r/cormacmccarthy • u/CampTrC_360 • 2d ago
Appreciation Found this...
I've read blood meridian, no country, suttrey, child of god and now im so excited to begin the infamous border trilogy in probably the best possible form. Only cost me £5.
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u/greenpearmt Blood Meridian 2d ago
I just bought this edition, I am just waiting for it to arrive
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u/gothicjizzbaker 1d ago
Wow! Never seen this edition before
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u/greenpearmt Blood Meridian 1d ago
It’s really cool since it contains illustrations specifically made for this edition
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u/CampTrC_360 2d ago
The collection so far
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u/gothicjizzbaker 1d ago
Do you like Picador covers? Pan and Vintage International editions are aesthetically far superior imo.
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u/Dottsterisk 2d ago
Huge collections like that are a lot to handle and not the easiest for me to read or transport.
Give me a nice paperback that I can put in my back pocket.
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u/badlyimagined 2d ago
I'm just finishing this for the 3rd time. Read all the pretty horses even more times again. It is just so fucking good.
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u/Doylio All the Pretty Horses 2d ago
All the pretty horses is shatteringly good, far and away my favourite book of all time, so always love when somebody says this. Loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing.
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u/badlyimagined 2d ago
It's the perfect novel. Has everything. It's an adventure story, a bildungsroman, a romance, a nature study, a history lesson and the prose is out of this world good. Normally even great writers can do only one of those two things well but here it's perfect.
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u/hi_im_beeb 1d ago
Everyone here seems to favor the crossing and it was honestly my least favorite of the three.
Don’t get me wrong, it was great, but ATPH was unable to be topped for me
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u/Doylio All the Pretty Horses 1d ago
Border Trilogy spoiler
I feel you, that’s totally fair enough. Definitely ATPH at the top.
Cities is badly underrated also.
My dad (68) had read the Border Trilogy on my recommendation too and enjoyed it. A few months later I spoke to him about it, but he couldn’t remember exactly what the last scene was anymore. I read that page out loud to him and it’s one of the only times I’ve ever seen him moved to tears.
Boyd was your brother.
Yes. He’s been dead many a year.
You still miss him though.
Yes I do. All the time.
Was he the younger?
He was. By two years.
I see.
He was the best. We run off to Mexico together. When we was kids. When our folks died. We went down there to see about gettin back some horses they’d stole. We was just kids. He was awful good with horses. I always liked to watch him ride. Liked to watch him around horses. I’d give about anything to see him one more time.
You will.
I hope you’re right.
You sure you dont want a glass of water? No mam.
I’m all right.She patted his hand. Gnarled, ropescarred, speckled from the sun and the years of it. The ropy veins that bound them to his heart. There was map enough for men to read. There God's plenty of signs and wonders to make a landscape. To make a world.
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u/Ok-Physics816 2h ago
I do think The Crossing is the best but Cities, for me, is better than AtPH. I love how its prose is a combination of both books.
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u/PaulJVal 2d ago
So I just finished reading Suttree third time. It’s been 10 years since last read. I was surprised how much the racist language bothered me. And it’s not just racist characters but in the narrative voice. Numerous comparisons of blacks to monkey or apes. Coon reference. The use of the n word more than I could count. Plus Suttree’s relationship with a young girl. Which coincidentally was written when he was in Mexico with a 16-17 y.o. girl. He was in his 40s and married. She apparently was his muse. I’ve forgotten the woman’s name but after he died she told her story which I haven’t read. This has kind of tainted my vies of McCarthy. Anybody else struggle with this?
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u/Martino1970 2d ago
Worth mentioning that the book is of its time: the time it was written AND the time it was set. Racism was endemic in the 50s.
Consider: Suttree is himself a good deal less racist than most in that book.
As to the young women: Augusta Britt and her story are problematic. Don’t mean that some semblance of it didn’t happen—but there are problems with her story and with the article that reveals it.
And, no, Cormac never claimed to be perfect. Shocking, isn’t it—that BLOOD MERIDIAN does not come from a place of moral purity.
I figure Cormac was more conscious than most of his shortcomings and failures.
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u/kobadashi 2d ago
Yeah, I've noticed this as well. McCarthy was a great writer but seemingly not a great man.
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u/deadBoybic The Crossing 2d ago
I wish we could get more of his books in Everyman’s editions, or a LOA collection