Nominations for New Classics

[Pompey Bum]

Anyways, The road is a good book, nothing near the best of McCarty, of course. Also, more typical thrailler like (of course).

I have a good opinion of The Road. I think some of the literati who go ape for Blood Meridian were a little hard on it, or at least too jaded. McCarthy stoked that fire a bit himself, though. He is notoriously reclusive and has made himself less than accessible to the Powers That Be over the years. But (a little hilariously) he made a point of "doing Oprah" when The Road came out, to promote his book to be sure, but also to just diss 'em. I kind of like that.

The movie also. I think the reason of the lack of popularity was timing. Despite that I have sometimes the giggles thinking that the little boy is Jesus Christ, if you analyse you will see it is Walking Dead (a father trying to keep his son alive in a pos-apocalyptic world. The zombies are a detail - in both tv and comics - and in McCarty they are such a detail that they do not appear, but let's suppose they are a local color that the natives do not feel need to mention, like the famous camel in the koran - according to Borges - which was according to Gibbon, both wrong anyways).

Spoiler alert: If you don't want to know how The Road ends, skip the next three paragraphs. Skip the paragraph after that if you've never read or seen World War Z, and the one after that if you've never read or seen No Country for Old Men.

I saw the man with the crossbow, who the boy goes off with at the end, as the Christ figure (crossbow, get it? And it's on his back). The boy and his father are just "carrying the fire," which has to do with the Valentinian gnostic concept about redemptive purity. Or you could skip the hocus pocus and just say that they maintain their humanity because they will starve before they join the "zombies." The father fulfills his duty by delivering the boy safely to an area where a community of like-minded people can find him--perhaps.

I would have ended the story differently. The sudden appearance of the Savior figure was too much of a deus ex machina for me (where were the "good guys" all through the rest of the book?) I would have made it more ambiguous. The father would have been teaching his son mushroom lore (or mycology, if that's the word) as they passed through the dark mountains: remember this kind because you can eat it; remember that kind because, if you ever really needed to die, it would do the trick; avoid this kind because it will make you go crazy and see things for a while. But the boy would have a hard time remembering the differences, and eventually his father would tell him to forget it. After his father dies, I would have shown the boy sitting beside his body eating a mushroom (the pistol would be out of bullets, which it is not in the book). Is he eating to live? In other words, left alone in the nightmare world, has he now taken responsibility for his own survival (by choosing the right mushroom this time)? Or with his father gone, has he chosen to die? And was he even capable of choosing the right mushroom? Was it one of the hallucinogenic ones?

At that point, after the boy had sat beside his father's corpse for some time, the man with the crossbow on his back would arrive. Is he what he claims to be? Or is he just a cannibal trying to con the boy out of the pistol, then lead him away be slaughtered and eaten? (That point is actually left slightly ambiguous in the book as it is--and to good effect, in my opinion). Or is the man Jesus, come to take the boy to be with his his father--in other words, is the boy dead, too? All that would be ambiguous in my ending, and made the more so by the potential that the boy's perception might be clouded by hallucinations.

I never saw The Walking Dead, by the way, but it does seem a little similar to The Road in some ways. (I watched World War Z on the back of a plane seat recently and was disappointed that at least one of Brad Pitt's little girls didn't get eaten up--but I guess that's what sequels are for. )

No Country was also written with hollywood as a target, I meantioned the road because it is more a "finished package", since No Country still roams in some grey areas that hollywood would not consider typical, but there is no doubt the movie helped him to break out the american label and be a more well-know name outside america, so it will have some height on his chances of prosperity.

I had the very strange experience of finishing No Country for Old Men on an airplane, and then watching the movie on the back of the seat in front of me. Consequently, I have a little trouble sorting them out in my memory. They both (I think) had a Ford Madox Ford-style modernist ending, in which the climax happens "offstage." That was fine in the book (I think), but later I heard a lot of disappointed movie-goers say that they felt like they had missed a step on a staircase. People also complained that there was no reason for the wife to have been killed, too. But personally, I thought that was one of the more powerful moments in the book. The devil goes by karma, not mercy.

As Ridley Scott... He probally thinks the Judge is some alien, hence he wants to make it as Prometheus 3.

Or the Glanton party's helicopter crashes and "the boys" have to fight their way out of Mexico while the UN just shrugs? Or the Judge is a secretly a Roman general who will have his vengeance--in this life or the next? (Actually that does sound a little like the Judge).

[sandy14]

Is the book better than the movie?

As far as I remember, the book and the novel are quite close - the film adaptation is pretty faithful to the book. The book's humour is funnier- and uses the accents of the characters which can be a problem for folk who are not used to its cadence.

Sex Lives of the Master Chefs is worthwhile - his best book for a while.

[NikolaiI]

That's usually what makes for good movies.

Thanks for the recommendation, I will remember it.

[Pompey Bum]

Joe Simpson, author of the mountaineering "classic" "Touching the Void", recounted a story about literary prizes in his second book. "Touching" was nominated for some major literary award, and his competition included some very famous writers (I forget who right now, and I forget which award it was). Sitting at the gala, he wondered how his book rated -- since he had dropped out of school at age 16 and never written anything before. He won.

"Bloody hell, I'm going to die to Bony M!"

[JCamilo]

I have a good opinion of The Road. I think some of the literati who go ape for Blood Meridian were a little hard on it, or at least too jaded. McCarthy stoked that fire a bit himself, though. He is notoriously reclusive and has made himself less than accessible to the Powers That Be over the years. But (a little hilariously) he made a point of "doing Oprah" when The Road came out, to promote his book to be sure, but also to just diss 'em. I kind of like that.

I think the main reason is "selling to hollywood" part. Considering this is a strategy for best-sellers as Dan Brown, etc. he went to a muddy water. Of course, the trade with popular art - which is what they do with movies - is not so unique. Happens a lot. But I guess the ivory tower trembles when this happens.



Spoiler alert: If you don't want to know how The Road ends, skip the next three paragraphs. Skip the paragraph after that if you've never read or seen World War Z, and the one after that if you've never read or seen No Country for Old Men.

I saw the man with the crossbow, who the boy goes off with at the end, as the Christ figure (crossbow, get it? And it's on his back). The boy and his father are just "carrying the fire," which has to do with the Valentinian gnostic concept about redemptive purity. Or you could skip the hocus pocus and just say that they maintain their humanity because they will starve before they join the "zombies." The father fulfills his duty by delivering the boy safely to an area where a community of like-minded people can find him--perhaps.

Well, I think the boy behaves in a way that make me think it, it is like he is leaving Joseph (the mortal father) to christianity, in the end of the book. Anyways, I just chuckle. In the end it is only about a father -son relationship.

I never saw The Walking Dead, by the way, but it does seem a little similar to The Road in some ways. (I watched World War Z on the back of a plane seat recently and was disappointed that at least one of Brad Pitt's little girls didn't get eaten up--but I guess that's what sequels are for. )

Like i said, the overall theme , specially in the comics, is the father protecting his son in a apocalyptic world. Most Zombie movies, have the zombies as irrelevant, a meeting by chance no difference from locusts to egyptians. The usual danger is the human, so the Road is pretty much like it. World War Z is more a super-hero movie which villain are hordes of zombies. I cannot even say it is an apocalyptic work, they basically win...

I had the very strange experience of finishing No Country for Old Men on an airplane, and then watching the movie on the back of the seat in front of me. Consequently, I have a little trouble sorting them out in my memory. They both (I think) had a Ford Madox Ford-style modernist ending, in which the climax happens "offstage." That was fine in the book (I think), but later I heard a lot of disappointed movie-goers say that they felt like they had missed a step on a staircase. People also complained that there was no reason for the wife to have been killed, too. But personally, I thought that was one of the more powerful moments in the book. The devil goes by karma, not mercy.

The thing about the movie (good movie) is that the acting and audio-visual aspect steals some of those momments up for meditation that you find in a book. And with this, we would see the entire theme of the movie is how pointless all is. The killer does not play with a coin to scare people, it is a failed prophet, one that is afraid of cassandra and then take the risk for himself. Of course, the movie is inconclusive, of course, average viewers would complain about it.

[JCamilo]

meh (double, mods could delete it?)

[Ecurb]

"Bloody hell, I'm going to die to Bony M!"

I had forgotten that part!

One more (similar) mountaineering "classic" story, since I've attracted a little interest in the subject: many people think "Conquistadors of the Useless" (Les Conquérants de l'inutile) is the best mountaineering autobiography. It was written by Lionel Terray, the greatest of all French climbers. Terray was a professional mountaineering and ski guide in Chamonix, and had dropped out of school at age 11 (or somewhere thereabouts). As a result, many critics thought "Conquistadors" must have been Ghost-Written.

A recent book by David Roberts (True Summit: What really happened on Annapurna) investigates another mountaineering "classic", Maurice Herzog's book "Annapurna", which was the best-selling mountaineering book of all time until "Into Thin Air". Among other interesting discoveries, while rooting around in Terray's family home in Chamonix, Roberts discovered an original manuscript, handwritten in Terray's own scrawl, of "Conquistadors". Hardly a word had been changed for publication.

[Pompey Bum]

I had forgotten that part!

That line had me in stitches, though it must not have been very funny for Simpson at the time. I wonder what it is about the brain that makes it play music for you under extreme physical duress? Ages ago I had an experience, nothing like Simpson's (who was probably starting to die at the time), but bad enough, in a remote-ish part of central Africa, in which I keeled over from heat exhaustion. According to the friend who was with me, my pupils rolled back and I tossed about. All I remember--except for a thrashing sensation--is that my brain played Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA at an obnoxiously high volume the entire time. I think I would have preferred Bony M.

Ecurb, I think you're a mountaineer.

[Pompey Bum]

Again, spoiler alerts for The Road, World War Z, and No Country for Old Men.

In the end it is only about a father -son relationship.

I agree. I think that's why this book will live in people's hearts when books like Blood Meridian and Child of God are being kept on life support by academics. Speaking personally, I remember turning over the last page of The Road (books had pages in those days), then driving to a bookstore (which we also had in those days) and buying my dad a copy for Father's Day. True, he later told me that he found it "Really depressing," but we had many good talks about it, too.

I heard a rumor--I don't know how true it is--that McCarthy, no spring chicken, was inspired to write The Road after marrying a much younger woman and having a son with her. Feeling fatherly love for the boy, and realizing that he would certainly not be alive for much of his son's life, he had to confront his extremely negative feelings about human nature and the world. What kind of place was he abandoning this child to? And what was his duty before he left?

That is why, according the report, there is a question repeated over and over in the novel--Will the boy be okay? It starts when the son thinks he sees another little boy looking out of a window in one of the ruined towns he and his father pass through; but of course all he is really seeing is his own reflection in the window pane. His concern for this "boy" never leaves him, and the last thing that his father tells him before he dies is that the little boy will be okay--that goodness will find him.

World War Z is more a super-hero movie which villain are hordes of zombies. I cannot even say it is an apocalyptic work, they basically win...

I don't watch many American movies. I have only see them on airplanes for maybe ten years now--and then I usually watch the silliest ones I can find, like World War Z. When I was 18 or 19, though (in the pre-ceramic Neolithic), I used to go "with the guys" to see the old George Romero zombie flicks. Watching World War Z, I was really struck that what had once been a shocking cinema form, intentionally so, to the point of near-obscenity, had become, over the years--processed cheese? That's the best way I can describe it: the zombie movie reduced to family fare--starring the perfect husband, who was once a secret military ops guy (for the UN no less!) and who doesn't mind driving into the city to pick up the kid's prescription (despite the flesh-eating ghouls); with a nice soft focus on the people being ripped apart, and a jerky camera so you don't really see anything anyway. What a difference a generation makes! I did like the zombie who kept chomping his teeth at the end, though. Oddly enough that was a fairly well acted scene. The actor had obviously studied the behavior of mental patients. So like the boy from The Road, we look at the image looking at us, without knowing that it is just us looking at the image.

The thing about the movie (good movie) is that the acting and audio-visual aspect steals some of those momments up for meditation that you find in a book. And with this, we would see the entire theme of the movie is how pointless all is. The killer does not play with a coin to scare people, it is a failed prophet, one that is afraid of cassandra and then take the risk for himself. Of course, the movie is inconclusive, of course, average viewers would complain about it.

My take on the scene with the coin was that it had to do with a kind of mindless karmic evil. The devil (here Mammon, from what McCarthy later says) has no real will. He'll kill the clerk or spare him depending on the toss of the coin. By the same token, there's no emotion about killing the wife. He kills her because he promised her husband he would. It reminds me of something I once read by the director of the National Holocaust Museum in Washington. In writing about the many unfulfilled promises made to Jews by various nations and other parties in the long run up to the death camps, he noted that the only one who kept his promises to them was Hitler.

[Ecurb]

I have done some climbing, Pompey, and still occasionally bag a relatively easy peak (Shuksan, this summer. Whitney by the East face last summer). All those nights spent in tents are great for reading. What else is there to do? My ice axe and crampons went to the top of Denali this summer, with one of my son's friends whom I helped turn on to climbing, by the Cassin Ridge. I doubt I'll ever see them again.

Perhaps I'll read "The Road". McCarthy turned me off when I read "Blood Meridian". I recognize his talent, of course, but reading the book was not a pleasant experience I was eager to repeat. I emerged from the book feeling like the kid, beaten and abused.

[Pompey Bum]

I have done some climbing, Pompey, and still occasionally bag a relatively easy peak (Shuksan, this summer. Whitney by the East face last summer). All those nights spent in tents are great for reading. What else is there to do?

Well done. I used to climb the Presidentials (the highest peaks of the White Mountains in New Hampshire), but mostly when I was a teenager or a 20-something. (I was at the summit of Mount Washington on July 4, 1976, which was a good way to spend the Bicentennial). My favorite peak in those days was Mount Lafayette, the second tallest after Washington (so named to honor the Marquis de Lafayette--without whom there would have been no United States--in his lifetime) But I climbed most of them and others besides in those days.

In my mid-thirties, I decided to try to climb Lafayette again. I felt every moment of age that had gone by in the ten years or so since I had last climbed it. I got very near the summit, but turned back at the last minute in a sudden snow storm (it was Columbus Day which is a stupidly late time to try a fall climb on a big mountain like that). Nevertheless I consider it a victory of age: if I had been a teenager, I would have been dumb enough to have kept going. As you know, mountains don't forgive youthful folly--or any other kind.

In my mid-forties, I decided that I wanted one last shot at it (midlife crises are not pretty). This time, I made it to the summit and back, and retired with a single moral burnt into my soul: NEVER AGAIN.

I am in my even older now and borderline handicapped (not to mention old and getting fat). I have had to put beautiful mountains in the same emotional drawer I have long kept beautiful women (with the exception of the beautiful Mrs. Bum): been there, done that, not afraid to move on.

Ironically, Lafeyette was also getting old (and fat) when his name was given an honor second only to Washington. He was visiting America at the time, but there was no possibility of getting him anywhere near the White Mountains for the ceremony. Instead he was hoisted up tiny tiny tiny Bunker Hill (near Boston), the highest point he could still ascend. That I will accept as my mountaineering legacy. "Lafeyette, we are here."

My ice axe and crampons went to the top of Denali this summer, with one of my son's friends whom I helped turn on to climbing, by the Cassin Ridge. I doubt I'll ever see them again.

Sounds like they are in good hands.

Perhaps I'll read "The Road". McCarthy turned me off when I read "Blood Meridian". I recognize his talent, of course, but reading the book was not a pleasant experience I was eager to repeat. I emerged from the book feeling like the kid, beaten and abused.

I recommend it highly. It is not a cheerful book (far from it), but it has a humanity that some of his other books lack at times.

[Paulclem]

Although I liked The Road - book and film - I felt it inferior to both Blood Meridian and No Country For Old Men. This is because of what I felt to be an inconsistent ending. I also thought that whilst it challenged common heroic conceptions of what humans would do to survive, this challenge was not such a strong feature as in the other two.

I liked everything about Blood Meridian, but particularly this notion of challenging an accepted stereotype - the essentially good, independent man. The kid could have been this figure, but as the story progresses you realise that he is one of a company of murdering, raping, pillaging child killers. It's grimness is compounded by the factual basis which I found somewhat shocking.

Old Country I found to take this further. We see the psycho - Chigurh - becomes the antithesis of Moss, with an oddly consistent moral philosophy. What he says is what you get. There's no trickery in him. He doesn't kill gratuitously, and sees no problem in carrying out what is right absolutely consistently. This is what makes him a psycho. He cannot waver from his moral standards to a different set - the ones you and me hold.

In this sense he is superior to Moss who, whilst pursuing his aim has a confused morality revealed when he goes back to the shooting. Moss represents the capable independent American outsider. A Vietnam vet who relies on himself but who cannot begin to understand Chigurh moral worldview and represented by Moss being unable to pronounce his name.

Both novels for me challenge accepted views of US icons very successfully.

[JCamilo]

Again, spoiler alerts for The Road, World War Z, and No Country for Old Men.

I agree. I think that's why this book will live in people's hearts when books like Blood Meridian and Child of God are being kept on life support by academics. Speaking personally, I remember turning over the last page of The Road (books had pages in those days), then driving to a bookstore (which we also had in those days) and buying my dad a copy for Father's Day. True, he later told me that he found it "Really depressing," but we had many good talks about it, too.

Well, I am never so sure about the motives why a artwork is alive. I like the road, but I think it was the less impressive book of McCarthy I read. This includes even the border triology last book. But this is a thread about immortality, so let's wonder a little. I wonder if all the motives why McCarthy will be remembered are remarkable in The Road, having a theme that provoke empathy or not. In one of triology books, he tells the story of a cowboy who saves a she-wolf. I am not saying the relationship between a man and his pet is the same as a boy and his father, but notice how both are about a mature person traveling to take his "cub" to safety. But see the difference, there is not a road for the wolf and the cowboy. The action is told from such perspective that is more unique also stronger than in the Road. Despite, perhaps, a less complex journey-relationship. I suspect that is where his genius is to be found. This is not saying The Road is bad, not this, more the evidence that McCarthy is good enough for minor works.

As Blood Meridian, let's just say, it must survive because Moby Dick will survive and needs spawns that are not just Benchley's Jaws.

I don't watch many American movies. I have only see them on airplanes for maybe ten years now--and then I usually watch the silliest ones I can find, like World War Z. When I was 18 or 19, though (in the pre-ceramic Neolithic), I used to go "with the guys" to see the old George Romero zombie flicks. Watching World War Z, I was really struck that what had once been a shocking cinema form, intentionally so, to the point of near-obscenity, had become, over the years--processed cheese? That's the best way I can describe it: the zombie movie reduced to family fare--starring the perfect husband, who was once a secret military ops guy (for the UN no less!) and who doesn't mind driving into the city to pick up the kid's prescription (despite the flesh-eating ghouls); with a nice soft focus on the people being ripped apart, and a jerky camera so you don't really see anything anyway. What a difference a generation makes! I did like the zombie who kept chomping his teeth at the end, though. Oddly enough that was a fairly well acted scene. The actor had obviously studied the behavior of mental patients. So like the boy from The Road, we look at the image looking at us, without knowing that it is just us looking at the image.

Well, we must be careful to not see much beyond the zombie movies. Sometimes zombies are just zombies in a zombie movie. As the changes, they are more suited for the comedy like Shaun of the Dead or the very interesting Le Revenants (the original, not the american version) tv series. However, zombies there do not eat anyone.

My take on the scene with the coin was that it had to do with a kind of mindless karmic evil. The devil (here Mammon, from what McCarthy later says) has no real will. He'll kill the clerk or spare him depending on the toss of the coin. By the same token, there's no emotion about killing the wife. He kills her because he promised her husband he would. It reminds me of something I once read by the director of the National Holocaust Museum in Washington. In writing about the many unfulfilled promises made to Jews by various nations and other parties in the long run up to the death camps, he noted that the only one who kept his promises to them was Hitler.

Well, true, but let's think of the coin gimmick original user: Batman Two-faces. Two-faces gimmick with the coin is just a symbol of the duality, he is both evil and good. Chiurgh is not. He is just evil and cold. So, what he does? He knows what will happen and he gambles with fate. He is not giving the clerk or the wife the chance to live. He is giving himself the chance to kill or not. It is like he is adding this possibility to avoid to fullfil the prophecy (I will kill - as you said, he has not really a will, he is a killer so he would have no option), so he has some control, he has a dialogue with Fate. Hence why he is so cold - the victims are not relevant to him at all. His attempts to avoid to be caught in a 'system" however fail, does not matter how many coins he tossed, in the end he is a killer that keep killing and the occasional mercy of the coin does not change the scales. Does not matter also, he has no real options, no control and fate will rub on his face: all the time it was matter of a coin being tossed anyways, adding it didn't made any change. Adding to Paul, Moss is also the commun people, the modern people, Chiurgh plays with myth-like forces, which Moss avoid. Moss just accept the outcome without any hope to change it, like Chiurgh in vain tries to pretend to be doing.

[Pompey Bum]

Very interesting. You and Paul certainly have a higher opinion of No Country for Old Men than I do. I thought it was okay, mostly because Chigurh was an interesting character, but beyond that all I really took from it was McCarthy's view--articulated through Bell--that a moral evil, specifically a dehumanizing greed, was about to bring hell to the American Southwest. Okay. I mean drugs are bad. But in the decade or so since the book came out, it seems like drought has been the bigger culprit. The rest (except for the murder of Moss' wife) seemed like one long chase scene to me. The Road, for me, was about staying human in the face of evil. We don't all face Apocalyptic nightmares (or demonic hit men), but we all struggle to hold on to something sacred in ourselves. No Country for Old left me a little indifferent, but The Road moved me--to be honest to tears. But then I am predisposed to relate to its very low anthropology and its stubborn theology. I also love picaresque novels (which in a very weird way The Road is).

As Blood Meridian, let's just say, it must survive because Moby Dick will survive and needs spawns that are not just Benchley's Jaws.

Heh heh. Amen!

[JCamilo]

Well, let's put this way, just like The Road may be just about a father-son relationship in a typical pop zombie apocalypse world, No Country maybe just about hell in Southwest in a typical mix of Serial Killer Hannibal Lecter Hollywood style mixed more than often with the Fugitive (with Tommy Lee almost reprising his role) and all the rest is merely a way to count the stars.

As I said, both were written with hollywood in mind and McCarthy shows to flirt with pop american culture in both. How good they are is another matter.