[j9461701]

> McCarthy shares none of these inclinations. His characters ride aimlessly through the desert and kill for what seems like no reason at all. Blood Meridian is a book that reflects a particular moment in history, but his characters have no sense of that history, are otherwise immune to time, and seem oblivious to the forces ordering their world.

This is my biggest issue with all McCarthy's works. They feel like pointless exercises in sadism and cruelty, where the forces of evil are literally superhumanly powerful (like the judge) and nihilistic misanthropy is the only sensible philosophy.

But, in the novel's defense, I grew up after the myth of the west was dead. I have only ever thought the frontier was a miserable, lawless place full of bandits. So perhaps if the novel's goal was to 'bust the western myth', that's why it failed to engage me in any way except utter disgust.

[freddie_mercury]

My biggest complaint about Blood Meridian is it throws all this graphic violence in your face and then has typical American squeamishness about sex. It felt like the inability to depict sex undermined whatever point it was trying to make with graphic depictions of violence. Compare, here is the single sex scene in the book which is "fade to black" blink and you missed it:

I seen you right away, she said. I always pick the one I want.

She led him through a door where an old Mexican woman was handing out towels and candles and they ascended like refugees of some sordid disaster the darkened plankboard stairwell to the upper rooms.

Lying in the little cubicle with his trousers about his knees he watched her. He watched her take up her clothes and don them and he watched her hold the candle to the mirror and study her face there. She turned and looked at him.

Let's go, she said. I got to go.

[robertlagrant]

That doesn't seem squeamish. I think many writers of that era viewed violence as bad, and sex as private. You may disagree with them on that point, of course.

[thebooktocome]

The text is painfully awkward, not McCarthy at his best.

1985 isn't usually considered a locus of Victorian attitudes toward sex, at least in the United States. The Hayes code was abolished in 1968. The Miller test was established in the late seventies, reducing publisher risk for content that would have been considered pornographic a decade or two earlier.

Anxiety about sex—and particularly homosexual sex—didn't significantly rise again until the early 2000s, around the time Lawrence v. Texas was decided. The Puritans have been loudly agitating for blanket censorship ever since.

[robertlagrant]

I'm not talking about Victorian attitudes in particular. Sex is often considered private, even today. I'm pointing to a resolution of the apparently irony of describing violence but not sex.

[armitron]

There is a strong philosophical message in the works of McCarthy, but it's not explicit, you have to synthesize it. If you read his best works being totally oblivious to what he's really saying, then they'll feel like pointless exercises in sadism and cruelty.

Blood Meridian is perhaps the easiest of his works to understand in that regard, since he's as far from deliberate occultation as he can possibly be. The philosophy in that book reaches out and punches you in the face.

[ajcp]

-> If you read his best works being totally oblivious to what he's really saying

If you have to be briefed on what an author is "really saying" outside of the story conveying it, what's the point?

If you have to explain the joke it's not funny.

[beaned]

One theme seems like it's not that hard to distill. That aimless young men with no prospects and no philosophy are more inclined to participate in destruction, and end up destructed.

We have English literature classes for the very purpose of finding and discussing these and other themes. The point of Shakespeare, Dickens, and Orwell aren't always immediately understood to some readers, even if they sense that there's something to be taken from what they're reading.

[pringk02]

Being told something makes less of an impression than figuring it out. When an author explicitly states the theme of their work, there is nothing to think about or consider. Personally, I much prefer stuff that makes me do some of the legwork myself.

[beaned]

Yeah, this is a huge difference in, for example, 2 of Ayn Rand's books. The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. The first is a simpler story with fewer characters, and though their dialogue obviously matters, much of the message happens through their actions. The same is true for Atlas Shrugged, but it contains many more monologues that are really the author expressing her philosophy explicitly in words, and the story around them is much more just providing context. Both great (or terrible, if you hate her) books, but The Fountainhead is much more poetic for this reason.

[cratermoon]

> If you have to be briefed on what an author is "really saying" outside of the story conveying it, what's the point?

It's not about having it explained to the reader in a briefing. A sophisticated reader comes to a book with the cultural, literary, and historical understanding in which the themes of the book are in play. Understanding of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet at age 12-14, where it's commonly taught in the US, is pretty superficial. Studying it as an adult sheds light on subtle threads woven through story. What exactly are Friar Laurence's motivations in helping Romeo and Juliet? At the end, after he confesses his role, why does Prince Escalus say, "We have still known thee for a holy man"?

[MikeBVaughn]

> If you have to be briefed on what an author is "really saying" outside of the story conveying it, what's the point?

What armitron said was, "it's not explicit, you have to synthesize it." The verb 'synthesize' implies the exact opposite of what you've construed them as saying.

[Rodeoclash]

Try the books from the Border Trilogy or Suttree. They're very different to Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men.

[HEmanZ]

Also now “The Passenger”, it strikes me as a lot like Suttree and is a surreal experience to read.

If you’re crazy, you can also try “Stela Maris”. just be warned it’s not a story, it’s a philosophy book that doesn’t even try to pretend it’s a story. I enjoyed it but wouldn’t recommend it to most people I know.

[rgrieselhuber]

This book made a lot more sense to me when it was explained as a Gnostic fable and the Judge as the Archon.

[armitron]

I once read someone's dissertation on that very theme (maybe we're both referring to the same source). Even though there are some bits that one can make fit, it is laughable to think that a Gnostic fable is THE interpretation of a book that proclaims "War is God" and screams determinism every chance it gets.

[WeylandYutani]

Every territory wanted to become a US state as soon as possible. I really don't understand how this idea formed that everyone in the wild west was an anarchist.

In fact I think people back then were just like people today: they wanted to lead orderly peaceful lives under the rule of law. But that would make for incredibly boring books.

[brenainn]

>This is my biggest issue with all McCarthy's works. They feel like pointless exercises in sadism and cruelty, where the forces of evil are literally superhumanly powerful (like the judge) and nihilistic misanthropy is the only sensible philosophy.

I think Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men are like this, and The Road to a lesser extent (the evil is mortal men, it's just there's a lot of them). As others have mentioned, not all his books are like that. Suttree is downright funny at times.

I've always thought Cormac McCarthy has a great fear of evil and war and those bleak stories are his expression of it. Humans are in a downward spiraling race of shedding their humanity to be capable of greater acts violence so that no violence could be done against them. And those that don't engage in that are eventually overcome, like Llewellyn Moss in No Country For Old Men - someone capable of handling themselves, but was never able or willing to be so ruthless. It's why ironically The Road, grim and miserable, is one of his most hopeful books - the boy lives and they remain "the good guys". Blood Meridian certainly the most hopeless, and possibly a reflection how he was feeling about these fears at the time.

I'm not a literature person but that's my take on those.

Consider the Border Trilogy if you ever want to give him another chance. Blood Meridian is an anti-western, but the Border Trilogy looks at the frontier lifestyle from a more humanist perspective and deeply mourns the loss of it.

[aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA]

Have you read _All the Pretty Horses_?