[everybodyknows]

> continuing autonomous across the naked rock without reference to sun or man or god.

It occurs to me now that this echoes a scene late in Moby Dick in which Ahab smashes his sextant to the deck and declares that henceforth he will navigate by dead reckoning alone, without reference to the sun or stars or like works of God.

[ryanfreeborn]

Ya McCarthy borrows heavily from Melville and Faulkner, which he readily cops to. Judge Holden and Ahab have a lot in common.

[everybodyknows]

Holden is presented as immortal, a figure for the devil in the Christian sense (in No Country For Old Men, the assassin Chigurh approximates this). Moby Dick's white whale is perhaps immortal, though not a devil figure to any modern reader.

Captain Ahab is mortal and goes down with all but one of the crew of the Pequod, like Glanton who dies along with most of his gang at the hands of the Yuma. Both leaders are proud and defiant to the last and are justly killed (though we have to feel first mate Starbuck at least deserved better).

Both Glanton and Ahab are undisputed masters of their respective expeditions, and both leave behind young families at the outset, though for different reasons: Glanton flees the law, Ahab sails voluntarily.

[meigwilym]

Do you have any Faulkner recommendations?

[huthuthike]

My favorite of his is As I Lay Dying. I find it much more readable than The Sound and the Fury. The latter is his most famous, and McCarthy's favorite work by Faulkner. But Faulkner himself said As I Lay Dying was his magnum opus.

[ryanfreeborn]

Yes, exactly what huthuthike said. As I Lay Dying. Sound & Fury is great but a much more challenging read.