i found it embarrassing desu. the mystifying rants were meaningless and the acts of violence were cheap thrills that broke up the boring voyages. it all felt grimdark unlike more inventive hellish stuff like miss lonelyhearts, naked lunch or mad god.the faux old timer prose was cringy and the familiarity that comes with antiquity clashed with the ongoing intent of rendering everything alien. when ishmael does it more playfully in moby dick with his hypos under the rug it works but it felt really childish and insistent here.that forced drama in the narration also clashed with rendering the characters dummies/rag dolls/marionettes/scarecrows. something colder and more detached would have worked better for this, with even some perspective distance like keeping the dialogue indirect as its done occasionally. but the chapter bullet points were genius and there were some good similes. the real life story it's based on seems extremely interesting and im still curious about what the common points of discourse around blood meridian are, beyond what happened to the kid. like what do people make of the epilogue, or the dancing monologue, or the missing girls, or the intro being from the bluest eye?
here is my review of bloodmeridian(final countdown intro plays)bloodmeme ugh, this book was written by corncob tortillas YeCarthy.I could blame 4chan for making me read this, but I have no one to blame but myself. I wondered what all the memes were about and gave it a shot.what I found out was, it's a meme for a reason.it's a book about riding horses. it's about spitting. maybe occasionally killing some injins and taking their hair. then it's about getting wasted and partying.3 quartets of the book is just about scenery and riding horses. they rode on and on and on and spat and ate some tortillas and spat and rode on and said ye.corncob describes a lot of nice Vistas that I can't imagine because I'm not a pleb. so basically I could have skipped to the last 70 pages or so when the unkillable outlaw band somehow gets ambushed and all killed. yay it's not boring anymore. blah blah skip to a few years later. oh yeah the judge. he's some guy that's all smart and bad and stuff. well him and some kid meet up again. this is where corncob tortillas YeCarthy let's you chose the ending. it's like a puck your own adventure. wtf happened. who knows. this is what I think happened. I fucking hope you read this book or this review isn't for you. well some shit goes down with a bear and some girl and I think the kid rapes the girl, fuck I don't even know I wasn't really paying attention. well the judge don't like that to much and he challenges the kid to a game of blackjack. the kid bets all his chips on red and loses. he gets pretty pissed so he flips the chess board and pieces go flying everywhere and one actually hits the judge. well the judge he don't like that to much. he stands up and yells habeeb it and socks the kid right in his keister. the kid yells out twinkiehouse and the judge pulls down the kids pants and sticks his flaccid penor in the kids bum. the judge thinks of Margaret thatcher naked and gets a huge boner. like a 6 foot boner and the kid explodes. that's when some dude walks in and is all like "woah fuck this shit I'm out of here".then there's some blurb about some other shit on the last page that flew over my head cuz I'm retard.so yeah if you like riding horses and actually subvocalize and picture shit in your head this book might be for you. I thought it was a right snore fest. fuck you /lit for memeing into reading this. I got tortilla'd and I'm a stupid corncobber fuck
>bullet points were geniusI know this is mainly bait to coax some Asperger-laden recluse out of his slumber, but this is indicative of the zoomer mindset. Get to the point point point or I’ll scroll to find something else. Flash fiction is the future.
>>24744873>something colder and more detached would have worked better for thisWhat book did you read? This is Blood meridian to a tee. The narrator is not emotionally invested in the characters at all. The characterization is as utilitarian and distanced as can be.>the faux old timer prose was cringy and the familiarity that comes with antiquity clashed with the ongoing intent of rendering everything alien. when ishmael does it more playfully in moby dick with his hypos under the rug it works but it felt really childish and insistent hereTwo completely different brands of antiquarianisms. Mccarthy's language in BM is alien nevertheless. The clashing latinisms of antiquarian diction embedded in a paratactic style does make the narrator sound alien. Whether it is your taste or no is subjective but you are seem to be contradicting yourself there.
McCarthy managed to make ultraviolence boring.
>>24744915>The narrator is not emotionally invested in the characters at all.not the characters but the air of profundity and grandiosity>he passed and so passed all into the problematical destruction of darkness.>how these things end. in confusion and curses and blood.>for each fire is all fires, the first fire and the last fire to be.>the greater void seemed to swallow up his soul>all history present in that visage, the child the father of the man.personally rolled my eyes at stuff like this. seemed imitative, local, some of it emotive, and desperate to be taken seriously. a particular offender was>cancer, virgo, leo raced the ecliptic down the southern night and to the north the constellation of casiopeia burned like a witch's signature on the black face of the firmament.where the "constellation of" is only there to sound archaic, since he was already talking about constellations.>in a paratactic styleit was definitely more syntactic than paratactic for most of it.>>24744898its a neat structural trick in a book where destiny is a major theme. also they barely felt like teasers, where learning what the points referred to can be more interesting than the point itself.also i did appreciate the night of the ball and the first apache ambush a lot. the first few chapters were very memorable and i felt more mixed on the book until the judge's speeches.also what was the deal with the black jackson joining the magicians for a show?
>>24745011>seemed imitative, local, some of it emotive, and desperate to be taken seriously. a particular offender wasThese gradiose exclamations are a mainstay in gothic fiction and they are sprinkled rather thinly across the book, considering how descriptive the whole thing is. Your example doesn't fit with the others and won't even stick out as something particularly Mccarthyesque. Your problems seem vague to me, and you don't seem to have a good grasp of what and what is not archaic. That's not archaic in the slightest.>it was definitely more syntactic than paratactic for most of it.Please google what paratactic means.
>>24745038those arent examples of archaicness but the problems i cited.>Please google what paratactic means.thought you were using it in the sense ofthe book definitely has more long sentences with conjunctions than not. go to a random page.
>>24745072What are you even saying?
>>24744949ThisI was led to believe it would be harrowing descriptions and depraved corpse fuckingIts no more violent than a clinical autopsy report and only two offhand remarks alluding to necrophiliaLegion of Horribles is still an amazing line and the volcano blackpowder scene was kino
The scene with the dancing bear that started dancing harder after being shot was the most horrifying part of the book.
>>24744949>McCarthy managed to make ultraviolence boring.In a way, that's sort of the point of the book, no? Being exposed to so much gore and viscera and acts of cruelty that you get desensitized to it. Or I think that's what the intent was, but for anyone who grew up on the internet in the 2000's it should be blasé.
>>24745075sorry forgot to delete a part. im saying i didnt cite the examples i did because they were archaic (aside from the last), and that the book isnt generally paratactic. pick a random sentence and it will more likely be a long one with conjunctions.my problem isnt that vague. the book was trying to be deep and dark but i felt like it only managed to be trying. that gothic grandiosity has the opposite effect of making things feel like a funhouse ride, which works for poe, but mccarthy was trying to pull off something much closer to a good man is hard to find.
Reading "Books are made out of Books" recently and here are the confirmed references made in the margins of McCarthys drafts for Blood Meridian (from the CM archives/Wittliff Collection):Chapter 7. Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West153 Beowulf (ca. eighth century) [See also Suttree]155 Boehme, Jacob (1575–1624) [See also Eugen Herrigel in this chapter]156 Céline, Louis- Ferdinand (1894–1961)162 Chaucer, Geoffrey (1343–1400)163 Collinson, Frank (1855–1943)164 Conrad, Joseph (1857–1924)164 Dillard, Annie (b. 1945)166 Dobie, J. Frank (1888–1964)169 Doughty, Charles Montagu (1843–1926)172 Durant, Will (1885–1981)173 Fraser, Julius Thomas (1923–2010)175 Gard, Wayne (1899–1986)179 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749–1832)179 Heller, Joseph (1923–1999)181 Heraclitus (ca. 535– ca. 475 BCE) [See also Xenophanes in Suttree]183tABLe of contentsxi Herrigel, Eugen (1884–1955) [See also Jacob Boehme in this chapter]185 James, William (1842–1910)187 Kierkegaard, Søren (1813–1855)190 Kinnell, Galway (1927–2014)195 Krutch, Joseph Wood (1893–1970)196 McGinniss, Joe (1942–2014)198 Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900)200 O’Brien, Tim (b. 1946)203 O’Connor, Mary Flannery (1925–1964)204 Pirsig, Robert M. (1928–2017) [See also The Road]206 Salinger, J. D. (Jerome David) (1919–2010)206 Shakespeare, William (1564–1616) [See also Suttree and The Road]208 Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950)208 Tolstoy, Leo (1828–1910)209 Valéry, Paul (1871–1945)211 Whitehead, Alfred North (1861–1947)214 Wolfe, Tom (b. 1931)216
>>24745128>and that the book isnt generally paratactic. pick a random sentence and it will more likely be a long one with conjunctions.Apparently you can't google either.>the book was trying to be deep and dark but i felt like it only managed to be trying. that gothic grandiosity has the opposite effect of making things feel like a funhouse ride, which works for poe, but mccarthy was trying to pull off something much closer to a good man is hard to findThe book isn't trying to be dark. It's deliberately funny in many places. You have shoehorned it into being something you presume it to be instead of letting be what it is.
>>24745170>Apparently you can't google either.>is a literary technique in writing or speaking that favors short, simple sentences without conjunctions, or sentences coordinated without the use of subordinating conjunctions.>It's deliberately funny in many places.a few places if you're not a psychopath. the overall tone is very self important.
>>24744873who gives a shit
>hey i’m some nobody on an anime forum yet i still manage to take myself way too seriously and have never will never write anything lasting or of any merit but here’s my hot take(down) of this wildly famous successful novel enjoy!
Am I crazy or do a lot of chapters of BM feel like the script of a play?
>>24745228>hey I'm some nobody on an anime forum yet I still manage to take myself way too seriously and have never will never write anything lasting or of any merit and what you posted made me very very upset so there!
I enjoyed Blood Meridian. It has some flaws, but I enjoyed it.
>>24744885First of all why do you choose to write in all lowercase? Apart from when you want to say "YeCarthy" which is I guess is an unfunny meme term for McCarthy you've invented. Also are you saying you are completely incapable of picturing scenery that you read about? And you sincerely think that people that can are the plebs? Oh lord my sides what a fucking moron you are. I bet you can't even rotate a 3D apple in your cretinous little noggin can you? I don't even love BM and think it's far from McCarthy's best and not without its flaws, but come on man this is ridiculous. >inb4 "I was just pretending to be retarded"
>>24745254You’re not crazy. McCarthy is mirroring Dostoyevsky a bit; the “characters” are less people than they are vehicles for driving his vision. Dosto’s characters seem like soap-opera cutouts at times with their histrionic outbursts, but they feel legitimate because they’re being maneuvered by the author to expose something about the human condition. McCarthy is similar: almost as if he’s hijacked the characters of a western novel to use for his own ends, with the judge possibly being something that originated outside of the confines of this story, implanted here by the author to instruct the reader on how to engage with the text.
>>24745201>It's deliberately funny in many places>a few places if you're not a psychopathIf it was dead obvious before, OP is failing to bait. Too desperate to generate disagreement. Instead of engaging, turn this thread to BM discussion.
>>24747389It's not a character study
>>24747406surely im the one being baited, since the one person that did engage with me doesn't want to admit he misused paratactic. i still think the judge's speeches don't hide anything actually profound and the forced grimness and grandiosity renders the book a theme park ride rather than something like "a good man is hard to find" like i said, or even the intentionally more farcical "a distant episode". but no one is answering my earnest BM questions either like why did Jackson join the magicians' show or what the deal is with the epilogue or are the missing girls connected? was it the judge, like the real judge its based on?but maybe>NO HE SAID BAD THINGS ABOUT WELL LIKED BOOK LETS IGNORE HIMsays enough about the intended audience
>>24749374Dumbass, parataxis doesn't mean sentences have to be without conjunctions. Stop taking cues from chatgpt. Parataxis means that clauses are linked without SUBORDINATING conjunctions, such that clauses themselves have no relation to each other. You can use connecting conjunctions like 'and' or 'or' and it's still paratactic. That's how the book is written. Syntactic elements like poetic diction and complex verbiage are also blended together, which is what gives Mccarthy his unique flavor as opposed to, say, Hemingway whose use is much closer to its (parataxis) definition.
>>24748943If you knew what a character study was you would understand the post you’re replying to is agreeing with you. You’re a retard.
>>24750778>Stop taking cues from chatgpt. Parataxis means that clauses are linked without SUBORDINATING conjunctions, such that clauses themselves have no relation to each other. You can use connecting conjunctions like 'and' or 'or' and it's still paratactic.you're making up that part because you know the novel is infamous for endless "and"s. lack of coordinating conjunctions are included in every definition. why didn't you yourself google it?>the placing of clauses or phrases one after another, without words to indicate coordination or subordination>the placing of clauses or phrases one after another without coordinating or subordinating connectives>Speech or writing in which clauses or phrases are placed together without being separated by conjunctions, for example "I came; I saw; I conquered">a situation in which two clauses or phrases are used one after the other without a conjunction (= connecting word) between them to show their relationship to each other>Syntactic elements like poetic diction and complex verbiage are also blended togetherif you are using paratactic in contrast with syntaxis then the "short and simple" part of the former is essential. we really didn't need to go down this path of pedantry but you chose to condescend.
Who would win in a duel: Holden or Sephiroth?
How these things end. In confusion and curses and blood. They drank on and the windblew in the streets and the stars that had been overhead lay low in the west and theseyoung men fell afoul of others and words were said that could not be put right againand in the dawn the kid and the second corporal knelt over the boy from Missouri whohad been named Earl and they spoke his name but he never spoke back. He lay on hisside in the dust of the courtyard. The men were gone, the whores were gone. An oldman swept the clay floor within the cantina. The boy lay with his skull broken in a poolof blood, none knew by whom. A third one came to be with them in the courtyard.It was the Mennonite. A warm wind was blowing and the east held a gray light. Thefowls roosting among the grapevines had begun to stir and call.There is no such joy in the tavern as upon the road thereto, said the Mennonite. Hehad been holding his hat in his hands and now he set it upon his head again andturned and went out the gate.
>>24744873what the fuck does OP even read? Post a better paragraph than this from a fav of yours.“Far out on the desert to the north dustspouts rose wobbling and augered the earth and some said they’d heard of pilgrims borne aloft like dervishes in those mindless coils to be dropped broken and bleeding upon the desert again and there perhaps to watch the thing that had destroyed them lurch onward like some drunken djinn and resolve itself once more into the elements from which it sprang. Out of that whirlwind no voice spoke and the pilgrim lying in his broken bones may cry out and in his anguish he may rage, but rage at what? And if the dried and blackened shell of him is found among the sands by travelers to come yet who can discover the engine of his ruin?
>>24744885>lot of nice Vistas that I can't imagine because I'm not a plebAre you saying that you can't picture descriptions in your head? You think that the ability to do so makes one a pleb? Bizarre way to out yourself as cognitively impaired. >if you like riding horses and actually subvocalize and picture shit in your head Subvocalisation and picturing "shit" in your head are not one and the same. Subvocalisation can improve comprehension and memorisation, but no matter your reading style if you are an intelligent, literate, human being with a functioning imagination you should be able to "picture shit in your head" no matter whether you are reading aloud, subvocalising, or otherwise. You are a bizarre individual, and I don't think reading is for you.
>>24751769ironically i was gonna post something from gordon lish which has cormac in the dedications but couldnt find a pdf. if you want something i think is better ive mentioned four other stories/novels in the thread.>Far out on the desert to the northid actually underlined the first part of that section as good but again its immediately deflated by those phony grand rhetoricals. not only is the intended profundity too naked, and no actual profound wisdom found (which the wisdom literature style implies), but again it clashes with the coldness and dehumanization the rest is going for. the narration asking a rhetorical is too human. its still not the worst case of these in the novel, but it is emblematic of my problems.
>>24744873The Judge didn't really exist and it's just a collective cope mechanism that the gang created in their heads to justify their unhinged actions
This guy read "The Temptation of St Anthony" by Flaubert and "My Confession" by Samuel Chamberlain and then said "hold my beer."
>>24751496Polysyndeton is an example of parataxis. So is Blood meridian's writing style. I don't need to google shit. I already know what they mean. You are hung up on definitions when the context is quite clear.>>24751841>not only is the intended profundity too naked, and no actual profound wisdom found (which the wisdom literature style implies), but again it clashes with the coldness and dehumanization the rest is going for. the narration asking a rhetorical is too human.That's Holden speaking, not the narrator. You are just incapable of seeing the forest for the trees. Blood meridian's narrator is one of the coldest, most distant from the narrative. But you can't seem to comprehend the fact that a purpler delivery does not indicate humanization. Let alone the fact that not all luscious prose is supposed to deliver some hidden wisdom (and it doesn't; in your head every simile is some "clashing profound wisdom" which doesn't hold up in court). You are critiquing the book from a vantage of having observed 20% of it. Nor do I think you really understood much of it.
>>24752277>Polysyndeton is an example of parataxis.apparently not according to the definitions you berated me to look up>That's Holden speaking, not the narrator.indirect speech is still indicated elsewhere. i don't see any indication here.>Let alone the fact that not all luscious prose is supposed to deliver some hidden wisdomyes but mccarthy definitely wanted the air of wisdom literature with that style. and with no wisdom its only the air.>simile is some "clashing profound wisdom"not at all, and i appreciated the creative ones>But you can't seem to comprehend the fact that a purpler delivery does not indicate humanizationwhile i disagree that BM's prose is that way, there is an interesting conversation to be had on this point. though i wish you'd be nicer. the first lines open with an imperative to the audience. there is an undeniable tone of lament in >>24751762. the style wants to elevate this journey into utmost importance the way ishmael does in MD, through whose prose we see him get fleshed out. in BM all i feel is the author really wanting this to be profound, unless you want to argue that the more human parts are somehow mocking and sinister, which i don't feel is made tangible at all.
>>24752126thisI'm glad I'm not the only one interpreting the book like that
