cormac mccarthy

i've just read:

- the road

- all the pretty horses

- the crossing

- cities of the plain

- no country for old men

- blood meridian

in that order and liked (some much more than others) them all.

i was wondering which of his to read next but there isnt much left:

- The Orchard Keeper

- Outer Dark

- Child of God

- Suttree

i'm thinking child of god. recommendations?

which was your favourite? and why was cities of the plain so bad?

also based on the fact i like him any recommendations on where to go next authorwise

I've only read The Road and Blood Meridian, but they were immensely enjoyable and powerful novels. For what it's worth, Child of God is next on my list too.

I'd have to say I preferred The Road to Blood Meridian. I think freeing it from the constraints of history just made it that much more creative and imaginative. They're different novels though, despite the similarity in tone and mood. B.M. focused more on the characterisation I suppose, especially the judge, whereas The Road seemed to focus more generally on human nature. Anyway, great great novels. Was it you in the Now Reading thread talking about the characterisation in B.M.? I was thinking after that post about the character of the kid and why he's so loosely sketched compared to the other characters. The obvious answer is to make him easier to empathise with, or to portray him as a kind of contemporary "everyman"... any thoughts?

I should add that I read The Road in one sitting, and then read it again. It's one of the best novels by anybody in the past few years and everyone should read it if they haven't.

And just to derail this thread before anyone else even has a chance to reply, has anybody read The Kindly Ones yet? Sounds like it could be McCarthy-ish, but everything I've read is so mixed that I'm not sure I want to make the effort for a 1000-page hardback just yet.

i've read The Road & The crossing while enjoying Earth latest albums : :heart:

The Road is one of the best novel i've read. what i really like is how simple & straigh it is. its bible like in a way.

I need a new book to read, I'm gonna check this dude out.

  Iain C said:

I'd have to say I preferred The Road to Blood Meridian. I think freeing it from the constraints of history just made it that much more creative and imaginative. They're different novels though, despite the similarity in tone and mood. B.M. focused more on the characterisation I suppose, especially the judge, whereas The Road seemed to focus more generally on human nature. Anyway, great great novels. Was it you in the Now Reading thread talking about the characterisation in B.M.? I was thinking after that post about the character of the kid and why he's so loosely sketched compared to the other characters. The obvious answer is to make him easier to empathise with, or to portray him as a kind of contemporary "everyman"... any thoughts?

yeah that was me. i think you're could be right about the kid. the book want really about him it was just through his eyes.

definitely very different novels but also there are the similarities which all his books seem to have which is the wandering lost aspect. the road is like a condensed version of his usual story of the journey without all the flowery prose and meetings with interesting people.

suttree is his best novel, read that. the other ones you listed are all books you can afford not to read. in fact his early faulkner phase borders on unreadable.

Ive read All the pretty horseys and no country. Two very different novels, but I liked them both. Im not really jumping at reading anything else of his though zaphs recommendation might be worth considering. But probably not

  zaphod said:

suttree is his best novel, read that.

big yes

comic macmic

ok i'm ordering suttree

my wife gets sick of me asking her to translate the spanish parts in his books, when she not around i miss lots of whats going on

vs. zaphod, i've come to like his earlier phase much more than his later phase (except for suttree, which i guess is technically later phase, and is his best novel). and i have no idea what happened in 'cities of the plain,' especially the epilogue-ish thing at the end, wtf. also 'the sunset limited' was absolute shit. everything else by him, though,

oh also, as for where to go next author-wise, there isn't really anyone currently living who writes like mccarthy (dead people would include melville, faulkner, maybe sort of beckett?). so i guess i'd have to recommend those people.

hmm, i absolutely hated outer dark. suttree stands on its own. probably his only novel that has moments of real humor in it. i think he's pretty full of himself though...kind of fallen out with all of his work with the exception of suttree and the crossing. i read an interview with him where he said something along the lines of "the only writers that matter are the ones that wrote about death". such a ridiculous attitude to take.

the road is ok but his whole james joyce combiningwords, no punctuation gimmick is distracting. his novels are relentlessly gloomy and he cannot write female characters at all.

  Quote

his novels are relentlessly gloomy and he cannot write female characters at all.

i can usually forgive lapses in content for atmosphere/formal aspects (which probably explains why i like kubrick or 'the new world' or any number of other things). i don't mind the no punctuation thing so much ...

but okay, really, 'outer dark' was incredible! it's like reading some sort of dark myth, this palpable overwhelming thing, and economically written; i was very affected by it ... and there were so many great lines (like 'green calyx' etc. at roughly page 140).

and yeah, the nyrb interview is ridiculous, he seems to dismiss 50% of major world authors, and is kind of a goofball. but, his writing ...

i just think his books tend to be very overwritten even when they're barely breaking 300 pages. outer dark felt the same as blood meridian, to me. overwritten and so incredibly serious. i know he's trying to communicate some kind of mythic story but i just get the feeling that he thinks his writing is incredible, and then so many people go on about how "no one alive" is writing like mccarthy...i dunno, i guess it's that his writing has no application to my life because it's presenting such a narrow world view, this world of violence and death and basically nothing else. that gets boring after one or two novels.

zaphod can we be gay dads and raise a child together?

quit the whores and i'm all yours

I've read blood meridian, the road, outer dark and lost interest halfway through suttree.

hey, wait, i want to be a gay dad!

didn't want to make a whole thread for this but the trailer for the road is out:

http://movies.yahoo.com/premieres/13468916/standardformat/

it's obviously being marketed as an action movie (the trailer is basically the i am legend trailer complete with the text about a schedule and then the break with "hide"). i really think there's just an algorithm for film trailers, like a computer just runs the raw footage through and comes up with one of maybe three trailers based on what kind of movie they want to market it as. i actually can't believe they'd shit all over what might be a good film with a trailer this bad.

looks like mad max on ambien

  zaphod said:

didn't want to make a whole thread for this but the trailer for the road is out:

 

http://movies.yahoo.com/premieres/13468916/standardformat/

 

it's obviously being marketed as an action movie (the trailer is basically the i am legend trailer complete with the text about a schedule and then the break with "hide"). i really think there's just an algorithm for film trailers, like a computer just runs the raw footage through and comes up with one of maybe three trailers based on what kind of movie they want to market it as. i actually can't believe they'd shit all over what might be a good film with a trailer this bad.

I bought the road a couple days ago. Im going to read it before seeing the movie.

stumbled across this thread by accident. resurrection rite beginning now:

i've read The Road and the Borders Trilogy, i'm thinking Blood Meridian next. i see Suttree getting some love too, may consider that. i saw the better part of The Road movie, it seemed well done, and certainly got the tone pretty well. haven't seen No Country for Old Men, and All the Pretty Horses looked like a shitty romance adaptation of the book (not that i loved the book particularly). is he still working on new stuff? i know he's pretty private, and certainly getting old, but i'm curious where he would go next after The Road and with what i know of the content of his previous novels.

am i only one that LOVES The Crossing? i've re-read parts of it and am just enthralled with it.

also, any good resource for the spanish translations online? i mean, yeah, i could enter the text into google, but that'd take forever.

no i love the crossing. i was a little hard on him in this thread. i fucking love that book. i know pbn loves it too.

I loved reading The Road, and No Country For Old Men, was a great movie (I'm told it stayed very true to the book)... I've been meaning to read Blood Meridian at somepoint but I've got a lot of other books I'm in the middle of to finish first, I tend to slowly read multiple books at once.