/CmC/

[Anonymous No.15087414]

Cormac McCarthy containment general

What works have you read?
What's your favorite?
Where does he rank in the American literary tradition?

Suttree edition:

Why did Cornelius Suttree leave his family?

[Anonymous No.15087431]

I have read Blood Meridian, No Country for Old Men and The Road. No Country for Old Men exceeded my expectations. Blood Meridian is of course his masterpiece

[Anonymous No.15087443]

Does anyone else find a common thread between Judge Holden and Anton Chigurh?

To me it seems like Chigurh is the chaotic counterpart to the order of the Judge

[Anonymous No.15087448]

>>15087443
Chigurh is more human than judge
I would liken judge to the whale, chigurh to ahab.
Monomania vs transcendence

[Anonymous No.15087458]

>>15087443
Chigurh still claims that he is acting for the order of the universe which might seem chaotic. He and Holden are both defining their own version of order, it seems

[Anonymous No.15087501]

>>15087458
I've never really thought about this. Is that why he leaves peoples lives up to flipping a coin? Chance is the law of the universe and he is the enforcer?

[Anonymous No.15087566]

>>15087414

>Why did Cornelius Suttree leave his family?

Obviously it's never stated. But the backstory seems to be that his mother's side of the family was a bit dubious (with alcoholics and various miscreants) and his father's side (who were much more respectable) looked down on her and therefore on him. It's implied he rebelled against the pressure put on him as a result of that.

[Anonymous No.15087691]

>>15087414
Anyone read Child of God? It's it really gory and disgusting? I'm squeamish but I really want to read some McCarthy and this one is shorter.

[Anonymous No.15087714]

>>15087691
It's not very gory. The murderer's method of killing is clean and instantaneous. It's a little gross because of what he does to them after but it's all tastefully, even beautifully depicted.

[Anonymous No.15087724]

>>15087691

It's not bad at all, though obviously an early work. They filmed it and the main guy was pretty good, as I recall, but the film isn't well known at all.

[Anonymous No.15087795]

>>15087691
Gross over gory, I read it around 14-15 and didn't find it too stomach turning. Read Outer Dark too, fucking love it.

[Anonymous No.15087897]

>>15087501
I believe so. Somehow turning chaos into his order. He has to be the one flipping the coin

[Anonymous No.15087931]

WHERES THE PASSENGER CORNCOB?!

[Anonymous No.15087972]

>>15087566
Specifically his wife and child

[Anonymous No.15087994]

I've been wanting to write down my theories of the Judge. More interesting than metaphysical ascriptions, such that he is a demon or devil, don't lend much insight and do more to obscure the character. More revealingly given the context of the novel he has been described as a perverse image of Manifest Destiny . In his contrasting brutality and eloquence he displays the force of ideology, or rather how textual justifications mask instrumental violence. He is not simply a violent animal. He is sophisticated, almost polymathic, and full of theories and pronunciations as to the meaning of what he does. He is far from a nihilistic figure. He views killing a purposeful industry and as the paramount expression of man's true nature. He is at once primal and atavistic (seen naked, with a body more representative of some humanoid subspecies than an actual man) and cultured and knowledgable, speaking multiple languages and showing various refined skills and talents. In him therefore is the ideological content not only of Manifest Destiny but its deeper roots in western imperialism. In it violence and language co-operated, the brutality of conquest was met with the well-formulated rationalism of the Enlightenment. He represents rather the "sophisticated barbarism" of this expansionist modernity, carrying with him all its intellectual rationalizations but staying true to its material facts of violence and conquest. It is no coincidence that the Judge is also almost translucently white and there is an inherent racist element to the gang's murder sprees, with most of their victims being Natives or Mexicans. He represents the White Man's scientific and industrial conquest of the West.

It is also no coincidence that he is called Judge. The "terra damnata" depicted in BM is a western frontier completely in the throes of anarchy there is no law in such a land save for the law of the gun and the argument of the bullet. Rather than serving as an agent of chaos Judge is a sort of lawgiver, ironically because their brutalities were technically legal and sanctioned by the authorities. He provides metaphysical coherence to the killings in the way that the ideology of violence always does.
More than just an antagonist the Judge is the fulcrum of the novel. Even the narrator seems to gravitate toward him and the bloody cosmos of that world cycles around his utterances. “It is not
necessary... that the principals here be in possession of the facts concerning their case, for
their acts will ultimately accommodate history with or without their understanding…" This is the mechanism of ideology at work, a “larger protocol exacted by the agenda of an
absolute destiny” as he puts it. Holden is aware that he is participating in a mechanical force of power that is shaping a new nation , that, quite literally, the violence they are inflicting isn't nihilistic because it is essentially a process of manufacture.

[Anonymous No.15088059]

>>15087691
It's a dark comedy, which surprised me as the rest of his works are quite serious.

[Anonymous No.15088127]

>>15087443
Chigurh is a determinist in an indeterminate world, comfortable resigning his will to whatever nature brings, represented in leaving decisions to coin flips. The judge is obsessed with absolute knowledge and control and his own coin trick, which he asks Davey to watch, is beyond anyone's understanding how he does it.

[Anonymous No.15088128]

>>15087414
All but Orchard Keeper fwr
pic'd is best, then Crossing, then BM
Top 15 of novelists, maybe top 10
Don't think it matters why he left; when he tried to visit, why did his family throw shit at him from off the porch? Seems he had to aar.

[Anonymous No.15088146]

>>15088128
>crossing respecter
This poster reads

[Anonymous No.15088230]

>>15087994
Then the violence depicted in BM is not one sided. The opening quote about the anthropological discovery in prehistorical Ethiopia about the evidence for scalping situates the violence in a cosmic setting. The Apaches are just as violent if not more animalistically so rather than helpless victims. Holden is not a political agent per se, it is not that he has any motive to advance the specific, historically contingent political constellation of the westward expansion. He is rather motivated what drives it, the more primal metaphysics of war. He is the distillation and embodiment of what is happening around him , not merely one of its unremembered participants and certainly not one of its principal architects. One gathers that the Apaches are merely playing the same game-- and losing.

The Judge's religious content is not lost in this analysis. He strides through a world of broken and defiled churches, toys with a minister's life and confounds the expriest. Religion in the world of BM is a bloodstained, hollowed out husk, it is essentially profaned, disregarded, a casualty. The Judge seems not to care for Christianity or religion, as if his true faith is in the universal metaphysics he expounds and that this transcends the localities of particular historical faiths. Holden's most explicit religious gesture is in the baptism of the fool, but can this be seen as an anti-Christian sentiment? He does not desecrate any symbols in doing so, preferring to baptize the fool in the river as John baptizes Christ, before the Church and its symbols stood. In this perverse consecration the Judge is essentially inaugurating the kind of man who will inherit this land, the simpering idiot which the Judge takes as his pet stands for the historical ignorance and blindness to the deeds of the gang and their unconscious construction of violence brought about in their issue of state-craft.

[Anonymous No.15088246]

>>15087501
He can't bear the weight of decision, but he has no qualms about acting

[Anonymous No.15088384]

>>15087443
I thought of Chigurh and Ed Tom Bell as having the same dynamic as Death and the Crusader in Bergman's The Seventh Seal- he's an unflinching agent of chaos who casts all of the protagonist's lifelong notions of order into question.

[Anonymous No.15088456]

>>15087414
Pa. Why are eggs breakfast?

What.

You can put bacon on lunch.

Ye.

But if you put eggs on stuff it becomes breakfast?

The man spat and said the eggs are not for this world or from this world they come from the chicken but the chicken knows it not.

He wiped his chin and spat.

[Anonymous No.15089654]

>>15087414
Used to drive under/past that bridge everyday when I went to UTK. I would always say in my head, "There's the ol' Suttree bridge."

[Anonymous No.15089697]

>>15087994
>>15088230
Great posts. I think it's also interesting to consider the judge as an agent of cultural natural selection, which is how I've always interpreted his desire to record the wrecks of civilization down in his notes before destroying them.

[Anonymous No.15089721]

>>15087414
>read?
The Road
No Country for Old Men
Blood Meridian
All the Pretty Horses

>favorite
Blood Meridian

>rank?
Top tier, makes women and low testosterone betas seethe

[Anonymous No.15089773]

>>15087414
I think that Blood Meridian alone cements his reputation as one of America's great literary figures, but oddly enough I find it seems to not be properly engaged with or fully appreciated despite everyone and their brother claiming to be a fan of it. It seems most people have a kind of shallow "pretty prose about violence and Satan" view of it that doesn't do it justice. I feel like the full impact of its density won't hit the literary scene until after McCarthy dies.

[Anonymous No.15089976]

Just finished Suttree, while I liked it, its obvious that he hadnt achieved his top form yet. The same themes are much better explored in The Border Trilogy. It made me not want to read Child of God, or Orchard Keeper, since his style might still not be perfect.

[Anonymous No.15090371]

>>15088146
Arguably his best novel.

[Anonymous No.15090544]

>>15089697
> record the wrecks of civilization down in his notes before destroying them.
It's interesting how judge's violence and intelligence seem to be related. I'm reminded of the line of Wordsworth, "we kill to dissect" with respect to Judge's ability to both kill and know things. "What exists without my knowledge exists without my consent." This captures his worldview, to know is consume. An epistemological sentiment about the limits of understanding is broached in the passage, "The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man’s mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others."

The connection between the two statements, "what exists without my knowledge exists without my consent" and "even in this world more exists without our knowledge than with it," reveals the motive behind Judge's cerebral appetite. The implication is therefore that most of what exists exists without this consent because the sum of knowledge is less than the totality of existence. And the "mind just a fact among others" is intolerable to a solipsist, which the Judge essentially is. So he captures knowledge before destroying the cause of it in the object he documented, essentially he is trying to reduce the world to himself. To know is to simplify, in some sense to make the world less than what it was. His violence and intellect are therefore coincident, both are acts of consumption and both are methods of simplification-- of rendering the world to be closer to just your existence and thus slamming the gap of knowledge shut by a process of violent subtraction.

[Anonymous No.15090855]

>>15087414
what is it about mccarthy that i seemingly can't find anybody else's writing that gives me those feels? i literally can't get enough of his writing, brohs.

[Anonymous No.15090875]

>>15087431
but you havent read suttree

[Anonymous No.15090889]

>>15087443
if the judge is literally the devil (or god depending on how you see it) then sugar is the angel of death. i think there is more order to him than the judge, he is just a neutral figure that kills who nature tells him too.

[Anonymous No.15090938]

>>15087691
Most things are only ever implied. For instance, that he is some kind of creepy cross-dresser may well go over most people's head, because it's only stated like one single time and rather casually that he's wearing a dress.

[Anonymous No.15091234]

>>15088059
Suttree

[Anonymous No.15091261]

>>15088456
>Pa. Why are eggs breakfast?
>What.
>You can put bacon on lunch.
>Ye.
Always makes me kek

[Anonymous No.15091451]

The man came in his ass and got cum all over his denim cargo shorts.
I just fucked your ass real good.
Seems that way.
That it does.
The other man jumped up and pinned the man down and shoved his giant white cock down his throat.
Yeah how do you like bastert?
The man tried to speak but could not as there was far too much cock in his mouth.
Hard to speak with cock in your mouth aint it?
He pulled out and thrusted as hard as he could in the mans eye. He came with the spurt of a waterhose. The man tried blinking but there was so much cum in eye that he couldn’t blink all the way. Part of the lid just hanged over the edge and very slowly cum dripped down and onto his lips. The man slapped him with his cock. And then again from the other side. The man then farted.
Well now, this is embarrassing.

[Anonymous No.15091653]

The road was surprisingly mediocre.

[Anonymous No.15091674]

>>15091653
yeah its his worst that ive read

[Anonymous No.15091773]

If you're younger than 25 and/or have not read suttree, I declare your opinion worthless. It is his best work, hands down. My personal theory on sut abandoning his family is that he either suffered some kind of mental break or his alcoholism led to some unforgivable action.

[Anonymous No.15091796]

>>15091773
Mine is that he was just an arrogant lazy ass piece of shit, some people are just like that anon, it doesnt necessarily mean theyve been through some trauma.

[hungryman !!5BI0oSV9uvS No.15091829]

>>15088059
I loved the part with the baby and the bird. The way he describes the baby is Houellebecq-level good, dark comedy.

[Anonymous No.15092051]

>>15091796
>lazy ass
Book doesn't bear this out; he may be a worthless piece of shit, but he isn' t lazy

[Anonymous No.15093216]

>>15090855
Read Faulkner.

[Anonymous No.15093611]

Blood Meridian
Suttree
Child of God
Blood Meridian is the best with some scenes I'll never forget.

[Anonymous No.15093773]

>>15092051

>he isn't lazy

He is though. Being lazy doesn't mean literally never lifting a finger. Even lazy people are capable of sporadic bouts of activity. What they're not capable of is sustained effort.

Suttree is industrious every now and then, but never for long.

[Anonymous No.15093863]

>>15093773
He'd have been old Knoxville's resident flaneur had he not involved himself a little too much with the riff raff. But okay, I think 'lazy' strains matters but can be made to make sense if when on his way out he 'changes' having just avoided the abstract 'judge' and his ghost pups. And the feeling really is that he's changed (given all he's been through) but, like his family situation, this of course is left up in the air, the emphasis being solely on his escape right as the past is dismantled. Speaking a little obscurely to avoid spoiling

[Anonymous No.15093972]

>>15089976
I actually like his early novels better than the Border Trilogy. Suttree feels unpolished because its structure mimics Sut's life itself - an unstructured string of misadventures that do not form a grand narrative, but still share a common conclusion with the rest of humanity (death). And it is a very flawed humanity as depicted in the book. The real "story" of Suttree is in the detail of the narration which captures his social naturalism. The Orchard Keeper has a nice texture to the prose - dark, but wild - it's from before his style was fully distinct from Faulkner but something about the rustic setting is comfy to me. Outer Dark is a bit more mythic.

No Country for Old Men felt inferior to the film. I like Blook Meridian, but the magic realism and cinematic quality is a bit of an oddball among his works. The Road was good, it showed his advancement as a writer.

[Anonymous No.15093990]

>>15087414
Has McCarthy ever been to jail or used drugs or something? There's a wry sort of acceptance about bad habits in his books, it definitely feels like he's hung around undesirables and isn't too ashamed of it. He clearly doesn't believe in God.

[Anonymous No.15094001]

>>15093990

Like many writers he had problems with alcohol.

[Anonymous No.15094041]

>>15094001
I find writing while drunk impossible. But he says he's only written about places he's been and he writes about jail in Suttree. Wouldn't surprise me if he'd been in for something minor in his youth.

[Anonymous No.15094453]

>>15087414
btw i always think that cover says "Suttree?"

[Anonymous No.15094853]

>Blood Meridian
>Outer Dark
>The Orchard Keeper
>No Country for Old Men
>Child of God

[Anonymous No.15094918]

>>15087994

The judge is nephilim

[Anonymous No.15095204]

Can we get some more appreciation for The Sunset Limited
Literally the best play to come out this century but nobody seems to have read it

[Anonymous No.15095325]

>>15095204
Saw the movie, good not impressive

[Anonymous No.15095330]

>>15095325
Better than the Road easily

[Anonymous No.15095564]

>>15092051
Huge swaths of the Novel are Suttree just laying in bed