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Shitenshi posted:
I couldn't disagree more, I absolutely loved Outer Dark, even though it was probably the most depressing thing I've ever read. The atmosphere was positively palpable. I wouldn't quite put it on the same level as Blood Meridian or Suttree but I really enjoyed it, inasmuch as one can enjoy a story like that.
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Jan 17, 2014 01:12
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Screaming Cow posted:I couldn't disagree more, I absolutely loved Outer Dark, even though it was probably the most depressing thing I've ever read. The atmosphere was positively palpable. I wouldn't quite put it on the same level as Blood Meridian or Suttree but I really enjoyed it, inasmuch as one can enjoy a story like that.
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Jan 17, 2014 04:37
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How do you guys get used to McCarthy's writing style? I've tried to read The Road about three times now, and between his run-on sentences and lack of quotation marks I've outright given up. Are there any editions with proper grammar that are still for sale?
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Jan 18, 2014 04:52
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Noctis Horrendae posted:How do you guys get used to McCarthy's writing style? I've tried to read The Road about three times now, and between his run-on sentences and lack of quotation marks I've outright given up. Are there any editions with proper grammar that are still for sale?
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Jan 18, 2014 05:01
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Noctis Horrendae posted:How do you guys get used to McCarthy's writing style? I've tried to read The Road about three times now, and between his run-on sentences and lack of quotation marks I've outright given up. Are there any editions with proper grammar that are still for sale? What Above Our Own said. McCarthy's prose works the way it does for a reason. It's not immediately transparent, but it would absolutely be lessened if someone went through and 'corrected' it. I sold a story with McCarthyesque prose style and it gave me tremendous respect for the technique - it brings a certain immediacy and groundedness to the work that's hard to get otherwise.
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Jan 18, 2014 05:27
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Noctis Horrendae posted:Are there any editions with proper grammar that are still for sale? Does this actually exist?
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Jan 19, 2014 17:52
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I certainly hope not.
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Jan 19, 2014 18:17
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Most assuredly not. It's kind of a hilarious notion. "Hey Cormac... would you mind re-writing your pulitzer-prize winning novel known for it's stylistic virtuosity so that we can try and reach a wider demographic?"
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Jan 19, 2014 18:20
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Jewmanji posted:Most assuredly not. It's kind of a hilarious notion. "Hey Cormac... would you mind re-writing your pulitzer-prize winning novel known for it's stylistic virtuosity so that we can try and reach a wider demographic?" I suppose the closest thing you're going to get to that sort of thing is the Border Trilogy and No Country for Old Men
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Jan 19, 2014 18:32
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I don't get how you guys find this so revolutionary and eye-opening. The prose reads like a six year old's work in some bits due to the absence of grammar.
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Jan 19, 2014 21:19
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Noctis Horrendae posted:I don't get how you guys find this so revolutionary and eye-opening. The prose reads like a six year old's work in some bits due to the absence of grammar. Well, we're all children here, clearly. I wouldn't call him revolutionary; he's just imitating Faulkner and Melville and whoever else he admired. The style definitely takes some getting used to, but it's beautiful if you stick with it. Or try again after a couple years. Eye-opening for sure! Spine-tingling, brain-dizzying, heart-leaping also work!
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Jan 19, 2014 21:35
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It's not revolutionary or eye-opening or whatever. Or maybe it is, I'm no scholar of the history of literature. It is, however, evocative and compelling.
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Jan 19, 2014 21:39
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Peel posted:It's not revolutionary or eye-opening or whatever. Or maybe it is, I'm no scholar of the history of literature. It is, however, evocative and compelling. Yeah, exactly this. This is a super patronizing allegory (I'm sorry) but alcohol tastes like poo poo when you're a kid and you'd rather have grape juice. Reading is a skill that develops like any other, and McCarthy rewards a degree of practice. There's also, of course, an element of subjectivity and taste, and that's valid - but I don't think it's anywhere near the whole of it. e: also McCarthy has really good grammar! His sentences are consistently very grammatical. more e: Christ it sounds like I'm calling you illiterate. I don't mean 'reading' in the sense of 'I can sound out words', but reading in the sense of 'tackling more challenging works'. I used to enjoy Dungeons and Dragons novelizations, now I can't stand them; I couldn't stand McCarthy, now I can. General Battuta fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Jan 19, 2014 |
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Jan 19, 2014 21:41
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Noctis Horrendae posted:I don't get how you guys find this so revolutionary and eye-opening. The prose reads like a six year old's work in some bits due to the absence of grammar. Intent is what separates the two. Take a look at any excerpt from Blood Meridian. quote:The fool enshadowed him where he crouched at his trade but he was a cold forger with hammer and die, perhaps under some indictment and an exile from men's fires, hammering out like his own conjectural destiny some coinage for a dawn that would not be. It this false monier with his gravers and burins who seeks favor with The Judge, and he is at contriving in cold slag brute in the crucible a face that will pass, an image that will render this residual specie current in the markets where men barter. The intent with these words and this syntax is the intent of the language of the entire book: to evoke an epic, Biblical feel for the equally Biblical subject matter (eg good and evil, violence and temptation). The structure of the story, the quest, and the allusions in the story (eg Satan and gunpowder and Milton and Paradise Lost) are all indicators of that intent. Short version being, he wrote how he wrote what he wrote in order to achieve a certain effect. Intent. Now take a look at something from The Road. quote:Okay, the man said. So, okay. Mechanically, this has all the complexity of a Lincoln Log. But again, there's an intent behind it. The Road is a sparse, sparse book. Not a single wasted word and never more than a line of description. But that adds to the tone and story. Some lit nerd could make some kind of comparison here--I don't know, maybe by saying it starves the reader the way the man and the boy themselves are starving, evoking the post-post-colonial death of capitalism or some overwrought nonsense like that--but all that lit crit poo poo aside, keep in mind that, at its core, The Road is the story of a father and his young son. So it's written in the voice of a six-year-old (in some parts) for that reason. Intent. The tl;dr take away: any good writer knows how to change voice and tone, and McCarthy, despite his often elliptical style, is very, very good at doing that. The guy spins words like glass, and isn't afraid to be simple when simple serves the story. It's what makes his work so easy to admire (but often hard to like). Asbury fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Jan 19, 2014 |
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Jan 19, 2014 22:41
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Noctis Horrendae posted:I don't get how you guys find this so revolutionary and eye-opening. The prose reads like a six year old's work in some bits due to the absence of grammar. For example I don't really like Melville's style but Moby Dick and Bartleby are both impactful works that I enjoyed reading more after the fact than while I was reading them.
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Jan 19, 2014 22:53
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I guess coming to the McCarthy thread and bitching about McCarthy was pretty dumb. Pulling out after this post. His style of writing isn't for everyone. I've only attempted to read The Road and that's put me off of him entirely.
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Jan 19, 2014 23:11
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Noctis Horrendae posted:I guess coming to the McCarthy thread and bitching about McCarthy was pretty dumb. Pulling out after this post. I can say that I enjoy his style but it does get a little much. It's what he says more than how he says it that I find compelling about his work.
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Jan 19, 2014 23:17
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Noctis Horrendae posted:I guess coming to the McCarthy thread and bitching about McCarthy was pretty dumb. Pulling out after this post. No, dude! Wasn't dumb at all. I couldn't stand McCarthy when I first read him. In point of fact, I felt the same way you do--when I finished the The Road, my first thought was, "Jesus, this won the Pulitzer?" It took me a long time to appreciate his work. And The Road is actually one of his worst books, but it came after he'd proven what he could do with the language. So if you're down with giving him another shot--and you need to be patient--try All the Pretty Horses. It's fairly accessible. Or if you're up for a challenge, try Suttree--it's basically one long-as-gently caress prose poem and needs to be read as such. It's hard, real hard, to learn how to read him. But it's rewarding once you do.
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Jan 19, 2014 23:18
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It's worth noting that I started out disliking the language in both Blood Meridian and The Road, until a little way in both 'clicked' and became poetic and compelling. e: also it's never dumb to drop a reasonable contrary opinion in a discussion thread that will naturally bias itself towards incestuous amplification.
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Jan 19, 2014 23:56
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In case anyone missed it, Peel just fired a pretty awesome shot across the bow of TVIV.
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Jan 20, 2014 00:07
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In case anyone hasn't had a chance to check it out yet, thought I'd put out a little public service announcement: Humble Bundle is doing an audiobook bundle where you pay whatever you want, and if you pay more than the average (currently around $5) you get a few more books, including, much to my delight, Blood Meridian. Definitely worth it if you enjoy audiobooks. https://www.humblebundle.com/?utm_s...ac4d94-99581781
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Jan 22, 2014 01:25
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Noctis Horrendae posted:I've only attempted to read The Road and that's put me off of him entirely. You done hosed up. It's his least complex work stylistically and thematically, so the sparseness of the prose might be appropriate but isn't necessarily entertaining taken by itself. Contrariwise: "The crimes of the moonlight melonmounter followed him as crimes will." Not a punctuation mark to be found, but it doesn't have the same stylistic connotations as a sentence from The Road might have, for one thing because it's loving funny and betrays a sort of playfulness on the narrator's part, but more crucially because the author is now playing with sound and verbality in a way that would be out of place in The Road. I'm reminded of the phoneme/alliteration analysis that Gass did on the first scene in Gaddis' Recognitions, but I can't find that piece now. Joyce and Nabokov are also obvious examples of that sort of spoken-word-level mastery, and McCarthy uses that style as appropriate (less so in The Road than in Blood Meridian, to take the most apparent contrast in his oeuvre).
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Jan 23, 2014 20:20
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Does anybody know how the audiobooks for McCarthy are? I've tried to read him several times because he gets great reviews from everybody, but I absolutely cannot get past his... idiosyncratic punctuation. I am normally not an audiobook persom, but I noticed Blood Meridian in the Humble Audiobook bundle and it occurred to me that an audiobook would bypass the punctuation issue entirely.
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Jan 24, 2014 06:44
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I've not listened to the whole thing myself, but I do plan to. The narrator for it has, I think, the perfect voice for the book. It'd be a good choice for you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvXOUG6Glsc
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Jan 24, 2014 06:56
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Khizan posted:Does anybody know how the audiobooks for McCarthy are? I've mainly read Mccarthy through audio books. There are of course some cons to using audio books, especially for literature like Mccarthy's, which is meant to be read slowly. But still, some of the recordings are very good. Frank Muller's reading of All the pretty horses and Cities of the plain are good, as is Alexander Adams' reading of The crossing. But the really great one is of course Richard Poe's reading of Blood Meridian, which was posted above. In my opinion all of these narrators were able to give the characters distinct voices with a lot of personality. This might help you understand who is talking etc. if you've been confused by Mccarthy's style of writing dialogue. I'd start either with Blood Meridian or All the pretty horses, if I were you.
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Jan 24, 2014 07:54
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mdemone posted:"The crimes of the moonlight melonmounter followed him as crimes will." "Somebody's been loving my watermelons."
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Jan 24, 2014 14:33
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"He's drat near screwed the whole patch!" I love Suttree. I want to marry the book.
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Jan 24, 2014 14:39
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Edit: gently caress it, I posted this last year, here it is again: mdemone fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Jan 24, 2014 |
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Jan 24, 2014 14:47
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Yeah I think Blood Meridian is the more tightly written book but feel Suttree is McCarthy's magnum opus. poo poo's excellent.
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Jan 24, 2014 23:02
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Earlier in the thread somebody was asking about the Spanish that's McCarthy uses. I'm about a third of the way through Blood Meridian (for the first time, I'm loving it), and while I was probably picking up enough of what was being said, I decided to install a Spanish to English dictionary as the default on my Kindle, so I could mouse over some the words I wasn't sure about to get an idea of what was going. Just a thought for anybody else who might find that useful.
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Jan 25, 2014 00:14
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So I was reading this book on King Leopold II's colonisation of the Congo - it's a really great book by the way - and I saw some passages which struck me as reminiscent of Blood Meridian:King Leopold's Ghost, pp. 147-148 posted:... [Joseph] Conrad's white men go about their rape of the [Congo] in the belief that they are uplifting the natives, bringing civilization, serving "the noble cause". King Leopold's Ghost, pp. 193 posted:... Rebellious [native] Budjas had killed thirty [colonising] soldiers, and several punitive expeditions were sent against them. Canisius and two other white officers led one, accompanied by a force of fifty black troops and thirty porters. The column marched into villages abandoned by the fleeing Budjas and left scorched earth in its wake. "As our party moved through village after village. ... A party of men had been detailed with torches to fire every hut. ... As we progressed, a line of smoke hung over the jungle for many miles, announcing to the natives far and wide that civilization was dawning." ...
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Jan 28, 2014 23:33
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Just got informed by a random Youtube link that James Franco has directed a Child of God adaptation that should be coming out soon. The teaser trailer is just Ballard looking at the camera for 30 seconds but I'm kinda hyped for this, even if Franco doesn't look anything like I pictured Ballard in my head. Oh well.
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Jan 31, 2014 12:47
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Who is it that has the rights to Blood Meridian now? I thought I'd heard Franco was aiming for that one. Actually I think it would work better as an animated film so you could get the Judge right.
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Jan 31, 2014 14:30
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Illinois Smith posted:Just got informed by a random Youtube link that James Franco has directed a Child of God adaptation that should be coming out soon. The teaser trailer is just Ballard looking at the camera for 30 seconds but I'm kinda hyped for this, even if Franco doesn't look anything like I pictured Ballard in my head. Oh well. Franco doesn't play Lester Ballard, he's played by Scott Haze. Oh poo poo there's a full trailer now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KnbqSf9eWE E: What an awful trailer, but it looks like it doesn't deviate from the plot. If it has the atmosphere from the book, it'll be great. Carthag Tuek fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Jan 31, 2014 |
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Jan 31, 2014 18:36
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mdemone posted:Who is it that has the rights to Blood Meridian now? I thought I'd heard Franco was aiming for that one. Actually I think it would work better as an animated film so you could get the Judge right. I think Tommy Lee Jones actually. God I hope Franco has nothing to do with it. He's kinda poo poo.
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Feb 1, 2014 00:44
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Frostwerks posted:I think Tommy Lee Jones actually. God I hope Franco has nothing to do with it. He's kinda poo poo. Eh, he wouldn't be bad as the Kid, because it's probably the smallest speaking part among the main actors.
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Feb 1, 2014 01:07
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You're kidding right? There is no way he looks youthful enough.
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Feb 1, 2014 04:22
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mdemone posted:Eh, he wouldn't be bad as the Kid, because it's probably the smallest speaking part among the main actors. Yeah that doesn't make any sense...
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Feb 1, 2014 05:51
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Snapchat A Titty posted:Franco doesn't play Lester Ballard, he's played by Scott Haze. mdemone posted:Eh, he wouldn't be bad as the Kid
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Feb 1, 2014 13:43
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Frostwerks posted:You're kidding right? There is no way he looks youthful enough. Yeah I was mostly joking. Didn't really think it through; haven't seen much of Franco's work in the last several years.
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Feb 1, 2014 14:24
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