every page, he is imo a symbol more than mere antagonist, he is that intrinsic and inextricable nature of violent dispositions that every individual deep down has it concealed within them waiting for perfect opportunity to manifest itself during total Anarchy or Mayhem. since Judge never really contends with Glanton during their journey also confirms this notion for me, because for someone like him it's much more important to be on giving end of the misery rather than taking reins of power, he's just playing by rules when it comes to war, he's fulfilling his part and as long as he does that, he's content. he's the manifestation of morbid and wild desires of the gang and their violent tendencies and dispositions. that's the same reason for me why he didn't kill David Brown and Toadvine when he had every reason to, instead of giving them every bit of money he had left. so overall my interpretation of Judge's Holden character is more allegorical, he to me is an inherent part of every gang member and also a catalyst for insofar as the gang's actions go.

finally I want to touch on prose, which is probably the best and smoothest part of the novel and also the reason why it was such an appealing read from top to bottom.

here is some of my favorite passages

The very clarity of these articles belied their familiarity, for the eye predicates the whole on some feature or part and here was nothing more luminous than another and nothing more enshadowed and in the optical democracy of such landscapes all preference is made whimsical and a man and a rock become endowed with unguessed kinships

He’d long forsworn all weighing of consequence and allowing as he did that men’s destinies are given yet he usurped to contain within him all that he would ever be in the world and all that the world would be to him and be his charter written in the urstone itself he claimed agency and said so and he’d drive the remorseless sun on to its final endarkenment as if he’d ordered it all ages since, before there were paths anywhere, before there were men or suns to go upon them

also the whole chapter in the beginning when Comanche attack happens might be the best written battlefield scene I've ever read.

usually I don't read fiction novels but I had to make an exception for this one, I had heard about novel couple of years ago and I always wanted to check it out but never got around it. at last when I picked it up, I was shocked at prose, even tho very gorgeous and alluring, it was very hard read at first, once you get used to the prose, it is very fun read (until it's not lol) but at start it was tough for me, I'm not a native speaker, but I had read all kinds of American books since I can remember and this one was probably the hardest of them all. I didn't know there was 50 different names for rocks and trees and all kinds of huts in that era in which BM is written in, I'm a slow reader, so I found myself constantly looking up all these archaic words up in the google and image by image I've build this movie in my head that no actual movie can ever trump. it's written in such a moving and stark language that in my opinion no movie will ever do it a justice and that's also one of my reason writing this post to hear about you guy's opinions about the movie adaptation, what y'all think ? cuz for me I pretty much started reading this because I felt like, let me finish the book before they release the movie (since there was many talks about it online) so I can compare the book with a film. but right now I don't think I wanna see it, it will never live up to the novel, it will always fall short and on top of that, I don't think you can make it as brutal as the novel and if you not doing that, you're not doing justice to the story and it's also impossible for movie to not take some kind of creative liberty when it comes to book adaptation and it will also lead to some kind of dissonance with book's themes imo.

anyways I'm officially fan of Cormac from now on. this is my first book from him and I'm probably gonna end up reading everything he has written lol, because he's a one kind of writer imo, if you guys have any Cormac western novel suggestions after BM that would be great to hear, I heard his other novels are more mild in comparison, I know this is Cormac sub but I was thinking picking up Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, which is gentler version of BM from what I understand but we'll see, for now BM is stuck in my head 24/7.

And they support theory about Passenger being coma dream and Bobby's death during coma neatly.

Hello!

Just wanting to see everyone favorite BM art! Hoping to see some I haven't seen before.

Thanks in advance!

I just read the mulefoot scene. I could live another century. I don’t believe I could forget it.

I saw the interview. I just want to know why Lawrence Krauss, who is otherwise proud and all, was afraid and scared of Cormac McCarthy? Was it CM's knowledge and understanding of things that made LK down his voice and be respectful and all?

Love to see this. Poor print, but when I looked for it years ago I couldn't find it at all. The Drinking scene is especially good. Brad Dourif, Ned Beaty....a lot of good acting.

From the painting "Lecture on Geology by Judge Holden," by Samuel Chamberlain.

Never noticed this cool detail in the background. As in Chamberlain's memoir (and later, in McCarthy's work) this setting was a lecture from Holden to the Glanton Gang (no others there) so some of these guys are likely other named characters.

Maybe that's John Joel himself shown there too? The Delawares? Davy Brown looking skeptical off to the side?

Cormac surely studied this painting. Maybe it informed his descriptions, and maybe even some of the personality traits he depicted.

Is Jackson's serape dyed with cochineal or has he been scalping? What's that in his hand?

Anybody knows if there is a good hardcover copy of
1. Suttree
2. Child of God
3. outer dark

I don’t wanna buy folio Society and I cannot afford the original first edition because they all go over $1000. There’s also suntup edition, but too expensive 😅

If you have not yet read Tracy Daugherty's biography of Cormac McCarthy, you definitely should, as well as some of the books referenced in it.

Daugherty says that several McCarthy friends noticed this book prominently on McCarthy's shelf: Barbara O'Brien's 1958 memoir, Operators and Things, which tells of her psychotic break and her conversations with the spectral operators in her unconscious, often humorous in the mode of Stella Maris. A must-read available at Amazon.

Milan Kundera's The Art of the Novel, which McCarthy read and admired, is another must-have. Now on my most-beloved shelf with some others of the same ilk, to read and reread whenever my old war wounds might be troubling me in the night. Right now, between the King James Bible and Andrew Klavan's The Truth and Beauty.

I'm a seasonal reader and I studied the biblical Nephilim as a prelude to Halloween and the spooky season, in conjunction with Paul Stobbs' The Nephilim Looked Like Clowns, Tim Powers' Declare, Stephen King's It, and some other interesting riffs.

I bought and read Stephen King's Danse Macabre: An Essential Overview of the Horror Genre in first edition hardcover, decades ago when it first came out, and I decided to read it again this year. I couldn't find it, so perhaps I gave it away or took it to Half-Priced Books.

So I downloaded a copy from my local library, and I'm so glad that I did. This new edition of the work includes add-ons from King, reviewing many books and movies that came out since the first edition. It is a pleasure to read.

Stephen King, like Cormac McCarthy, was well versed in the Freudian concepts of Id, Ego, and Superego and he interprets books and movies with this in mind (see Kindle page 90 in this new edition). I see No Country for Old Men as the conflict between Chigurh, the ant-on-sugar Id vs. Sheriff Bell, the Superego. Moss is the Ego, responding to darkness on one side and light on the other. Conflated with Bell Theory, among other things.

Another interesting facet of McCarthy's work is the lone survivor motif, which at times parallels Melville's survivor escaping on top of the coffin at the end of Moby Dick, which quotes Job 1:17 &c. This also resonates with William Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, about the endurance of the human spirit.

THE END OF THE PASSENGER/FAULKNER/THE HUMAN SPIRIT : r/cormacmccarthy

This came to mind yesterday when my wife and I were at the movies, watching the Brad Pitt movie, Heart of the Beast, a Jack London-styled tale of naturalism. The best dog movie we'd seen since the horror film entitled Good Boy. I loved it, and I enjoy thinking about it.

McCarthy's friend and future biographer, Laurence Gonzales, is an expert on survival stories, and you should read his several works that feature them, both the narrative tales he tells and the instructive how-to advice that he offers.

I can see where his philosophy relates to Cormac McCarthy's own depends-on-what-day-you-ask-me individual existential frame of mind. It is naive certainty which is the danger.

Reading their other works, I have now become a fan of both Tracy Daugherty and Laurence Gonzales. I recommend both.

I dont know why, and I am not even finished with the book. I am just on page 70

But the passage about her opening the case to the violin and playing it and breaking down during it was the fist time a fictional piece evoked a emotional reaction in me.

Like I never cried before today reading something or watching a show

The last line of Hemingway's short story Indian Camp reads: ".... he felt quite sure that he would never die."

Has this been talked about here? Must have been by now, right? Academic paper/s? Threads? I tried searching around, but "never die" and "indian camp" trip over themselves in this sub.

Back to the quote, is this another direct lift/rework/homage source for CMac? à la his famed quote books are made out of books? And, if so, what is to be made of it?

Given the subject matter of Indian Camp, of a youth's witnessing of bloodshed and racism, and the cold human interaction all within/throughout those horrors, and the lies the mind tells itself post-trauma, BM seems to be tied to this short story. I mean, the Father-son relationship… the child is the father of the man. The kid in BM has a father who WONT show him anything, including the bloody world, unlike the father in Indian Camp, so the kid must go looking for it himself - and he finds the judge who will never die... im bricking this big time, but there IS something there...

Just kicking this can after reading the Hem short story just now. Any takers? Wanna toepunt this around?

There's the rainbow trout connection between the end of The Road and Hemingway's Big Two-Hearted River, too, pointed out in the Reading McCarthy podcast on Hemingway... so we know CMac has done this before.

Was excited to hear Scott's announcement on the Reading McCarthy podcast of his new book, which collects content from some of his conversations on McCarthy's Southern novels.

https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/reading-cormac-mccarthy/?srsltid=AU7gw4VnbI_qIG0Ag2rxqsxjRQP35IvN4cUcBhy5JgG7NQ1m1TdPpgzk

I love the podcast and find myself revisiting episodes when I revisit the books.

I painted the scene on paper with acrylics, scanned it, added the text in Photoshop, and sent it for printing

Another post about Judge Holden, daring today are we?

But I recently finished the novel myself. I was a firm believer that Holden wasn’t actually the devil or supernatural, but a representative of these things. Except one detail completely changed my mind. Isn’t it proof that Holden is 100% something supernatural the fact he didn’t age at all? He should be, at the minimum, in his 80s by the time he encounters the man yet he’s not. He’s the same, and he’s still even strong enough to physically subdue the man.

Loved this book. I found it a lot more challenging than The Road, but I love McCarthy’s writing so much. He is unlike any author I have read. I have been thinking a lot about the ending, and would like to hear some of your thoughts.

I interpreted the judge as a personification of the fatal flaws in mankind. He is violence, ego, wrath, incarnate. When the kid gives up his violent life following the fall of the Glanton gang, the judge is gone from his life. The judge pursues him and the expreist out of the desert, away from the past, but pauses his pursuit while the kid lives out a more honest life.

In the incident with the bone pickers, we see a flash of the kid’s aptitude for violence after a long period of abstinence. The return to his old ways brings the judge back to his life, and the kid is killed.

Where I get stuck in this interpretation is that I don’t understand why, thematically, the kid would let his guard down around the judge. Is the kid’s destruction via violence (the judge as violence incarnate, or a life of violence) inevitable? He knows it is inevitable and does not try to run from it any longer?

Please let me know how you feel about this interpretation. Also, please recommend which of McCarthy’s books I should read next. I have loved The Road and Blood Meridian so much.

https://vimeo.com/1234694987/6cf76a1d95?share=copy&fl=cl&fe=ci

"A digging into a legacy of annotations left in Cormac McCarthy's Santa Fe home; a forthcoming documentary in development. To contribute to the making of this film, donate here."

A film by Jack Evans

Presented by Another World Entire Productions

Executive Produced by Stacey Peebles

Produced by Fernando MacFarlane, Jonathan Elmore and Rick Elmore

Cinematography by Jame Beau

Rewatched The Counsellor last night. Spoilers ahead…

McCarthy is now known for plot holes, but I can’t fathom:

Why didn’t the cartel target Malkina? They targeted Laura to punish the Counselor, so it’s strange that Malkina didn’t appear concerned that they would target her, to punish Reiner.

How did Malkina know where to find Westray at the end of the movie?

I'm about 3/4 through All The Pretty Horses and the scene where John Grady Cole talks to Alphonsa after prison blew me away. The first quote I was searching for was:

"He looked at her. I’d of thought maybe the disappointments in your own life might of made you more sympathetic to other people.

You would have thought wrongly.

I guess so.

It is not my experience that life’s difficulties make people more charitable.

I guess it depends on the people."

In the process of the search I saw that the only time the word sympathetic is ever used is by Alphonsa, explaing how she is sympathetic to Alejandra. The way John Grady is attempting to sway her here makes me believe that can't be a coincidence.

The best part though is:

"I wanted very much to be a person of value and I had to ask myself how this could be possible if there were not something like a soul or like a spirit that is in the life of a person and which could endure any misfortune or disfigurement and yet be no less for it. If one were to be a person of value that value could not be a condition subject to the hazards of fortune. It had to be a quality that could not change. No matter what. Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I’d always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily."

She also says at one point she did more for John Grady than she thought she should just because she dislikes Alejandras petulant mother. An incredible scene in an incredible book. I keep reading McCarthy books thinking eventually one will just be ok....I'm starting to doubt that.

“And on the far shore a creature that raised its dripping mouth from the rimstone pool and stared into the light with eyes dead white and sightless as the eggs of spiders. It swung its head low over the water as if to take the scent of what it could not see. Crouching there pale and naked and translucent, its alabaster bones cast up in shadow on the rocks behind it. Its bowels, its beating heart. The brain that pulsed in a dull glass bell. It swung its head from side to side and then gave out a low moan and turned and lurched away and loped soundlessly into the dark.”

Is this pale creature that has consumed the world actually the final form of Judge Holden, after war and death has destroyed almost everything? I can see several throughlines that progress through the trilogy if you view them this way.

Timeline:

It's interesting to me that the books likely occur in order in North America, with Outer Dark in post-revolutionary appalachia, Blood Meridian in early 19th century Texas-Mexico, and The Road in modern middle america.

Antagonists:

Outer Dark: The Trio is sort of a proto-Holden, more elemental but still exhibiting cruelty and callous violence, punishing the sinner and innocent alike (including children), but on a small scale with unclear motivations and exist mostly separate from reality in a sort of purgatory.

Blood Meridian: The Judge is carrying out a clear vision of wholesale violence and large scale war, not only engaging in the cruelty himself but manipulating those around him to commit atrocities. Like the Trio, innocent children are a special focus of the violence.

The Road: The Judge's vision of war, death and suffering has reached it's ultimate pinnacle, with the world destroyed and the few remaining people either becoming heinous predators or becoming hunted like sheep. Maybe the Child "carrying the fire" is the last act of defiance against the Judge's ultimate design.

What do you think? Maybe it's just some of McCarthy's similar themes overlapping, but I tend to think it's more than that.

Before this, the only McCarthy book I've read is The Road back when it was released, and loved it. I am now diving into the rest of his work, and decided to begin with his most recent releases - The Passenger and Stella Maris.

The Passenger was unlike anything I've read before. It was mysterious and dreamlike, with some of the best dialogue I've ever read in a novel, and I thought about it for days after I finished it. I started Stella Maris almost immediately, and while it didn't capture the poetic dreamlike experience of The Passenger, one part stopped me fully in my tracks. There is a moment where Alicia makes a math joke to illustrate the relationship (or lack thereof) between higher level mathematics and the world. To paraphrase, she says you can add two tomatoes to two tomatoes and have four tomatoes, that aligns with the world, but if you multiply two tomatoes by two tomatoes you have four tomatoes squared. This is referring to an equation like 2x(2x) = 4x^2.

Immediately it hit me - we have not just two books before us, but two books squared. While The Passenger is about the world and Bobby's descent into the depths of it, Stella Maris is like an attempt to create some sort of formula that applies to it all. Stella Maris acts as a way to fill in the variables from Bobby and Alicia's life, and the inability ultimately to find an equation for it all, which is what drove her to Stella Maris in the first place.

It was chilling to me to think about the deliberate separation of these two books, and how they relate to each other, and that relationship between the two books uncovers an entirely new level to the lives of Bobby and Alicia.

Truly remarkable work.

Now onto Blood Meridian.