u/NopeNopeBlinders

I read Blood Meridian last year. I thought it was a beautifully written disgusting book, worthy of some thought, but Moby Dick it was not.

Being a male past the age where testosterone peaks may have tempered my experience. The violence felt gratuitous, taking away from the obvious writing talent on display.

I do think McCarthy used Moby Dick as a blueprint of sorts, but he distorted it to the point that it has the opposite effect on the reader.

Can we let Moby Dick exist outside of McCarthy’s monster?

His prose is poetry? His people are gods and they are flawed? His world is beauty, there for the taking?

He likes incredibly long sentences, and super short chapters?

How would/do you describe Faulkner to the uninitiated?

I feel like The Hamlet was the most beautifully written, The Town was the most interesting from a character standpoint because of how much we learn, and The Mansion was a powerful narrative that leaves as many questions as answers.

As a trilogy, it’s not the most cohesive thing ever, but I loved it for the wit, the novel circumstances (boys and the cows they love, for example), and the larger than life characters more than anything.

Gavin, V.K., and Chick are phenomenal narrators. I would have loved to hear more from Eula and Linda directly. When I saw the table of contents in The Mansion I thought we would finally get Linda’s thoughts directly in part two, but no dice.

I appreciate Faulkner for his reluctance to feed answers to the reader, but I guess I was hoping for a little more out of this trio of books.

Flem feels like a secondary character in The Mansion, which felt odd. Linda still feels like a mystery. Chick fades oddly out of relevance even while he is narrating. Gavin is like a Don Quixote who actually knows better but refuses to do anything about it and doesn’t change at all.

Yet Mink’s part in The Mansion was one of the most engaging and compelling parts of the whole thing, which is impressive considering how repulsive he is to begin with.

While I was a fan of the trilogy, I was already enamored with Faulkner before I started it. I feel like if you weren’t already a Faulkner fan, and had no prior knowledge of Yoknapatawpha, it could be a very different experience. Maybe in a good way, like it is a beautifully written slice of Gothic Southern life, but the numerous loose ends feel like it would drive the average reader nuts. That may be a function of “The County” being a living and breathing thing, and, like I said, I do appreciate Faulkner’s reluctance to tie things up in a neat bow.

Maybe I want to have my cake and eat it, too. I just thought that after a 1200 page trilogy it would feel more complete.