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The Road is basically the final dream in No Country For Old Men put to a more literal and extensive narrative - the father carries the flame and passes it on to his son.
Neither did I until I saw your video. But it makes sense in light of your analysis. In this way, The Road is the thematic sequel to NCFOM just as much as NCFOM is a thematic sequel to Blood Meridian. It's a progression that runs from the frontier West (BM) to the civilized West (NCFOM) to a world where there is no frontier or civilization (Road). I'm now convinced that The Road isn't an apocalyptic story, not in a literal sense. It's an attempt to strip down and distill McCarthy's philosophy about human frailty to a barebones setting without the past or present to weight it down. Just a father and son trying to make sense of the evil in a world full of nothing but evil. @@epochphilosophy
“You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday dont count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it's made out of. Nothin else. You might think you could run away and change your name and I dont know what all. Start over. And then one mornin you wake up and look at the ceiling and guess who's layin there?” ― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
@ronlipsius No.We are besieged by bigger problems than those we can surmount on a daily basis.McCarthys point is actually kinda banal but at bottom lies malaise and alienation.Theres little to nothing left in Mc Cathy's guts,in the pit of his belly.Theres no real fight,just the hollow drone of instinctual residue and that which cannot be entertained.Its Samuel Beckett,it's Hunter Thompsons suicide letter,it's the brighton beach carny in winter.Mc Cathy's too aware of his surroundings and himself..there's no escape.
McCarthy is very skilled at forcing us to confront the depravity that resides at the core of humanity. But he does so without preaching. His writing is subtle enough to lead the reader to their own conclusion, but still it is a conclusion that McCarthy points us toward
@@PopularDemand1000 I think Cormac's whole point and indeed his exsitence was born of suffering to bear suffering and to then one day end in suffering. The guy lived on beans and coffee in a shack, deferring certain riches out of seeming spite of them. He strikes me as a man whom the world had betrayed and he wanted no further part of it. I can relate to that a lot.
It's obvious, you don't need a book to tell you that. I mean...evolved animals don't tend to act like saints. So funny that people say they believe in Evolution and then act surprised when animals actually behave like animals.
I've always found McCarthy to be something of a pessimistic optimist. What do I mean by that? Pessimistic because he always looks at the worst side of humanity. But optimistic because he doesn't let it make him lose his faith. Now, I've only read three of his works (No Country for Old Men, The Road, and All the Pretty Horses). After reading all of them, I was always a little shaken. But I've always recognized his fundamental message: Right is still right, and wrong is still wrong. No matter how much you try to delude yourself.
Well said: the right and the just can make this world blossom, but the wrong and the criminal will make it wither. It's up to us as the gardner of our plot to tend that land and carry the fire.
McCarthy never tried to please anybody. His attitude was "This is my work: take it or leave it ". That fundamental indifference to criticism and the literary world set him apart and helped to make him a great writer.
I read the book and it almost killed me . Much of the dialogue is similar to language between me and my son . This combined with the movie depressed me too much
Blood Meridian is the anthropocentric counterpart to Lovecraft's Cosmic horror. It makes our heart of darkness, our wars, our petty wickedness and conflicts just as horrifying as an uncaring cosmos inhabitated by any manner of twisted unknown entities could be. "The wraith of God lies sleeping. It was here for a million years before men were, and only men have the power to wake it.." I'm pleasantly surprised to see you cover McCarthy.
McCarthy is probably the epitome of American literature, one of the few that held no punches back to tell the tale, as he wanted, uncompromised. You did it justice with your video, fantastic :) you got a new fan.
Right from page 1 of a Cormac novel, you immediately sense how the air is thin, the ground uneven & emotions - all dehydrated & packed away till The End. As a closet poet , he's like a mentor to me. A scary one tho 😮 Thank you for great video!
Hello, would you like to speak about writing. I'm a writer and do write poetry, I'm keen to find people who write so as to further myself. My name is Jordan, I'm from Scotland, writing allows for my sufferance of life's myriad of tests.
Hobbes was writing in the 17th century not the 15th. He published Leviathan in 1651. I am mentioning it because as you said the historical context is key, and he was writing following the aftermath of the internecine conflicts that plagued the 17th century such as the English Civil War.
No worries. I only pointed out because it makes your arguments even more pertinent. The massacres described in Blood Meridian can be compared to what was happening in Europe at the time Hobbes was writing. I really enjoyed your analysis.
@@epochphilosophyThe proper English is - “in which he resided (or did reside)”. Also that is not what Nietzsche was getting at with “eternal recurrence”, and invoking the crackpot Foucault is not a good move.
He even got the most famous quote wrong. Then casually moving into Nietzsche who is incompatible with Hobbes. This video is a good example of nowadays liberal arts education
Being a western geologist and grandson of a Nevada mining engineer and great-grandson of a Montana Forester I know exactly what McCarthy is saying. He is describing the lives of generations of men exploring and exploiting the land. It describes a myriad of activities. The most obvious to me is the Discovery and exploitation of petroleum. First you have the exploration crews who drill the holes by striking their steel against The Rock to create fire from the Earth. They are followed by production crews who collect the petroleum which in a real sense are bones. Finally there are the people that do not make the holes or gather the bones or even look for the bones they are there to build the houses and stores, open the schools and whore houses all in service to the ones who make the holes and collect the bones. Drilling for oil, digging for coal, gold, silver, lead and copper. Drilling holes for water in the desert And in my case literally drilling holes for pollution and then collecting those bones of long dead industrial practices so that those who don't seek or collect can build expensive condominiums for the non-seekers to thrive on top of the graves of industry past. And the drillers and The seekers of Bones and collectors of Bones have all moved on to the ends of the Earth until they themselves are bones.
@@epochphilosophyLed Zeppelin's The Immigrant Song and Pink Floyd's Welcome to the Machine both deal with the dark underbelly of Western expansion. Also Smedley Butler's book War is a Racket. It's in our DNA, so we don't see it, like the air we breath. Your channel is off the hook. Just found it . I've got a lot to catch up on.
Once I hit the part of the book where the judge makes gunpowder from raw materials and the surprise and ambush the natives that are following them. They are all out of powder and resigned to death and he is like a god in that moment. Directing them to find the materials and orchestrating the synthesis of black powder while standing naked on top of a mountain, lightning in the backround. What a scene I can’t wait for the unfilmable movie I think they should cast me as the kid
Cormac McCarthy. The one author who could make people even much more scarier and much more hellishly terrifying villains than non human villains in fiction like ghosts, goblins, vampires, werewolves, zombies, demons, aliens, A.I., mutants, killer animals and other non human antagonists. He also showed just how much country life can be every bit as scary and dangerous as city life.
I absolutely adore McCarthy’s writing style, I know a lot of people criticize it for its lack punctuation. But the way he writes is so deeply poetic and beautiful I can’t help but love it as a poetry lover myself.
Professor Harold Bloom, Trinity Dwight College Yale University. What an inspiration, all his books and lectures of "How to Read and Why." Cormac McCarthy is one of my favorite writers. None is greater than " Blood Merridian." Thankfully, Edgar Allen Poe, who knew suffering as a child of being abandoned throughout his life, the losses of those he had loved and alcoholism, became after being betrayed and his suspicious death became one of America's greatest writers. He inspired and created a new genre of writers in America. He did not get the acclaim he desired while he was alive. Unfortunately, this is true in all creative arts. Thank you for this.
Great video man. His work is so immense and dense, and nothing if not daunting. He’s my favourite author too. And was once upon a time when I was gonna untangle his theology from his texts for an honours project at uni but life didn’t allow for it. But here u are doing something similar. Respect
I won't go see the movie, if it ever comes out. Blood Meridian lives in my being and I refuse to allow anyone else's vision touch where I he characters live in my mind's eye.
Same here. I find it unfilmable and so much would be lost by the impossibility of adapting so many things. Also the violence is so gut-wrenching (as it's supposed to be) and horrid and in your face that any Hollywood adaptation could never do it any part of the book justice
I became aware of McCarthy via The Sunset Limited. I saw the HBO film (also starring Tommy Lee Jones), then read he play. I don't necessarily have a "favorite author", but McCarthy is right at the top of the list. Excellent video, Sir. Well done
Thank you for this great video on my favourite writer. Despite a vague feeling of superficiality that you address, I think you make some great points and are able to point to an actual existing thread that does unite McCarthy's novels. And that is saying a lot. Watching your video I meditated about how The Road argues that, fallen the Leviathan, the violent state of nature will reconquer the world. And yet, this time he envisions the power of the human spirit to keep fighting against the " absolute truth of the world". Carrying the fire despite the absurdity of it all (is it too obvious that The Road is my favourite novel?). McCarthy, what a writer.
Thanks for saying CMC is no philosopher proper. A ‘worldview’ or significant insight about how life is working is a great gift from the artist to an audience. I appreciate your presentation.
I like to think McCarthys books are a more refined, modern, and more expanded version of the message of heart of darkness. My shabby attempt at a takeaway is that everyone believes that the time they live in is the most epic, the most important age to end all ages one of heros and villans. But the world is like a coin flipping between ages of light and dark heros and villains are born then tomarrow the villians are revered and heros cast down spawning new heros and villans that will be cast down and revered in turn, the fate of those around them governed by that same coin, simply by chance.
Great video, very nicely put together and touching on one of the absolute core themes of McCarthy. Suttree may be one of the most organic, interconnected works of storytelling ever put to paper. I think Outer Dark deserves a mention as an abstract blueprint for the themes explored in Blood Meridian, as well as a wonderfully dark fairy tale that’s perfectly compose. If I may, I’d recommend “Cormac McCarthy: An American Apocalypse” as a very recent study. The author also explores the McCarthyean theme of violence to a level I have not read elsewhere, but apart from philosophy and mysticism, also connects it to the work of myth, McCarthy’s interest in science (particularly entropy), the weight of Christianity (and its failure) in his work, and relates it all through McCarthy’s idea of the novel. I think you might dig it.
I don’t think we can escape trauma, but we can stop passing it down. And we have never been in as good a place to do that as we are today. McCarthy’ work is part of that step forward, opening up new lanes to better understand ourselves and each other
Not easy, not easy at all, the breaking of generational patterns, one of the greatest challenges we face in the pursuit of living a life free of angst, nihilistic thinking, existential exhaustion, and especially free of the special self competing for attention
Thanks for broadening my horizons. I never have heard of McCarthy, and only vaguely of No Country which I never watched. Actually your treatment and narrative were worth the time and I learned something valuable. If you want my opinion, McCarthy shows philosophy its limitations. None of the problems he illustrates can be squared away with some tidy rational answers, no thoughts can contend against the emptiness. It points loudly to the spiritual lack that is the inheritance of our society. And our society is predicated upon the Enlightement's embrace of new utopian forms of existence, capitalism and socialism. But McCarthy exposes the lies that reek to the heavens in all of our optimistic hypocrisy. At the end of the day, Cain is still murdering his brother with a rock.
A couple of things: 1. Bobby was not a Vietnam veteran. There’s the extensive conversation he has with Sheddan about Sheddan’s experiences in Vietnam and is now fascinated by the gruesome violence. 2. Personally I have never heard a single person speak of Suttree as his magnum opus. Blood Meridian at this time in history is certainly considered his magnum opus, as the ocean of dude bro lit guys are drawing the public’s attention back to the more demonstrative excitements of the novel and in essence underpin and disregard the exceptionally post modern view the novel proposes. That’s all. I’ll come off my high horse. Loved your video!!
was looking for this comment, I thought I missed something in The Passenger, Bobby was truly just listening to how it was to be a chopper gunner :D I agree, great video
I love this book the way I love a tough teacher. I think the view of history is the most important thing for us to learn from it at this time - all the grand narratives are futile, myth making. Small bands acting in absurd self interest really make history happen, and the rest of us make up the narratives afterwards. “No order except the threads you put there” Think of the epilogue with the man on the plain being followed by the crowd-those interested in bones, and even those that aren’t. It’s why he made the choice to be absolutely inscrutable for most of the book I think. No myths, save for the one conspicuous at the beginning about a wild landscape to try men’s hearts
I don't normally subscribe to a channel without even finishing a single video... but you just made me do it while only halfway through. Thanks for that, and for your perspective!
One thing I saw, as a long ex-Catholic kid, was the Trinity. Father; son; and Sprit as the Flame. That flame, the love engendered between them, and possibly the only hope we have. The first question the Boy asks as he meets his new 'family' after his father's death, is, 'Are you carrying the flame?' Had the answer been 'No', the Boy would not have gone with them, I'm sure. He sensed his true sustenance, came from that flame.
I have always had a feeling the boy in the road, could be messianic in some way, not in a overtly religious way, but a boy picked out for leading a path for another generation of survivors .
To me The Road was, more than anything, about bringing up children - teaching them how to handle a violent and uncaring world. The post apocalyptic setting of The Road just brings into sharper focus the challenges of guiding children in the vicissitudes of life. I think that McCarthy saw the post apocalyptic setting as what already exists under the veneer of our world.
The Coen Brothers passed on making a film based on Blood Meridian, thinking it too dark and difficult for popular consumption. Cormac thought it could be done with some modification or gentling. I agree with Cormac, especially after seeing Bone Tomahawk with Kurt Russell. The author and director, S. Craig Zahler, would be a good candidate for the Blood Meridian screenplay and ask the Coen Brothers to review and consider it again.
Great video-I never considered his work as being a kind of parallel to Foucault’s. One small correction: Bobby never fought in Nam. He presses his friend Oiler early on in the book for war stories. He did race cars in Europe until he ended up in a coma, however, and this does invoke a similar death drive that threads throughout the novel. Thanks for all the food for thought!
Cormac McCarthy was a right-winger. The idea that his books “parallel” known pedophile Michel Foucault is absurd. We know for a fact, thanks to the Wittliff Collections, that McCarthy based Judge Holden (the villain of Blood Meridian and pretty much the embodiment of evil) partially on Foucault. But you midwits will always see whatever you want to see.
I find his stories, horrible as they are, are not saying us as people are evil, but that the world we exist in exploits the unstable catalyst for violence inside of us
Suttree is second only to Blood Meridian among his works. It is genius and haunted and a lyrical rival to BM. This book is catching up on the obnoxious amount of times I’ve read BM. It’s gorgeous
The Wanderer. It’s an elegiac poem of 115 lines found in the Exeter Book, an Old English manuscript created circa AD 975. The bulk of the poem consists of the protagonist’s musings as he wanders, an exile from society after the loss of his lord and kinsmen Tolkien’s Influences: The Wanderer Bing search
Wow. Great insights here. Blood Meridian is relentlessly harrowing. I just experienced it in audio book form but now feel compelled to revisit it in hard copy. McCarthy's powers of description demand repeated scrutiny.
Blood Meridian sent me to the dictionary often. What I found was that Cormac used the exact period appropriate word to capture his meaning and description. Great writer IMHO. He often explores the,depths of the human psyche and the nature of man, something he shares with Shakespeare and other great writers.
The carrying of the Torch or Fire appears in every McCarthy novel….not just The Road. Sheriff Bell’s dream about his dad, etc….but it only got a few seconds of mention at the end of your video 🤷🏻♂️
With regards to the eternal return Faulkner said "The past is never dead its not even past" (Requiem for a Nun). I found McCarthy's " The Crossing" second book in The Border trilogy similar to Blood Meridian but not as violent. The best in the series in my opinion. Great analysis on McCarthy and his works.
The Road is a very important book to me. Regardless of Mcarthy’s more philosophical intentions with the texts, The Road illustrated to me what it meant to be a father in general. To build a foundation of experience and knowledge and meaning that is to be handed off to your children. Not as a script or doctrine but as a blueprint to build a better tomorrow for them interpreted in your memory because you earned it. It seems surface level I suppose but to me it created an archetype of intention that I didn’t have before as a young parent.
Blood meridian is above all things the dark version of the New Testament, instead of a savior we get a judge, instead of a sermon on the mound we get a massacre on a volcano, we get the slaughter of the innocent in both but it’s the protagonists that kill toddlers on the river bank. Even the language is called Neo biblical, so yeah.
What if like posthumous self recordings of Cormac came out Brando style. And it’s just notes for his research for blood meridian. And the public sits rapt with attention like ‘oh man oh man maybe we’ll get insights into his process’. And the recording crackles to life and it’s just like: “Cormac McCarthy july 7th 1975. *clears throat* I’m gay. I’m so gay. God I’m so gay. Ahhhhhh I’m so gay. *screams of pain* I’m gay. EVERY LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATED DUDE WHO LOVES MY WRITING IS REALLY GAYYYYYY AHHH” wouldn’t that be so crazy you guys?
I was named after Cormac McCarthy and I greatly appreciate the proper pronunciation of our name I've always said "spelled with an A pronounced with an I"
Thanks 🙏 for your analysis of McCarthy’s work. I’ve only read “The Road” however it’s a story I haven’t forgotten even after 10 plus years since reading it.
Civilisation is hooped together, brought Under a rule, under the semblance of peace By manifold illusion; but man's life is thought, And he, despite his terror, cannot cease Ravening through century after century, Ravening, raging, and uprooting that he may come Into the desolation of reality… --- W.B. Yeats ---
There are artists who I fully acknowledge as being exceptional if not great, but still they’re not ones I particularly enjoy, their work that is. McCarthy is one of these for me. With that said, I will say you do probably the best explanation of McCarthy one can do in your video here-congrats are in order! The one thing I would take issue with you on is in describing his work as post-modern. His style at times is like a lot of post-modern authors’ writing, but the subject matter and all of the content he introduces are all historic, compatible with the period, and related to the aforementioned, coherent. Vague at times, yes, but not so much as to shift contexts. Therefore, I would have to say his work is definitely modern.
I will have to read Hobbs again. It's been a long time since I read Leviathan, and all I can recall at this late date is he was not an advocate for liberal democracy, but a monarchist. And that implied to me a man living in great fear.
there is a point of view that would say that at the core of a man is an overwhelming ocean of peace and love. the journey from animal to human is through the battlefield that perhaps mccarthy documents. there is hope, not much, but still a little.
Read The Passenger and Stella Maris a month or so ago and I still can’t get the story out of my head. Having grown up in New Orleans added a little something to it for me as well. Especially since I went to visit not too long before reading them.
i think it is part of the eternal return; each generation is born, humans with instincts and biological propensities, driving us in a determined style along the lines of thinking Robert Sapolsky and associated research. education and a curation of healthy and diverse cultures are the only defense, yet our ignorance to see and properly understand dooms us currently to the repetition. yet even in knowing it's hard to prevent that which likely must happen - competition, coordination, cohesion, divisions; the cycles continue as we barely yet know ourselves.
The comments you are making about blood moraine and remind me a lot of what Joseph Conrad wrote in heart of darkness. Do you think there’s any similarities there?
As someone who’s read a bit of McCarthy, I think it’s really important to mention to those who haven’t read much yet that a lot of the time Christian god is the counterpoint to a lot of the emptiness, and questions of the unending nature of humanity in his books. Not to say that takes away from them at all, but I think it’d be a bit remiss to leave out the fact that God is often the only (though still quite distant) hope that the reader is left with at the end.
A man seeks his own destiny and no other, said the judge. Will or nill. Any man who could discover his own fate and elect therefore some opposite course could only come at last to that selfsame reckoning at the same appointed time, for each man's destiny is as large as the world he inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well. This desert upon which so many have been broken is vast and calls for largeness of heart but it is also ultimately empty. It is hard, it is barren. Its very nature is stone ...The world goes on. We have dancing nightly and this night is no exception. The straight and the winding way are one and now that you are here what do the years count since last we two met together? Men's memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not.
I believe you are correct. Not sure how that one slipped past the cracks. I initially thought he and his friend both were. But appreciate the praise, always friend.
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The Road is basically the final dream in No Country For Old Men put to a more literal and extensive narrative - the father carries the flame and passes it on to his son.
Damn man, a solid interpretation I never quite pinned together.
Neither did I until I saw your video. But it makes sense in light of your analysis. In this way, The Road is the thematic sequel to NCFOM just as much as NCFOM is a thematic sequel to Blood Meridian. It's a progression that runs from the frontier West (BM) to the civilized West (NCFOM) to a world where there is no frontier or civilization (Road). I'm now convinced that The Road isn't an apocalyptic story, not in a literal sense. It's an attempt to strip down and distill McCarthy's philosophy about human frailty to a barebones setting without the past or present to weight it down. Just a father and son trying to make sense of the evil in a world full of nothing but evil. @@epochphilosophy
Yes. Exactly.
Do you carry the fire?
Oh shit… OH. SHIT.
Very astute reflection!
“You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday dont count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it's made out of. Nothin else. You might think you could run away and change your name and I dont know what all. Start over. And then one mornin you wake up and look at the ceiling and guess who's layin there?”
― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
That means that every day is another chance… to get it right.
@ronlipsius
No.We are besieged by bigger problems than those we can surmount on a daily basis.McCarthys point is actually kinda banal but at bottom lies malaise and alienation.Theres little to nothing left in Mc Cathy's guts,in the pit of his belly.Theres no real fight,just the hollow drone of instinctual residue and that which cannot be entertained.Its Samuel Beckett,it's Hunter Thompsons suicide letter,it's the brighton beach carny in winter.Mc Cathy's too aware of his surroundings and himself..there's no escape.
Thankfully, I'm not the same person I was yesterday.
McCarthy is very skilled at forcing us to confront the depravity that resides at the core of humanity. But he does so without preaching. His writing is subtle enough to lead the reader to their own conclusion, but still it is a conclusion that McCarthy points us toward
Absolutely wonderful description around the best part of McCarthy.
Our capacity for violence and cruelty is just the reflection of our capacity for suffering.
We are blood that flows from dust to dust.
But is this the right conclusion? It seemed to be for McCarthy. Will that conclusion alleviate anyone’s suffering?
@@PopularDemand1000 I think Cormac's whole point and indeed his exsitence was born of suffering to bear suffering and to then one day end in suffering. The guy lived on beans and coffee in a shack, deferring certain riches out of seeming spite of them. He strikes me as a man whom the world had betrayed and he wanted no further part of it. I can relate to that a lot.
It's obvious, you don't need a book to tell you that. I mean...evolved animals don't tend to act like saints. So funny that people say they believe in Evolution and then act surprised when animals actually behave like animals.
I've always found McCarthy to be something of a pessimistic optimist. What do I mean by that? Pessimistic because he always looks at the worst side of humanity. But optimistic because he doesn't let it make him lose his faith. Now, I've only read three of his works (No Country for Old Men, The Road, and All the Pretty Horses). After reading all of them, I was always a little shaken. But I've always recognized his fundamental message: Right is still right, and wrong is still wrong. No matter how much you try to delude yourself.
Well said: the right and the just can make this world blossom, but the wrong and the criminal will make it wither. It's up to us as the gardner of our plot to tend that land and carry the fire.
He must be fundamentally a religious writer then... Maybe that was his problem! 😏
@@oneoflokisMaybe you should think again, non-superficially.
Why use categories unnecessarily? You could just say that he’s a realist.
@ronlipsius How so? I don't like pessimists, curmudgeons and misanthropists.
The world needed this video. Thanks for making it.
Love to you all always. Thanks so much!
Wisecrack, i love your videos too.
Yeah, you and your world. Glad I’m not there.
I've read a lot of books, but "Blood Meridian" is in a class all its own. Nothing else like it. Amazing and haunting.
The best book ever written in English or any other language by any author.
“Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent” is such an excellent villain line
McCarthy never tried to please anybody. His attitude was "This is my work: take it or leave it ". That fundamental indifference to criticism and the literary world set him apart and helped to make him a great writer.
The Road is one of those movies you only watch once. You don't forget it.
Pretty much my main takeaway when I first watched it.
Same with the book.
@@gregbors8364 i dunno. I've read it three times with years inbetween and it crushes me in a different way each time
I’ve watched it like 5 or 6 times lol
I read the book and it almost killed me . Much of the dialogue is similar to language between me and my son . This combined with the movie depressed me too much
Suttree is such an overlooked masterpiece.
Favorite
I recently reread it and realized that it was his second greatest work after Blood Meridian.
The dialogue is insanely good. How CMcC never snagged the Nobel prize....!
You're a real one for using Richard Poe's audiobook version. The perfect book awaiting it's perfect orator.
Blood Meridian is the anthropocentric counterpart to Lovecraft's Cosmic horror. It makes our heart of darkness, our wars, our petty wickedness and conflicts just as horrifying as an uncaring cosmos inhabitated by any manner of twisted unknown entities could be.
"The wraith of God lies sleeping. It was here for a million years before men were, and only men have the power to wake it.."
I'm pleasantly surprised to see you cover McCarthy.
McCarthy is probably the epitome of American literature, one of the few that held no punches back to tell the tale, as he wanted, uncompromised. You did it justice with your video, fantastic :) you got a new fan.
Right from page 1 of a Cormac novel, you immediately sense how the air is thin, the ground uneven & emotions - all dehydrated & packed away till The End. As a closet poet , he's like a mentor to me. A scary one tho 😮
Thank you for great video!
Do you use & in your poetry?
No, I just bow down to his acute diction, his flow & his unnerving ability to stare down reality😅 !
Hello, would you like to speak about writing. I'm a writer and do write poetry, I'm keen to find people who write so as to further myself. My name is Jordan, I'm from Scotland, writing allows for my sufferance of life's myriad of tests.
Hobbes was writing in the 17th century not the 15th. He published Leviathan in 1651. I am mentioning it because as you said the historical context is key, and he was writing following the aftermath of the internecine conflicts that plagued the 17th century such as the English Civil War.
Yup, that is correct. Totally misspoke on the century he resided in!
No worries. I only pointed out because it makes your arguments even more pertinent. The massacres described in Blood Meridian can be compared to what was happening in Europe at the time Hobbes was writing. I really enjoyed your analysis.
@@epochphilosophyThe proper English is - “in which he resided (or did reside)”. Also that is not what Nietzsche was getting at with “eternal recurrence”, and invoking the crackpot Foucault is not a good move.
He even got the most famous quote wrong. Then casually moving into Nietzsche who is incompatible with Hobbes. This video is a good example of nowadays liberal arts education
Being a western geologist and grandson of a Nevada mining engineer and great-grandson of a Montana Forester I know exactly what McCarthy is saying. He is describing the lives of generations of men exploring and exploiting the land.
It describes a myriad of activities. The most obvious to me is the Discovery and exploitation of petroleum. First you have the exploration crews who drill the holes by striking their steel against The Rock to create fire from the Earth. They are followed by production crews who collect the petroleum which in a real sense are bones. Finally there are the people that do not make the holes or gather the bones or even look for the bones they are there to build the houses and stores, open the schools and whore houses all in service to the ones who make the holes and collect the bones. Drilling for oil, digging for coal, gold, silver, lead and copper. Drilling holes for water in the desert
And in my case literally drilling holes for pollution and then collecting those bones of long dead industrial practices so that those who don't seek or collect can build expensive condominiums for the non-seekers to thrive on top of the graves of industry past. And the drillers and The seekers of Bones and collectors of Bones have all moved on to the ends of the Earth until they themselves are bones.
Yup. Violence qua violence. I see The Judge as an almost religious like character to the power and all consuming force of industry and modernity.
@@epochphilosophyLed Zeppelin's The Immigrant Song and Pink Floyd's Welcome to the Machine both deal with the dark underbelly of Western expansion. Also Smedley Butler's book War is a Racket. It's in our DNA, so we don't see it, like the air we breath.
Your channel is off the hook. Just found it . I've got a lot to catch up on.
@@HEWhitney1 Learning so much here, thanks fellas!
Nice.
Damn. That Tommy Lee Jones performance gave me the chills. I forgot how good that movie was. Need to watch it again
An incredible scene that has stuck with me through the years.
It seems the gods themselves cast Tommy Lee Jones for the role of Sheriff Bell. Perfection in his recollection of his mysterious and ominous dream.
Watch The Sunset Limited - another McCarthy gem.Both Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel Jackson are brilliant in it.
@@buckyhate7695 Thank you for that, I am only now realizing how many movies have been made out of his books.
Once I hit the part of the book where the judge makes gunpowder from raw materials and the surprise and ambush the natives that are following them. They are all out of powder and resigned to death and he is like a god in that moment. Directing them to find the materials and orchestrating the synthesis of black powder while standing naked on top of a mountain, lightning in the backround. What a scene
I can’t wait for the unfilmable movie I think they should cast me as the kid
i want to be the first one to tell you that the scene is a reference to the beginning of Paradise Lost
@@Lenn869 Certainly has a Promethean quality to it!
If you’ve a talent greater than Barry Keoghan, and the “look,” I’ll second your motion.
@@Lenn869 never made the connection 🙏could you go more in depth?
Cormac McCarthy. The one author who could make people even much more scarier and much more hellishly terrifying villains than non human villains in fiction like ghosts, goblins, vampires, werewolves, zombies, demons, aliens, A.I., mutants, killer animals and other non human antagonists. He also showed just how much country life can be every bit as scary and dangerous as city life.
I absolutely adore McCarthy’s writing style, I know a lot of people criticize it for its lack punctuation. But the way he writes is so deeply poetic and beautiful I can’t help but love it as a poetry lover myself.
Professor Harold Bloom, Trinity Dwight College Yale University.
What an inspiration, all his books and lectures of "How to Read and Why."
Cormac McCarthy is one of my favorite writers. None is greater than " Blood Merridian."
Thankfully, Edgar Allen Poe, who knew suffering as a child of being abandoned throughout his life, the losses of those he had loved and alcoholism, became after being betrayed and his suspicious death became one of America's greatest writers. He inspired and created a new genre of writers in America.
He did not get the acclaim he desired while he was alive.
Unfortunately, this is true in all creative arts.
Thank you for this.
Great video man. His work is so immense and dense, and nothing if not daunting. He’s my favourite author too. And was once upon a time when I was gonna untangle his theology from his texts for an honours project at uni but life didn’t allow for it. But here u are doing something similar. Respect
“Blood Meridian” is now being made into a movie by the director of “The Road”
I won't go see the movie, if it ever comes out. Blood Meridian lives in my being and I refuse to allow anyone else's vision touch where I he characters live in my mind's eye.
Same here. I find it unfilmable and so much would be lost by the impossibility of adapting so many things. Also the violence is so gut-wrenching (as it's supposed to be) and horrid and in your face that any Hollywood adaptation could never do it any part of the book justice
Many people have tried to make it. I’ll believe it when i see it. Denis Villeneuve or the Cohen brothers could make this movie
@@erichaynes5826Not sure I want anyone to make the movie, but Denis is the only filmmaker I'd trust to try
plus the proposition which in its own right is one the best modern westerns, it could not be in better hands
Disco elysium poster in the background... i see, a man of culture ;) :D
One of the greatest works of art ever made!
I became aware of McCarthy via The Sunset Limited. I saw the HBO film (also starring Tommy Lee Jones), then read he play. I don't necessarily have a "favorite author", but McCarthy is right at the top of the list.
Excellent video, Sir. Well done
Thank you for this great video on my favourite writer.
Despite a vague feeling of superficiality that you address, I think you make some great points and are able to point to an actual existing thread that does unite McCarthy's novels. And that is saying a lot.
Watching your video I meditated about how The Road argues that, fallen the Leviathan, the violent state of nature will reconquer the world. And yet, this time he envisions the power of the human spirit to keep fighting against the " absolute truth of the world". Carrying the fire despite the absurdity of it all (is it too obvious that The Road is my favourite novel?).
McCarthy, what a writer.
Thanks for saying CMC is no philosopher proper. A ‘worldview’ or significant insight about how life is working is a great gift from the artist to an audience. I appreciate your presentation.
I like to think McCarthys books are a more refined, modern, and more expanded version of the message of heart of darkness. My shabby attempt at a takeaway is that everyone believes that the time they live in is the most epic, the most important age to end all ages one of heros and villans. But the world is like a coin flipping between ages of light and dark heros and villains are born then tomarrow the villians are revered and heros cast down spawning new heros and villans that will be cast down and revered in turn, the fate of those around them governed by that same coin, simply by chance.
Great video, very nicely put together and touching on one of the absolute core themes of McCarthy. Suttree may be one of the most organic, interconnected works of storytelling ever put to paper. I think Outer Dark deserves a mention as an abstract blueprint for the themes explored in Blood Meridian, as well as a wonderfully dark fairy tale that’s perfectly compose.
If I may, I’d recommend “Cormac McCarthy: An American Apocalypse” as a very recent study. The author also explores the McCarthyean theme of violence to a level I have not read elsewhere, but apart from philosophy and mysticism, also connects it to the work of myth, McCarthy’s interest in science (particularly entropy), the weight of Christianity (and its failure) in his work, and relates it all through McCarthy’s idea of the novel. I think you might dig it.
I don’t think we can escape trauma, but we can stop passing it down. And we have never been in as good a place to do that as we are today.
McCarthy’ work is part of that step forward, opening up new lanes to better understand ourselves and each other
Not easy, not easy at all, the breaking of generational patterns, one of the greatest challenges we face in the pursuit of living a life free of angst, nihilistic thinking, existential exhaustion, and especially free of the special self competing for attention
@@auggiemarsh8682 Didn’t say it was easy. If it were easy, it wouldn’t still be happening at the scale that it does
reading blood meridian right now, this arrived on my feed at the right time
The road is a book that deeply impacted me I came away different after the closing lines.
Thanks for broadening my horizons. I never have heard of McCarthy, and only vaguely of No Country which I never watched. Actually your treatment and narrative were worth the time and I learned something valuable. If you want my opinion, McCarthy shows philosophy its limitations. None of the problems he illustrates can be squared away with some tidy rational answers, no thoughts can contend against the emptiness. It points loudly to the spiritual lack that is the inheritance of our society. And our society is predicated upon the Enlightement's embrace of new utopian forms of existence, capitalism and socialism. But McCarthy exposes the lies that reek to the heavens in all of our optimistic hypocrisy. At the end of the day, Cain is still murdering his brother with a rock.
Happy to introduce you. I think that’s also a very solid interpretation of his outlook. I think you’ll enjoy his stuff greatly!
A couple of things: 1. Bobby was not a Vietnam veteran. There’s the extensive conversation he has with Sheddan about Sheddan’s experiences in Vietnam and is now fascinated by the gruesome violence.
2. Personally I have never heard a single person speak of Suttree as his magnum opus. Blood Meridian at this time in history is certainly considered his magnum opus, as the ocean of dude bro lit guys are drawing the public’s attention back to the more demonstrative excitements of the novel and in essence underpin and disregard the exceptionally post modern view the novel proposes.
That’s all. I’ll come off my high horse. Loved your video!!
was looking for this comment, I thought I missed something in The Passenger, Bobby was truly just listening to how it was to be a chopper gunner :D I agree, great video
I love this book the way I love a tough teacher. I think the view of history is the most important thing for us to learn from it at this time - all the grand narratives are futile, myth making. Small bands acting in absurd self interest really make history happen, and the rest of us make up the narratives afterwards. “No order except the threads you put there” Think of the epilogue with the man on the plain being followed by the crowd-those interested in bones, and even those that aren’t. It’s why he made the choice to be absolutely inscrutable for most of the book I think. No myths, save for the one conspicuous at the beginning about a wild landscape to try men’s hearts
I don't normally subscribe to a channel without even finishing a single video... but you just made me do it while only halfway through.
Thanks for that, and for your perspective!
Hey thanks so much man. Glad you enjoyed.
I have a bridge over the east river that I’d like to sell to you - it’s a real bargain, sonny.
One thing I saw, as a long ex-Catholic kid, was the Trinity. Father; son; and Sprit as the Flame. That flame, the love engendered between them, and possibly the only hope we have. The first question the Boy asks as he meets his new 'family' after his father's death, is, 'Are you carrying the flame?' Had the answer been 'No', the Boy would not have gone with them, I'm sure. He sensed his true sustenance, came from that flame.
I have put off reading blood meridian for years, but I think I’m gonna pick it up today after watching this video.
Hell ya dude
Sound quality on this video is insane, thank you for your excellence
I have always had a feeling the boy in the road, could be messianic in some way, not in a overtly religious way, but a boy picked out for leading a path for another generation of survivors .
To me The Road was, more than anything, about bringing up children - teaching them how to handle a violent and uncaring world. The post apocalyptic setting of The Road just brings into sharper focus the challenges of guiding children in the vicissitudes of life. I think that McCarthy saw the post apocalyptic setting as what already exists under the veneer of our world.
The Coen Brothers passed on making a film based on Blood Meridian, thinking it too dark and difficult for popular consumption. Cormac thought it could be done with some modification or gentling. I agree with Cormac, especially after seeing Bone Tomahawk with Kurt Russell. The author and director, S. Craig Zahler, would be a good candidate for the Blood Meridian screenplay and ask the Coen Brothers to review and consider it again.
Great Video! Definitely do Melville next!!
Great video.
Great video-I never considered his work as being a kind of parallel to Foucault’s.
One small correction: Bobby never fought in Nam. He presses his friend Oiler early on in the book for war stories. He did race cars in Europe until he ended up in a coma, however, and this does invoke a similar death drive that threads throughout the novel.
Thanks for all the food for thought!
Was looking for this comment 😂
Cormac McCarthy was a right-winger. The idea that his books “parallel” known pedophile Michel Foucault is absurd. We know for a fact, thanks to the Wittliff Collections, that McCarthy based Judge Holden (the villain of Blood Meridian and pretty much the embodiment of evil) partially on Foucault. But you midwits will always see whatever you want to see.
I struggled so hard to read Blood Meridian, but I'm desperate to put myself through it again
I find his stories, horrible as they are, are not saying us as people are evil, but that the world we exist in exploits the unstable catalyst for violence inside of us
This is my reading as well
You are an infant
Watched this on the Cormac Reddit and enjoyed it. Everything needs more Suttree though.
Suttree is second only to Blood Meridian among his works. It is genius and haunted and a lyrical rival to BM. This book is catching up on the obnoxious amount of times I’ve read BM. It’s gorgeous
The Wanderer. It’s an elegiac poem of 115 lines found in the Exeter Book, an Old English manuscript created circa AD 975. The bulk of the poem consists of the protagonist’s musings as he wanders, an exile from society after the loss of his lord and kinsmen Tolkien’s Influences: The Wanderer Bing search
Wow. Great insights here. Blood Meridian is relentlessly harrowing. I just experienced it in audio book form but now feel compelled to revisit it in hard copy. McCarthy's powers of description demand repeated scrutiny.
Blood Meridian sent me to the dictionary often. What I found was that Cormac used the exact period appropriate word to capture his meaning and description. Great writer IMHO. He often explores the,depths of the human psyche and the nature of man, something he shares with Shakespeare and other great writers.
Great watch.
Well assembled and thought out.
Very well done, I will be diving head first into other works. I already love no country (movie) so am excited for this journey
Thank you so much for no spoilers, i even avoid reading introductions to books these days as they are so spoiler laden.
Of course!
first video of yours i've seen.
subscribed.
definitely did cc justice.
I studied Hobbes for Philosophy he is a perfect complementary text to McCarthy's brutality
this was excellent, thank you :)
Im going to buy Blood Meridian today !!
You won't regret it. The first time I read it, I couldn't put it down. I'm ordering The Passenger today. I think it was McCarthy's last novel.
I read the epilogue of blood meridian regularly. Nice to see someone else who appreciates it so much as well.
Hey great video!! Are you editing these yourself? If so great job!
I like the proper use of the word “sublime” near the end there, good stuff.
Can you do a video on Thomas Ligotti?
Seeing the Disco Elysium and NORCO posters was all I needed to subscribe and watch the whole video!
Hell ya. Thanks man. Two amazing works of art.
Haha, I subbed as soon as I saw that too. I was like, hmm a man of culture; then scrolled down and saw this comment.
The carrying of the Torch or Fire appears in every McCarthy novel….not just The Road. Sheriff Bell’s dream about his dad, etc….but it only got a few seconds of mention at the end of your video 🤷🏻♂️
He's a huge lib, so he doesn't believe in traditions, or in the receiving of any passed torches. They might have icky ideology cooties on them.
Don't imagine anything I've ever said or done on this phone yet is private!
With regards to the eternal return Faulkner said "The past is never dead its not even past" (Requiem for a Nun). I found McCarthy's " The Crossing" second book in The Border trilogy similar to Blood Meridian but not as violent. The best in the series in my opinion. Great analysis on McCarthy and his works.
This is wonderful, that "epilogue" was poetry, and now, I must read McCarthy.
The Road is a very important book to me. Regardless of Mcarthy’s more philosophical intentions with the texts, The Road illustrated to me what it meant to be a father in general. To build a foundation of experience and knowledge and meaning that is to be handed off to your children. Not as a script or doctrine but as a blueprint to build a better tomorrow for them interpreted in your memory because you earned it. It seems surface level I suppose but to me it created an archetype of intention that I didn’t have before as a young parent.
Terrific review of the authors work. Thank you I will be adding his works to my personal to do list.
Blood meridian is above all things the dark version of the New Testament, instead of a savior we get a judge, instead of a sermon on the mound we get a massacre on a volcano, we get the slaughter of the innocent in both but it’s the protagonists that kill toddlers on the river bank. Even the language is called Neo biblical, so yeah.
Great stuff.
What we resist persists !!
Great vid. Well done. Respect 🙌
Thanks so much!
Western wasn’t a Vietnam vet in The Passenger, Oiler and Red were. There’s quite a few pages that explicitly state that clearly.
When i hear "Unfilmable" im now intrigued. Got it on my shelf rifht now 😮
What if like posthumous self recordings of Cormac came out Brando style. And it’s just notes for his research for blood meridian. And the public sits rapt with attention like ‘oh man oh man maybe we’ll get insights into his process’.
And the recording crackles to life and it’s just like:
“Cormac McCarthy july 7th 1975. *clears throat* I’m gay. I’m so gay. God I’m so gay. Ahhhhhh I’m so gay. *screams of pain* I’m gay. EVERY LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATED DUDE WHO LOVES MY WRITING IS REALLY GAYYYYYY AHHH”
wouldn’t that be so crazy you guys?
I’m not sure what’s going on here lmfaoo but go off
This is one of the funniest comments I've ever read, lol
I was named after Cormac McCarthy and I greatly appreciate the proper pronunciation of our name I've always said "spelled with an A pronounced with an I"
Thanks 🙏 for your analysis of McCarthy’s work. I’ve only read “The Road” however it’s a story I haven’t forgotten even after 10 plus years since reading it.
Civilisation is hooped together, brought
Under a rule, under the semblance of peace
By manifold illusion; but man's life is thought,
And he, despite his terror, cannot cease
Ravening through century after century,
Ravening, raging, and uprooting that he may come
Into the desolation of reality…
--- W.B. Yeats ---
Great breakdown
There are artists who I fully acknowledge as being exceptional if not great, but still they’re not ones I particularly enjoy, their work that is. McCarthy is one of these for me. With that said, I will say you do probably the best explanation of McCarthy one can do in your video here-congrats are in order! The one thing I would take issue with you on is in describing his work as post-modern. His style at times is like a lot of post-modern authors’ writing, but the subject matter and all of the content he introduces are all historic, compatible with the period, and related to the aforementioned, coherent. Vague at times, yes, but not so much as to shift contexts. Therefore, I would have to say his work is definitely modern.
Your thumbnail got me to click on the video. The Disco Elysium poster on your wall got me to stay.
Hell ya.
I will have to read Hobbs again. It's been a long time since I read Leviathan, and all I can recall at this late date is he was not an advocate for liberal democracy, but a monarchist. And that implied to me a man living in great fear.
Keep up the good work...
Always an interesting time with these videos.
Thank you very much!
you did him justice. subscribed.
Thank you so much.
there is a point of view that would say that at the core of a man is an overwhelming ocean of peace and love. the journey from animal to human is through the battlefield that perhaps mccarthy documents. there is hope, not much, but still a little.
Read The Passenger and Stella Maris a month or so ago and I still can’t get the story out of my head. Having grown up in New Orleans added a little something to it for me as well. Especially since I went to visit not too long before reading them.
The passenger haunts me almost as much as Blood Meridian. And Suttree, but in a different way.
Can we get a list of the music used?
i think it is part of the eternal return; each generation is born, humans with instincts and biological propensities, driving us in a determined style along the lines of thinking Robert Sapolsky and associated research. education and a curation of healthy and diverse cultures are the only defense, yet our ignorance to see and properly understand dooms us currently to the repetition. yet even in knowing it's hard to prevent that which likely must happen - competition, coordination, cohesion, divisions; the cycles continue as we barely yet know ourselves.
I listen to Stella Maris and Passenger on audible over and over and over again… such wells of knowledge
You have invented another lack within me, now I must venture down the road, into the world that is McCarthy’s and unfortunately our own
The comments you are making about blood moraine and remind me a lot of what Joseph Conrad wrote in heart of darkness. Do you think there’s any similarities there?
That would be my take too…
Man Im too high for this
Fair tbh
Everyone says blood meridian is unfilmable but even if it wasnt, I wouldnt want to watch it. Why in gods name would I do that to myself
Blood meridian is one of those books that puzzle me due to the fact it was written by a human being.
Yes
I couldn't have said it better.
As someone who’s read a bit of McCarthy, I think it’s really important to mention to those who haven’t read much yet that a lot of the time Christian god is the counterpoint to a lot of the emptiness, and questions of the unending nature of humanity in his books. Not to say that takes away from them at all, but I think it’d be a bit remiss to leave out the fact that God is often the only (though still quite distant) hope that the reader is left with at the end.
A man seeks his own destiny and no other, said the judge. Will or nill. Any man who could discover his own fate and elect therefore some opposite course could only come at last to that selfsame reckoning at the same appointed time, for each man's destiny is as large as the world he inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well. This desert upon which so many have been broken is vast and calls for largeness of heart but it is also ultimately empty. It is hard, it is barren. Its very nature is stone
...The world goes on. We have dancing nightly and this night is no exception. The straight and the winding way are one and now that you are here what do the years count since last we two met together? Men's memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not.
Great video, but i dont think Bobby in the Passenger was in Vietnam. His friend was. Just wanted to point that out. Thanks for a great listen.
I believe you are correct. Not sure how that one slipped past the cracks. I initially thought he and his friend both were.
But appreciate the praise, always friend.
I don't know much about this author and I enjoyed this .
Great stuff, I think you hit the nail on the head with this one 👌