One I'll have to reread before I'd feel comfortable sharing my thoughts as I feel I missed quite a lot (and I need to learn some Spanish) but would love to hear what anyone has to say about it.
spoiler
Rip :bear-chill:
i also need to reread, but i thought it was a great book. i feel like there is a connection to the war in vietnam that is not remarked upon enough
even though it came out in the mid 80s, mccarthy began writing the book in the mid 70s, when the war was still fresh in everyone's memory. one character has a necklace with an ear on it, and that was a major scandal during the war, that american GIs were making necklaces out of the ears of vietnamese people. if i recall correctly american military brass had an obsession with kill counts and confirmed kills, so GIs just began doing My Lai shit because once someone is dead it is very easy to say they were a combatant; similarly, the glanton gang soon realize that mexican scalps are indistinguishable from Apache ones so they begin indiscriminately killing mexicans too. the filibustering gang that the kid joins at the beginning, to cross the border and continue the war illegally, is kind of similar to the US actions in Cambodia and Laos.
like i said, i need to reread the book, and mccarthy surely intended it to be more than just a vietnam allegory, but i think there is enough there for somebody to make a masters' thesis or something out of it.
Read it for the first time earlier this year. Absolutely loved it. Some horrific imagery is seared into my brain now, but I really really liked the book. More of a horror than a western imo
If :cheeto-man: is the face of the :amerikkka:, Judge Holden is its soul.
That's very true, even the kid doesn't really have an identity and he doesn't have any sort of legacy. Him and the gang just consume until they themselves are consumed.
and thank you for the recommendations
I haven't read any Cormac McArthy books because the world is already horrible so why would I subject myself to that? I consume media to escape.
Incredible work of art, no notes. Like the text version of a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
I'm part way through (about 1/3) and its pretty good, fucked up in a way i can really appreciate. Whats with the punctuation though? The lack of speech marks and commas and such. Its written really differently than any other published novel i've ever read and it can make the actual sentences kind of hard to follow, especially being dyslexic. Do you get used to it and/or does the author let up a bit eventually?
I got used to it after thinking I downloaded a bad epub file. But yeah I think those parts are more about lulling you into the rhythm of the gang moving so as long as you get a general vibe you should be golden.
