See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt. He stokes the scullery fire. Outside lie dark turned fields with rags of snow and darker woods beyond that harbor yet a few last wolves. His folk are known for hewers of wood and drawers of water but in truth his father has been a schoolmaster. He lies in drink, he quotes from poets whose names are now lost. The boy crouches by the fire and watches him.
- Cormac McCarthy, in Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West.
I find this book both fascinating and boring. Too much of it reminds me of the long interminable travelogues of The Crossing, which I couldn't even finish. Other parts are riveting action passages, and the character of the Judge fascinates me. His writing alternates between a just-the-facts-ma'am Hemingway prose with bouts of almost biblical descriptions - I'll post one of those some day. Regardless, there's not a hint of humor anywhere in the book. I'm about one-third in and have yet to decide if I like it or not.
7 comments:
So..... Did you like it?
It's the greatest book I've ever read. The manner of the comment should speak to its validity. "Not a hint of humor" as if great literature needs it. Referring to Hemingway prose as if it were negative? Eh.
This is probably the funniest books ever. But it doesn’t have a laughing track. And rightly so.
He found it too boring to finish. What his literary mind, imbued with incredible knowledge of the English language far surpassing that of cormac McCarthy, believed to be run on sentences made him want to watch sports highlights.
Snidely calling the crossing a travelogue makes me think you need to go back to Borders. As someone said, who god forbid you try to engage with if you found blood meridian boring, in the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak; but for that one must have long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks – and those who are addressed, tall and lofty.
I am also here, and would like to cast judgement upon those that preceded me here, in time.
You are all wrong, and none of you is as smart as you think you are.
Don't question me; I shant hear it.
If you never finish it, you can always try my personal favorite:
“The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-
ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur-
nuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later
on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the
offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan,
erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends
an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes:
and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park
where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since dev-
linsfirst loved livvy”.
— Finnegan’s Wake, JJ
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