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connor wrote:I'm a good ways into Blood Meridian and while it's interesting, his prose style is a little disconcerting. It's just very obtuse to the point at which it kind of blocks out the reader. I dunno, maybe I shouldn't have read "A Reader's Manifesto" beforehand.

A violent as all fuck, gritty Texas western: this is the kind of story I want to like very much. I mean, eyeball-gouging is always entertaining.

Possibly the best book of my lifetime, with Suttree right up there.

The fans/foes of this book I’ve encountered are committed and unshakeable in their resolve. I like that.

Being on the junkie side of the fence, and having read it many times, I gotta encourage reading it again once you’re done. The prose was a distraction first time out, and now it floors me.

I'm jealous; you’re about to encounter more fine wisdom from the judge.

connor wrote:I'm a good ways into Blood Meridian and while it's interesting, his prose style is a little disconcerting. It's just very obtuse to the point at which it kind of blocks out the reader.

I have to take breaks from his style, because it gets deep into me and I have to let it ferment for a long while. His writing makes me dream differently Definitely heady, and to me it's surreal.

You may find Sutree a bit more involving. The main character is easy to fall in with from the beginning. It's one of the best starts to a story I've read.

The Faulkner of our lifetime. I don't believe he has the depth of Faulkner, but his dexterity of prose and intimacy with place are similar. I admit, his syntax and diction got a bit florid in the Border Trilogy, but I still think All The Pretty Horses is among his finest.

Blood Meridian is one of the finest books I've ever read, fer sure.
I read a while back Ridley Scott had the rights to make it into a movie. I say NO, NO, NO!

Sam Peckinpah is dead so i not sure who else should be granted permission. Maybe Eastwood after we've spiked his Protein shake with mescalin and locked him in a Guantanamo style cage for eight hours.

I have avoided McCarthy's other stuff as I don't want to be let down (don't see how you can go further than Blood Meridian without turning into either William Burroughs or James Joyce and none of his other stuff (after a glance) seems to go in that direction) but after so many of you lot are putting it next to Sutree I will check that out.

Hey, for any of you in Chicago, there's a new play by Cormac McCarthy running at the garage theater at Steppenwolf starting tomorrow night.

I read No Country for Old Men a few months back - fast-moving thriller in the Jim Thompson style for the most part, and (unlike when Faulkner wrote suspense) his semi-convoluted style adds to the suspense and the unpredictablity. The main set-up scene near the beginning of the book is just perfect and scary. The Coen Bros. are turning this one into a movie - it's worth reading first.

Flaneur wrote:I read No Country for Old Men a few months back - fast-moving thriller in the Jim Thompson style for the most part, and (unlike when Faulkner wrote suspense) his semi-convoluted style adds to the suspense and the unpredictablity. The main set-up scene near the beginning of the book is just perfect and scary. The Coen Bros. are turning this one into a movie - it's worth reading first.

I just started this book yesterday morning. So far it's really good.

Started Blood Meridian today.

I want to buy this guy a " key for his typewriter.

Eye gouging = not crap.

It's cool to see people reading Blood Meridian. It was assigned reading for a college course I took, and I liked it so much, I read all the other books he had written at the time.

My band recorded a demo for a song about the protagonist in Child of God, but we scrapped it.

Has anyone read The Road yet? I've heard mixed reviews but I'm counting on it being amazing.

same wrote:Has anyone read The Road yet? I've heard mixed reviews but I'm counting on it being amazing.

A few of us have.

Last time I posted on here regarding Blood Meridian, I was halfway through and uncertain as to how I felt. These days, I think it's probably my all-time favorite novel (up there with Lolita, The Enormous Room, As I Lay Dying and Moby-Dick). Read it twice. Some of that crazy shit just won't leave my mind (and I don't want it to). I'll chalk it up to McCarthy's prose which has a way of ingraining (or I suppose, more appropriately, "embalming") particular images in my brain.

Oh, and 120 pages into Suttree. Loving it.

I'll finish the Border trilogy one of these days.