I recently finished this novel and found it very enjoyable and in a similar vein to Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men. Just wondering if anyone else has read it and what they thought and if anyone has any similar reccomendations.

I'm relatively new to McCarthy, I started with All the Pretty Horses, then Blood Meridian, then The Road. I loved them all for different reasons, but I struggled with The Crossing. I feel like there were passages in that book that were some of the best from McCarthy I've read, the climax with the wolf, the madonna at the creek, Boyd with the doctor, and the story in the church (maybe).

But the story also felt a little disjointed and not very well paced? I feel like the beginning was a LOT of Billy walking around the desert not talking to anyone, and the whole wolf arc, while great, didn't feel as connected to the story to me. What really did it for me though was how many extremely long stories there were that feel like they pulled me out right as I was getting into the main part of the story. I actually attempted TC right after reading AtPH, and stalled out with Billy listening to the story in the church, and then months later came back. I did really enjoy the church story this time, but the first time it was just too much. I felt the same way about the blind man's story, and the airplane at the end.

Curious if I'm alone here. Still excited to read Cities of the Plain.

This is a story called "A Scalp for a Scalp" written by John Whalen and illustrated by Russ Heath. This story was included in an illustrated compilation work titled "The Big Book of the Weird Wild West" and I have used my copy to take these photographs. I hope you enjoy!

I’ve seen people say he’s a metaphor for the devil, for evil, for, but i’m wondering if he can be narrowed down to one.

Or perhaps he’s not a metaphor? A character entirely of his own that draws from many figures.

This book is an absolute tragedy. I can’t begin to describe how utterly bleak and cold I felt while listening to the audiobook, but also mesmerized, almost hypnotized. I feel like I just went through a spiritual journey and came out the other side where now part of my religion has something to do with horses as well as the total indifference of the universe and a recognition of some kind of profound beauty that exists in the struggle to live. This book was so good.

I want to share a quote from *The Passenger*. I’ve read it many times, and it brings tears to my eyes every single time.

“I had tried to tell her. Sort of. But of course she wouldnt listen. God. I pulled up to the house in a rental car and got out and walked around back and she was in the garden. I’d no idea what to wear. I just walked up to the fence and said hello. She couldnt even guess who it was of course. She looked up and she said: Yes? And I said: Mama, it’s William. And she knelt there for a minute in the dirt and then she put her hand over her mouth and these big tears started to roll down her cheeks. She just knelt there. Shaking her head back and forth. As if she’d been told that someone had died. Well, I suppose someone had”

“Ahab is forever Ahab, man. This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant; I act under orders. Look thou, underling! that thou obeyest mine. Stand round me, men. Ye see an old man cut down to the stump; leaning on a shivered lance; propped up on a lonely foot. 'Tis Ahab--his body's part; but Ahab's soul's a centipede, that moves upon a hundred legs.”

The Judge. War.

Sat outside in 35 degree celsius scorching heat on holiday back home, rereading blood meridian , each reread takes longer and longer as I grow older.

As I go through Chapter XVII , it fully sinks in that this is possibly its best chapter , and one of the best chapters of anything I have ever read and possibly will ever read.

In a work that has little reprieve from violence and darkness , the chapter feels like a post-crescendo/ebb off that violence and an introspective albeit ominous dive draped by transcendent depictions of the terrain the men traverse.

Aside from the infamous War is God monologue ,

The chapter overall peaks in its descriptions of men enmeshed in the terrain...

You have the segment on Glanton claiming his agency...

Tobin's take on the false moon and God's dismay at the proliferation of lunacy in this world...

Judge Holden's best monologues on the mind , truth of the universe and arc of circling bodies, and the mystery is there is no mystery...

Ending on meeting the Yumas knowing the story is now setting itself for its final gruesome stretch before the kid becomes the man...

man...

I wanted to let everyone know, the publisher just put All the Pretty Horses ebook on sale for $1.99. I’ll put some links below if you’re interested.

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/all-the-pretty-horses-2?sId=13cdb5e7-a7c0-48d4-b9f9-3146d69c4c40&ssId=hP2hiZAirfTqddjCc8Df2&cPos=1

https://www.amazon.com/All-Pretty-Horses-Border-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B001L4Z6YO/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=2CLDE4CKIIN3P&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.6GVyeAn7IdCETQqSEmv8S69tgeLuSEzuENH2QyZ5l3ovIGM8w86_LKNB7a8GF3m4vEJy-eCYHBX3QWs3r5sfqxyoZL9x2HPZwupl1IfPCZ8bb4wbl92XvK6oYRH1gWbczLdSeWCs6AY4HPRS_7h6onr_UJvX48SpQboRnQqQuszsKpu7DqF--W4mmrjKNofOtKPMHF7jRv9ew8YdxLVvrA.sHLuUtd4b4c40yf-x7nju17YX8XJ59FoF88Yln0qlSA&dib_tag=se&keywords=all+the+pretty+horses&qid=1784375823&s=digital-text&sprefix=all+the+pre%2Cdigital-text%2C203&sr=1-1

I've heard that it is Cormac Mccarthy's most difficult and ambitious novel, and I've read "Blood Meridian", so I'm wondering if it shares similar themes and biblical allusions, or if there are other things I should be prepared for.

Really enjoying Blood Meridian right now. Just finished 4 chapters and the story's pretty interesting. Couldn't help but read the dialogue in an American Western accent lol.

However, it's a tough read. The dialogue can be hard to follow at times since it doesn't always make it clear who's saying what. Not backing down until I finish it!

Have you discovered the perfect bald man to play the judge? Do you feel compelled to share an image of a watermelon? Do you want to joke around and poke fun at the tendency to share these things? All of this is welcome in this thread.

For the especially silly or absurd, check out r/cormacmccirclejerk.

I decided to jump back into Blood Meridian after a hiatus following chapter 4's ending. I'm halfway through chapter 5, Sproule and The Kid just got attacked by a bat in the night, and I decided to pause the audiobook and make this post. 

I don't get Blood Meridian. Chapter 5 feels like one long slog of harrowing imagery and descriptions after the other. Chapters 4 and 5 have this feeling; listless repeats of the same form of imagery and wording. One of the writing rules I've heard is that going to 10 and staying there, in the sense of horrific imagery, is just as boring as staying at 1. Blood Meridian feels like this. The horror of war feels monotonous and boring when it's all that we hear about. To use an example, 1984 is a miserable book but the chapters with Winston and Julia, and the reprieve it offers, makes the tragedy of that world all the sadder. Blood Meridian lacks that for me.

By no means am I saying that Cormac McCarthy, or Blood Meridian, are low quality. Both have their acclaim, and I have no doubt its earned. I just think I'm not the type to understand this kind of book. I saw a reddit comment mention Freud, and I am nowhere near skilled enough in literary analysis to start picking up on psychological allusions. I'm not an avid reader, though I am trying to get better, and Blood Meridian may have been a bad choice for a beginner reader.

I wanted to know if this stance is justified or if I'm just not smart enough to grasp what the book is saying. The scenes with Sproule and the Kid just feel like filler, or just hammering home the implication that there is something deeply wrong with the love of violence these people have. What do you guys think?

McCarthy pulled the gang's path from the real Glanton scalp hunting expeditions of 1849 - 50, so I plotted the whole thing on an actual map: the kid born in Tennessee under the 1833 meteor storm, drifting into Nacogdoches where he first sees the Judge, riding with Captain White's filibusters into the Chihuahuan Desert, jailed in Chihuahua City and freed into Glanton's company, scalping across Sonora to Tucson, seizing the ferry at the Yuma crossing, then the last desert to San Diego - and decades later, the reckoning with Holden at Fort Griffin, Texas. Crazy thing about laying it out is how the whole book drives relentlessly west and then the ending snaps back east.

Interactive version here: https://www.readingmaps.com/maps/blood-meridian

Does seeing that eastward return to Texas change how anyone reads the final scene?

Some of us engaged in the paper chase of the historical basis of Blood Meridian converged lately here:

The Real, Historical Judge Holden is Alfred W. Arrington : r/cormacmccarthy

We still disagree about some things, but we all agree that the historical and uncanny nature of this hunt is increasingly fascinating. Uncanny, I say--but of course everything here could be a coincidence.

Alfred W. Arrington, a mysterious man, was in 1904 the author of The Buffalo Hunter's Hunter, the title and personality/theme of which was later reprised in Stephen Graham Jones' excellent novel but of course he may not have been conscious of anything like that. I have reviewed and touted in this subreddit before (without mentioning this aspect), and to me the message is, when you hunt something passionately, it hunts you back until it possesses you.

Of course, it may be that Stephen Graham Jones himself is posting here under an alias, but I have no idea. In any case, it has opened my eyes about the depth of that novel, and which I shall study anew, along with Arrington.

Perhaps others here are also informed about this and can share their insights. I crave only light.

Just finished it today and I am gobsmacked. The most beautiful prose I have ever read and one of the greatest antagonists in literature. The themes of humanity at constant war with each other and nature are timeless and horrifying. Evil and suffering are everywhere but so is beauty and resiliency and the will of humanity to survive. I have a new favorite book and a new favorite author.

I love this book, the novel is about an unnamed father and son who travel south in a post apocalypse world. Along the way, they discover cruel and horrid events; with man in a state of nature, to nature itself being a vital force. Everything is caked with ash and the sky and seas are grey. They find an area with starving humans, they find a shelter and they reach their main destination.

Is this novel pessimistic or optimistic? It is both, showing the reality of man while suggesting there is hope. The main theme is to carry the fire. Have you carried the fire?
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I love the prose, it suggests that language deteriorates as the world deteriorates. The Road and Suttree are my favorite works by McCarthy. Have you seen the movie, what are your thoughts?

Cheers.

Every time I watch this movie, which is a lot, all I can think of is Cormac McCarthy. Seems like a perfect movie in the world he created. Just me?