Love all these McCarthy lectures. Thank you for sharing them. I has been a joy to reread Suttree and Blood Meridian and now ATPH. Will you be doing more of his novels in the future? I am a big fan of The Road, even though a lot of people think it is his weakest book - to me it is his best.
It's difficult to hear your students, so if this was mentioned, I apologize. However, in my experience, gunfights are often over before you realize you're in one; there's not nearly so much to write about as with a knife fight. A common aspect that McCarthy didn't include is the slippery nature of knife fighting. It is quite common for a party to cut themselves with their own knife. This is awful stuff, and there it sits, a fine piece of writing. I regret that I cannot attend your lectures, though I'd also like to know the title of the music that begins and ends your them. Thank you.
Both of these masterpieces hit me like a brick wall. There are few books that, as you’re reading them, you never want to end. These are two books that do. I wish I could read them again for the first time. These are books that, when you finish, give you a certain sensation that other books do elicit.
I want it to be an opera. The way the words rush over you the first time through is kinda like listening to a beautiful performance in a different language
I can handle your verbal ticks ( right, like, okay) but your lousy virtue signaling and racism is too childish to endure. There are far less annoying sources a click away. Cheers dirty white boy.
I dont think he killed the kid but the missing girl instead and that the kid was the one going to the bathroom outside. McCarthy does this in his books. Similar to No Country for Old Men the whole book/movie builds up to a final showdown between the protagonist and main antagonist but it never happens and Blood Meridian builds up to a final showdown between the Judge and the Kid but I think it never happens. Instead the Judge kills the girl with The Kid watching and after seeing it happen the kid warned the others not to go in there. The Judge prevailed not because he killed The Kid but because he corrupted The Kid again after it seems like The Kid had left that life and the kid returns to "the dance."
As someone who is interested in this but dropped out of college, thank you lol wanna get back to school soon but in the meantime I’m happy you’ve posted stuff like this.
"what's the judge doing" just being as evil possible lmao. unreasonably evil. destroying one of the most benign, simply useful, and important pieces of information (history) so no one else can have it
Big admirer of McCarthy's works here. I originally read this book many years ago and back then I wasn't christian, not at least in any serious sense. Nowadays I am a christian and I've been considering that it might be really interesting to read this again from a different point of view. Not sure if I'm gonna do that, however. It ins't my favourite from Cormac and I seem to recall that it was quite the tough read during that first time.
The Judge is a true Anti Christ, in a sort of Gnostic sense. This is myth building, myth as history even. The Judge is Yaldabaoth, Rex Mundi, King of this world. He is also Mephistopheles, who makes a Faustian bargain with Glanton, who seeks venganza on “the heathen”
The Judge is a true Anti Christ, in a sort of Gnostic sense. This is myth building, myth as history even. The Judge is Yaldabaoth, Rex Mundi, King of this world. He is also Mephistopheles, who makes a Faustian bargain with Glanton, who seeks venganza on “the heathen”
The kid shows mercy, even unto the Judge, because he is still The Kid. Later on, after he has become the Man, that he dhows no mercy to another “kid.” It is only then, when he has performed that act of merciless homicide, that the Judge shows up “to collect” and calls him honestly, “The last of the true.”
Strange how you glossed over the part where Santa Anna suspended the Mexican Constitution and declared himself dictator. The Mexican Constitution that guys like Jim Bowie had sworn to abide by as a Mexican citizen. The 18th and 19th Century American mind would've automatically dismissed an aurocrat like Santa Ana. And that is what happened. The Mexican Constitution was legitimate, in their mind. Santa Anna wasn't.
Ah! I used to drink a vodka and it was like kerosene scented perfume. That delicate scent that takes straight up the nose and stays right between the eyes. Makes you fit to sneeze as it savages some mucous membrane up there. Yeah... that might be all i recall of my 20s.
Having just finished the novel, I must say it's the one that fits the internet stereotype of Cormac McCarthy perfectly: a bunch of monosyllabic idiots bumbled around a beautifully described wasteland until they all come to bad ends, featuring baby canabalism. I think it's interesting in your discussions with the class, you only the very beginning and very end of the book, and barely talk about any of the vignettes that comprise most of The Outer Dark.
