IGX

Defranco could ruin a blow job

Great book. Not easy to transfer to screen. I need to ask: Did those guns really sound like popguns, or does the sound quality just suck. And, I would think that Apaches in 1850 might be a bit leaner. Those boys were fat.

Yeah, he's been trying to develop this for years. IMO, it's not really filmable because McCarthy's rich language and descriptions are what sets it apart. Unless you had a narrator over the story, you just couldn't do it justice.

Kazuya Mishima wrote:Yeah, he's been trying to develop this for years. IMO, it's not really filmable because McCarthy's rich language and descriptions are what sets it apart. Unless you had a narrator over the story, you just couldn't do it justice.

Agreed. And it may just be the bloodiest great book every written. I mean, it was hard enough reading some of the torture/death scenes. Not sure I'd want to see them depicted as written.

A few directors have tried to put something together for Blood Meridian but it hasn't come together. One director who had a fight with the producer or whoever owns the movie rights to the book said if he would have been able to do it the movie would have been x rated due to gore etc. He was probably the right person to do the movie. McCarthy was queried about the impossibility of a movie of Blood Meridian being done and he basically said it would take someone with big huevos who would be willing to take a risk. He also acknowledged that a movie based on the book would have to pick and piece together a storyline from the book so a movie wouldn't really follow the book as written. There is no way a movie could do the book justice but I sure hope someone tries, I for one would enjoy seeing it even if it sucks. Somebody really should try to do it.

HBO mini series .

Polo Tomasi wrote:Great book. Not easy to transfer to screen. I need to ask: Did those guns really sound like popguns, or does the sound quality just suck. And, I would think that Apaches in 1850 might be a bit leaner. Those boys were fat.

Those where percussion caps fired through unloaded black powder rifles and pistols. Probably made it cheaper, safer, easier and faster to film the film test with a bunch of actors.

I've started and not finished this book several times. I like it, but it's not exactly light reading...

McCarthy is one of those overrated authors, like Palahniuk.

Shafpocalypse Now wrote:McCarthy is one of those overrated authors, like Palahniuk.

Go fuck yourself.

Palahniuk is trash..McCarthy is a national treasure.

Shafpocalypse Now wrote:McCarthy is one of those overrated authors, like Palahniuk.

I'm curious to read why you think this. Having read both authors I never would have considered a comparison. In my opinion Palahniuk is a pop pulp writer. I enjoyed some of his books but in a bubble gum and cotton candy sort of way. McCarthy's work brings awareness to my own myopic views and often deeply effects me for quite a while after I finish the book. Everyone I know who has read McCarthy's work has been taken on a ride by it. As I write this a lady friend of mine is finishing All the Pretty Horses with leaky eyes.

Haha. Palahniuk is a bad comparison. McCarthy is an aged hipster delighting in his idiosyncrasies and funky punctuation. Every time you read a book of his, you are taking a metaphorical load to the face, you read The Road, it like he's fingering your unwilling butthole.

I'll tell you what, I'll make one more attempt at Blood Meridian.

Shafpocalypse Now wrote:Haha. Palahniuk is a bad comparison. McCarthy is an aged hipster delighting in his idiosyncrasies and funky punctuation. Every time you read a book of his, you are taking a metaphorical load to the face, you read The Road, it like he's fingering your unwilling butthole.

I'll tell you what, I'll make one more attempt at Blood Meridian.

Gee, after you describe it like that, it sounds so tempting...

Also, how many of you read Blood Meridian while high? It seems one of those books drug users delight in

Intellectual pretension, as opposed to Palahnuik's lowest common denominator pretension

Shafpocalypse Now wrote:Also, how many of you read Blood Meridian while high? It seems one of those books drug users delight in

I can see how being high might make it easier to understand the vocabulary without a dictionary, or at least "feel" like you understand it...

One thing that McCarthy often does --- and it sometimes makes him opaque --- is to write a scene that you can't quite figure out because he leaves an important element out. So, in The Road, the man and boy are crossing the bridge and come upon a man badly burned and stumbling and brain scrambled. The description is powerful but it is only later when the boy asks why they couldn't help that the father says, "He's been lightening struck." Sometimes that technique pisses me off but my opinion is that McCarthy is one of the two or three best living American writers.

Shafpocalypse Now wrote:Haha. Palahniuk is a bad comparison. McCarthy is an aged hipster delighting in his idiosyncrasies and funky punctuation. Every time you read a book of his, you are taking a metaphorical load to the face, you read The Road, it like he's fingering your unwilling butthole.

I'll tell you what, I'll make one more attempt at Blood Meridian.

I think the underlying story is that Shaf's little darling hasn't been giving him the much needed ass play he deserves.

Pahlaniuk is good but much like anything else the hipsters, psuedo intellectuals, and weak asses that feel a need to be shocking have ruined his work. McCarthy is just difficult. I love his work but every story I read of his makes me feel like I've been punched in the gut. Blood Meridian was a fucking nightmare for me to read since it was my first McCarthy book. Much like Moby Dick I liked it but really need to read it again to be sure.

The Road utterly ruined a vacation to Mexico and I loved it. Any book that can make you mediate on your own death at that level is a worthy bit of literature.

seeahill wrote: Sometimes that technique pisses me off but my opinion is that McCarthy is one of the two or three best living American writers.

Huh. Interesting. I'd never thought to put him up there, but maybe.

Personally I'd probably go Pynchon, Roth, and Jim Harrison as a top tier, then for me there's a second tier of writers where I'm like, "yeah, they're good", like McCarthy, Irving (purely for Cider House Rules, with demerits for Garp), DeLillo, Ursula LeGuin, Connie Willis, Jonathan Lethem, Chabon, Eugenides, Donna Tartt, Joyce Carol Oates, John Barth, Toni Morrison, hell Harper Lee's still alive...

McCarthy may be one of those "writers' writer" type guy, the type of guy you read for the language, they way he carpenters together a sentence and builds 'graphs and lets the story fall into place with no discernible effort. I think Blood Meridian is the Moby Dick of the 20th Century.

Your picks are all solid and an argument can be made for all. Peter Matthiessen was my pick for greatest living American writer until his death a few months ago. The only guy who ever The National Book award for both fiction and non-fiction.

Jim Harrison lives here and I see him quite a bit. I'll tell him that a guy on the forum thinks he ranks among the very top American writers. I can see the conversation now. Jim: "Who's the guy?"
And I'll tell him: "Bud Charniga's gaping asshole."

seeahill wrote: Your picks are all solid and an argument can be made for all. Peter Matthiessen was my pick for greatest living American writer until his death a few months ago. The only guy who ever The National Book award for both fiction and non-fiction.

I don't disagree. Snow Leopard is one of my favorite books, and one that I return to every few years. In the Spirit of Crazy Horse was great, and Far Tortuga and the Florida novels were a lot of fun, and fantastically well-written.

Jim Harrison lives here and I see him quite a bit. I'll tell him that a guy on the forum thinks he ranks among the very top American writers. I can see the conversation now. Jim: "Who's the guy?"
And I'll tell him: "Bud Charniga's gaping asshole."

That's really cool. I think Dalva and True North are pretty much unimpeachable.

Shafpocalypse Now wrote:Haha. Palahniuk is a bad comparison. McCarthy is an aged hipster delighting in his idiosyncrasies and funky punctuation. Every time you read a book of his, you are taking a metaphorical load to the face, you read The Road, it like he's fingering your unwilling butthole.

I'll tell you what, I'll make one more attempt at Blood Meridian.

Yeah...I hear you. Sometimes the complexity of language that McCarthy uses is tough for me to get through. I've yet to finish Suttree and the first part of that book was torturous for my feeble mind.

Blood Meridian would have been a tougher read if I hadn't seen the long multi page descriptions of the scenery as a separate character and a murderous one at that. When I moved to the Southwest and started exploring I came to understand the landscape as an entity/reality unto itself. It is easy for me to forget that going from one air conditioned box to another in the city. I think the saying used to describe war as "months of boredom punctuated by sheer terror" is embodied in the cadence of this work...which might help getting through it if you find yourself so inclined.

you read The Road, it like he's fingering your unwilling butthole.

This might explain why Oprah's book club got weak kneed about it...but now it worries me that I really like the book. Is camping in my future?

Blaidd Drwg wrote:The Road utterly ruined a vacation to Mexico and I loved it. Any book that can make you mediate on your own death at that level is a worthy bit of literature.

This is the only book that I recall reading as an adult that actually disturbed my sleep. I hated every page and myself for keeping reading the entire thing.