Re:Subterranean Treasures: Cormac McCarthy’s late style
by sharkweek on Friday March 24, 2023 @05:40PM
(#35295983)
No Country for Old Men is both worth watching and reading, it's a rare example where both the movie and the book are near perfect.
Re:Subterranean Treasures: Cormac McCarthy’s late style
by SideburnsOfDoom on Friday March 24, 2023 @07:19PM
(#35296998)
> Blood Meridian - Hard to describe.
Blood Meridian: easy to describe truthfully, hard to do justice to in that description.
Easy description: A Western. The western. One of the great masterpiece novels. Set in the Texas-Mexico border area, circa 1850, beautifully lyrical writing, but is also an appallingly violent work, certainly the single most bloody book that I have ever read.
"A major theme is the warlike nature of man". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Meridian#Violence
Re:Subterranean Treasures: Cormac McCarthy’s late style
by sharkweek on Friday March 24, 2023 @07:39PM
(#35297156)
Without spoiling anything, I do think The Judge is in my top 3 all-time fictional characters.
1) Watch "No Country for Old Men" (and optionally read it - it's a very faithful adaptation but you'll get additional character motivation/backstory from the book)
2) All the Pretty Horses - bildungsroman of two teenage boys chasing a way of life that no longer exists. One of his more accessible works, and the one that made him famous outside of literary circles.
3) Child of God - a light, quick read with a sympathetic portrait of a necrophiliac cannibal.
4) The Road - This will hit especially hard if you're a parent. A beautiful novel about not giving into despair no matter how dire the circumstances.
5) Suttree - in some ways the mirror of All the Pretty Horses - a young man leaves his way of life when it becomes clear that said way of life is vanishing. Based on McCarthy's real-life experiences growing up in Knoxville. Easily his funniest book. Probably the most compelling description of a specific milieu (1950s Knoxville underclass) I've ever read - simultaneously accessible - there are people who lived that life who are still alive - and yet impossibly remote.
6) Blood Meridian - Hard to describe. I wouldn't read Blood Meridian first because it's quite difficult, and because it has a way of making everything else (like...everything else, not just his other work) seem not as good.