NP:Blood Meridian

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Thanks for the feedback.  You've all convinced me to stick with it.  The book I'd read previous to this was McTeague, by Frank Norris.  Actually, Blood Meridian reminds me a little of the final mining/desert sequences of McTeague.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Ya Sam <takoitov at hotmail.com>
>Sent: Aug 3, 2006 2:46 PM
>To: tyronemullet at hotmail.com, pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: NP:Blood Meridian
>
>Maybe I'm a bit blase in terms of violence (i.e. in fiction), but this novel 
>did not seem to me extremely violent. I don't think there is anything that 
>can beat documentary accounts of real violence, at least that's the way with 
>me. Maybe it was Harold Bloom's harping about how bloody and unbearably 
>violent it was on BookTV.org (I wonder if that in-depth 2 hour feature about 
>him is still available online) that I had expected something way beyond any 
>reasonable boundaries, something similar to the way I felt first watching 
>Pasolini's 'Salo'. Apart from that, the language of Cormac McCarthy is a 
>treasure trove, I hadn't thought that it was possible to write that way in 
>Enlglish before reading Blood Meridian I think I will get to Suttree 
>someday, as the imagery he bombards you on the first pages promise a lot, 
>macabre and beautiful at the same time:
>
>'A world beyond all fantasy, malevolent and tactile and dissociate, the 
>blown lightbulbs like shorn polyps semitranslucent and skullcolored bobbing 
>blindly down and spectral eyes of oil and now and again the beached and 
>stinking forms of foetal humans bloated like young birds mooneyed and bluish 
>or stale gray.  /.../ The audience sits webbed in dust. Within the gutted 
>sockets of the interlocutor's skull a spider sleeps and the jointed ruins of 
>the hanged fool dangle from the flies, bone pendulum in motley.'
>(Suttree, Picador, 4-5)
>
>
>
>>From: "Steve Maas" <tyronemullet at hotmail.com>
>>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>>Subject: Re: NP:Blood Meridian
>>Date: Thu, 03 Aug 2006 11:07:52 -0700
>>
>>It's one of the few books that I read periodically. McCarthy's sublime 
>>writing combined with the horrible brutality of these vicious thugs 
>>combined with the musings on the nature of humanity is stunning. The judge 
>>is a character unlike any I have encountered in nature or in real life 
>>(thank god for that) and Glanton and the kid an others are memorable too. 
>>It's my 2nd most favorite book.
>>
>>So, uh -- yeah, I'd say keep going....
>>
>>Though I have no doubt you're right that Deadwood is much more 
>>pop-culturally relevant, if that's what you're looking for...
>>
>>Steve Maas
>>
>>---------------------------
>>Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2006 13:27:02 -0400 (EDT)
>>From: kelber at mindspring.com
>>Subject: NP:Blood Meridian
>>
>>I'm about a quarter of the way through Blood Meridian (just past the 
>>massacre by
>>the Indians in Mexico sequence).  I know a lot of the people on this list 
>>have
>>read it.  Question:  Is it worth finishing?  I get the whole history- of- 
>>the-
>>West-as- bloody- wasteland thing, but is there going to be any real 
>>character or
>>plot development from here?  Is there anything this book conveys that isn't
>>conveyed by the show Deadwood in a much more entertaining/pop culture way?  
>>I
>>ask, because I'm kind of depressed, and the book's a real downer to plow
>>through.
>>
>>Laura
>>
>>
>
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