If you think "Blood Meridian" is dark, try "Child of God." I'm a huge McCarthy fan, but "Blood Meridian" is tough to appreciate. "The Road," "No Country for Old Men," and "All the Pretty Horses" are his most readable works; try them, then decide how much farther you want to go.
I think Blood Meridian is his best book by far. The first time I read it, when I got to the end, I didn't even get up from my chair, just went right back to the beginning and started reading it again.
I also like the border trilogy: All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain. Sort of surprisingly, never actually read No Country for Old Men although I've seen the movie three or four times.
Yes. There’s something cruel there, or perhaps simply resigned, to reflecting the most brutal aspects of humanity in their most casual, logical, and inherent expression ([0] spoiler).
You certainly never shake the feeling that something terrible is going to happen at any moment.
I have read The Road and All the Pretty Horses. I won’t read any of the others. AtPH has less horror than The Road, for what it’s worth. It’s very much a bildungsroman.
If you enjoyed the road and want more like that, but without the horror; I’d say try our Steinbeck if you haven’t. He’s a greater writer, and less cruel.
[0] AtPH spoiler: For example mangling that boy’s feet. It’s not arbitrary, not entirely necessary, but it had a logic to it; and is exactly the type of thing people do to each other.
The Road was the first of his books I read. I read his last two books The Passenger and Stella Maris shortly after he passed. Both contained interesting thoughts on philosophy, science, mathematics. Of the two, I think Stella Maris was better - it's kind of a deep dive into genius and the madness that often accompanies it.
Agree on Steinbeck. Less cruel and more hopeful. My favorite American author. It would have been very interesting to be a fly on the wall in a discussion between an aged Steinbeck and a young McCarthy - one of those questions where if you could have two authors talk to each other over a beer and sit in on the conversation.
I don't know why I was surprised to learn this but there is a standard for alphabetical order. The NISO Guidelines for Alphabetical Arrangement of Letters and Sorting of Numerals and Other Symbols: https://www.niso.org/sites/default/files/2017-08/tr03.pdf
> The notion that north should always be up and east at the right was established by the Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy (90-168 AD). "Perhaps this was because the better-known places in his world were in the northern hemisphere, and on a flat map these were most convenient for study if they were in the upper right-hand corner," historian Daniel Boorstin opines. Mapmakers haven't always followed Ptolemy; during the Middle Ages, Boorstin notes, maps often had east on top--whence the expression "to orient."
Strange. “Upper Egypt” is the southern part of Egypt and “Lower Egypt” is the northern part. The source of the Nile (to the south of Egypt) was the key reference point to ancient Egyptians.
I searched, and Ptolemy was a Greek who lived in Egypt, not an ethnic Egyptian.
The first time I realized the Nile flowed from South to North, I thought someone was pranking me. It just felt fundamentally wrong. That’s probably because when you look at a globe, the Nile seems like it should be dripping downward…
I hope you take this the right way. Seeing your work gives me so much more confidence in my own creativity. I showed someone at the supply store a rough draft I had and they were encouraging, but also said I’ve never seen anything like it. Which is both possibly cool and doubtful.
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