(urth) Blood Meridian - still utterly and completely off topic
Matthew Keeley
matthew.keeley.1 at gmail.com
Sat Sep 23 14:57:08 PDT 2006
I was in a bookstore last night and actually considered buying Blood
Meridian or All the Pretty Horses. I read No Country for Old Men
earlier this year and thought it was great, so I figured I should try
another one of his books. So bleak, yet so persuasive.
By the way, I understand that McCarthy has a new book, The Road,
coming out very shortly. It's about a father and son trying to
survive in a post-apocalyptic world. Advance word on the book seems
good, though I don't think it's getting the same praise as Blood
Meridian or the Border Trilogy (All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing,
and Cities on the Plain).
-Matt
On Sep 23, 2006, at 10:55 AM, Daniel D Jones wrote:
> On Wednesday 02 August 2006 20:19, maru dubshinki wrote:
>> On 8/1/06, don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I've just finished reading Blood Meridian by Cormac
>>> McCarthy and I wish to express that it is one of the
>>> finest modern novels I have ever read, neck and neck
>>> w/ BotNS and Tim Obrien's The Things They Carried. It
>>> is also quite possibly the most violent literary book
>>> ever written. Incredible.
>>>
>>> Don
>>
>> I have to ask, why you think it is so marvelous? I read that just
>> last
>> year, and I remember thinking in incomprehension that the judge was a
>> marvelous character, but that the rest seemed pretty pointless and
>> gratuitious (Harold Bloom's criticism notwithstanding).
>
> Still off topic but these comments intrigued me, and so I purchased
> the book.
> First, I have to agree that it's an excellent novel. I thought the
> kid was
> as interesting as the Judge, albeit in a different manner. You do
> realize
> that the book, while fiction, is heavily based on real events?
> Many of the
> characters, including Glanton and Judge Holden, were real people.
> If you're
> not already conversant with it, you might find the following
> interesting:
>
> http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/HNS/Scalpin/heads.html
>
> In case the URL gets distorted by email:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/gweur
>
> It may make the violence less gratuitious to realize that it's
> reasonably
> historically accurate.
>
> Second, the volume I picked up included Harold Bloom's
> introduction. After
> reading it, I'm tempted to smack him upside the head with Stephen
> King's
> latest novel. Wouldn't you assume that a literary critic would
> realize that
> an introduction is read BEFORE you read the book, and that giving
> away the
> ending of the work in question is probably not a good idea? If
> anyone else
> decides to read the book, you might want to read Bloom's intro as an
> afterward.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
More information about the Urth
mailing list