r/cormacmccarthy

Right now, I'm reading Blood Meridian, and his writing is so different from what I'm used to.

It's also important to mention that I'm Brazilian and I've already read it in Portuguese. The translator did an incredible job with the translation, keeping the soul of the original through his choice of words. But now, I'm reading the original version, and I'm noticing how unusual the McCarthy's writing is.

Is his writing considered weird even for native English speakers? Or is it just difficult because English isn't my first language?

Let me say first, the post title and my overall point is hyperbolic and I think the fact that people are enjoying his work, hell, the fact that people are consuming fiction at all is a beautiful, beautiful thing. It’s infinitely more admirable than most modern hobbies, in my opinion.

This topic’s been rehashed a thousand times (and I’m likely preaching to the choir here. This is more aimed at other areas of the internet), so I apologize for another drop in the ocean…

I wish I was better at ignoring things, but some of the discourse surrounding Cormac’s work makes me scratch my head. And I think it can sometimes even dissuade outsiders that may be weighing trying a book of his.

I think a lot of outsiders view McCarthy through the lens of machismo. Like another incarnation of Hemingway. (though here, we all understand that their writing styles are oceans apart) They see no quotation marks. They hear about the violence. They hear a plot summary. They hear how Blood Meridian is his iconic work and is “THE MOST DISTURBING, BLOODY THING EVER WRITTEN!!!11” This all, in my opinion, mischaracterizes what McCarthy does on the page.

To me, first and foremost, Cormac is a POET. Yes, the plots of his novels are interesting and thematically rich, his characters leap off the page, etc. But what makes him transcendent, at least to me, is the sheer beauty of his prose. Yet it feels like when people are pitching McCarthy to others (or discussing his work generally), it’s mostly about the violence. The plot. About Judge Holden or that Cellar in The Road. And if this sort of discussion gets edgelords into reading, then hell yeah, I’m all for it. But these things don’t really represent Cormac’s work, in my opinion. They’re a teeny slice of a much larger, prose pie.

Honestly, fuck Judge Holden, fuck that Human Farm…have you read the first page of Suttree?! Have you been brought near-to-tears by the description of a sunset?! (again, I’m being hyperbolic) Obviously: Style, plot, character, all intertwine to make a great novel, but what separates McCarthy’s stories, to me, is the poetry with which he tells it. 

That’s why I find a lot of adaptation talk strange. With more plot-forward authors, yeah, adaptations can be awesome. But I don’t think that’s McCarthy.

“They were watching, out there past men's knowing, where stars are drowning and whales ferry their vast souls through the black and seamless sea.”

How the hell are you adapting that to the visual medium? And that is what makes his novels great. But that’s not how swaths of the internet talk about McCarthy. Those lines, of which there are thousands throughout his writing, to me, hold infinitely more weight than a tree full of dead babies. Than Judge Holden's dumb, shiny, bald head.

First of all sorry for any mistakes, English is not my first language and I read the book in Spanish so I'm hopeful I got it right.

It's my first time reading this author and I think I'll be reading more. Blood Meridian has really interesting themes on morality, fate and war.

Something that I found weird is that I got to this book because some YouTuber mentioned this being the most violent book and I've seen many people commenting on how grotesque it is. Especially on good reads I've seen a couple of commenters explaining how every character is unlikeable and you can't root for them in any way.

Don't get me wrong the book is obviously violent but that didn't distract me from what I believe was an amazing message altogether.

Not too ramble too much but I almost never read this book due to its reputation, I'd have missed something very interesting. Do you think this type of opinion comes from people only seeing the surface of the book or maybe refusing to engage with its themes due to the violence on it?

I know, I know. What a heading. When the judge first learns that Cloyce Bell is the idiots brother, he goes directly to the man and starts examining him. Like an anthropologist would a specimen. The judge is dumbfounded. He stares in disbelief at Glanton. God forbid this ‘deficiency’ could procreate and, therefore, replicate. Perhaps the judge was gauging the possibility of this with the idiot and the young girl at the Yuma camp. This is the biggest threat to the judges existence, because the idiot completely contradicts his philosophy of inherent violence. He renders the judges beliefs false. The idiot represents the most primitive form of humanity, whereas one can argue the judge represents the complete opposite. The idiot is a gentle creature. He is not violent by any means. I know the kid might seem like the antithesis to the judge but he’s somewhere in-between these two, being not entirely innocent, and not entirely evil (depending on your interpretation of his character). Anyway, that’s my take on the idiot.

One of the headings for the very last chapter of Blood Meridian is The Beehive. This was an actual saloon that existed and operated in Fort Griffin, Texas. Even Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and Pat Garrett spent time there during the frontier days. There was a steakhouse built on the same site, or in the same vicinity, in the 1980’s that was in business until 2023. But, anyway, I find the name ‘Beehive’ eerie for several reasons. Namely, the fact that Judge Holden is represented as the embodiment of war and evil in the book, regardless of it being in a physical or metaphorical sense. He is the queen of the hive. Not in the sense that he’s a female but in a symbolic sense that he is the god of war, or evil, or violence. However, if he’s not even a human being then one can easily consider him androgynous. He’s numero uno, though. ‘Hear me, man. There’s room on the stage for one beast and one alone.’ The people there for the dance are the worker bees who feed him, sustaining him and keeping him alive. Their evil thoughts and deeds are the symbolic nectar keeping evil alive. He never sleeps, he says he will never die. Looking at it this way the judge can rather be looked at as a metaphor for the violence and evil of mankind, rather than a physical entity, which will never end because it’s in our nature.

Thoughts?

At times, I have laughed. But maybe only 4 times or so and I’m wondering if I miss the jokes or something

My thoughts on the final chapter: Wherever the Judge appears, children vanish. By the end, they are also looking for the girl whose bear has just been killed. Then, when "the kid" goes into the latrine and encounters the "naked" Judge, the latter pulls him into his fleshy embrace.
An incredibly bleak ending, devoid of hope.
It’s heavy stuff—really intense. I’ve read the book three times over the last ten years, and it still wrecks me.
That Judge dances at the end because he has to dance, while others "sleep."

What an incredible, biblical level book. Such a slow build of dread culminating in a gutting, heartbreaking end.

The difference in prose and description between Culla and Rinthy’s chapters was something I only began to appreciate in the last 3rd which makes me want to re read it instantly.

Wanted to share some of my favourite quotes / phrases and would love to hear anyone else’s or particular parts that stuck with them

‘She watched the ground, going with care, the basin upright and riding her hip, slowly, processional, a lone acolyte passing across the barren yard, face seized in the light she bore.’

‘a sound so labored and remorseless as should have spoken something more than mere progress
upon the earth's surface.’

‘Thank ye, she said, the glass of milk in her hand, wearing a clown's mouth of it.’ ( personal fave just for the imagery’

‘The man seized them and examined them, bending closer to the fire, turning them in his hands like some barbaric cobbler inspecting the work of another world.’

‘caught up in the wake of the cart and its lonely tolling tinware demon piping like some creature rapt and besorced by witches music.’

‘His sparse gray hair stood about his head electrically and in all these gestures before the fire he looked like an effigy in rags hung by strings from an indifferent hand.’

‘A solid butternut safe in which languished some pieces of cheap white crockery, chipped and handleshorn coffeecups, plates serrated about their perimeters as though bitten in maniacal hunger’

‘The flowers in the dooryard have curled and drawn as if poisoned by dark and there is a mockingbird to tell what he knows of night.’

**‘**It wasn't his to name. Besides names dies with the namers.
A dead man's dog ain't got a name.’