Why I Love and Hate Cormac McCarthy's Books or A Review of Cities of the Plain

Рет қаралды 905

Күн бұрын

I finally finish my reread of McCarthy's Border Trilogy.
All the Pretty Horses
The Crossing
Cities of the Plain
#cormacmccarthy

Пікірлер: 76

@stephengreen4428 5 ай бұрын

I find it irritating when someone cannot distinguish the worldview of the characters from the explicit worldviews of the author. I don't relate to people who are disturbed by fictional violence. I'm not saying the book is perfect.

@BookishTexan 5 ай бұрын

I find that irritating as well. In McCarthy’s case he clearly has his characters speaking his philosophical ideas and the knowledge he picked up during his time at the Santa Fe institute.

@stephengreen4428 5 ай бұрын

Clearly?@@BookishTexan

@BookishTexan 5 ай бұрын

@@stephengreen4428 I think so.

@stephengreen4428 5 ай бұрын

Cormac's characters routinely wax on about the nature of god, yet in at least one interview he as explicitly said that he is a materialist. I think it's quite a leap to assume what any author actually thinks, especially one as mysterious as McCarthy. It's a hallmark of a great author to write a convincing character that resembles the writer in no way. @@BookishTexan

@copsuicide 5 ай бұрын

I find myself in agreement with a good deal of the ideas you espoused in this. Especially the bit about McCarthy being a little too self-reverent. But part of the process of enjoyment consists in recognizing the flaws as well as the strengths of a work. Thank you for your insight.

@BookishTexan 5 ай бұрын

I agree that recognizing the flaws in a work or an author can help increase the enjoyment of reading. Unfortunately authors like McCarthy seem to attract a fandom that refuses to see those flaws.

@TKTalksBooks 6 ай бұрын

I read All the Pretty Horses and thought it was jaw-droppingly perfect Went on to read The Road and Blood Meridian. Had to DNF Blood Meridian because I have to be mindful of protecting my heart… I just could not stomach that much heinous violence … I don’t care how gorgeous his sentences are. I’m pretty tolerant of whatever an author includes in the narrative, but this violence was a bridge too far for me. And I’m no wimp whatsoever! … really great video, Brian. The thing I love most about you is that you never shy away from controversial topic. Moral Courage is the quality I most admire in any human. From what I’ve seen of your channel, I think you have it.

@BookishTexan 6 ай бұрын

Thank you for the very kind words. I think because I first read Blood Meridian as a young man the violence described didn’t affect me as much as it might if I had read it later in life. That shock of the violence muted by youthful callousness seems to have kind of immunized me against it when I have reread it. (Not sure this makes sense). My heart has gotten much more tender as I have gotten older so without that “immunization” I pray balky would have done the same.

@FrankOdonnell-ej3hd 5 ай бұрын

I read all the pretty horses didn't finish the crossing and didn't even start cities of the plain but may go back to them. The ones I'm really looking forward to reading are the passenger and stella maris. Recently came on a channel of a young book tuber who's obsessed with mccarthy and wallace so may take a second look at wallace's work. ⚛😀

@BookishTexan 5 ай бұрын

That guy is truly obsessed with McCarthy and DFW. I didn’t like the last two McCarthy novels.

@eyesonindie 6 ай бұрын

Wonderful points! I read the Border Trilogy in my 20s, and I know I loved all three books. However, I don't think I was quite mature enough to be critical of them, and I barely remember a thing!

@BookishTexan 6 ай бұрын

So much of The Crossing and Cities of the Plain are meandering and pointless. I reread The Crossing just a couple of years ago and I still struggle to recall a lot of what happens after the part about the wolf.

@eyesonindie 6 ай бұрын

@@BookishTexan I don't even remember a wolf!! Obviously these books did not leave a big impression on me, which is strange because I remember loving All the Pretty Horses so very much at the time.

@Khatoon170 5 ай бұрын

Cormac McCarthy ( 1933- 2023) he was an American writer who authored twelve novels , two plays , five screenplays , three short stories- spanning western and post apocalyptic genre. He was known for his graphic depictions for violence and his unique writing style , recognizable by spare use of punctuation and attribution. He is widely regarded as one of greatest American novelists . His notable works suttree , blood meridian, border trilogy, no country for old men , road . We appreciate your great as foreigners subscribers as overseas students want to increase our cultural level and improve our English as well , literature lovers too. We in Arabic countries begin our conversation with greeting and end with bid farewell . Best wishes for you your dearest ones .

@BookishTexan 5 ай бұрын

Thank you Khatoon. I hope you have a wonderful week.

@krc5210 6 ай бұрын

I have read All the Pretty Horses and thought it was well written. I am also a Faulkner fan which helps with McCarthy I think. I read about a third of Blood Meridian which agree with you about but I couldn't finish for the reasons everyone usually gives. Thoughtful review of an authors work as usual TY.

@BookishTexan 6 ай бұрын

Thank you. I reread Blood Meridian and I certainly know what you mean and understand why people choose to DNF it. I wonder if I had read it first when I was older if I could have gotten through it. You

@susanneill7142 5 ай бұрын

Thanks for another great vid! I’m a pretty huge CM fan but have read just a handful of his books-Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, & The Road. Of these, The Road is my fav, one of my fav novels in fact. Having said that, maybe it’s obvious that I have no problem with his general pessimism about the human condition, perhaps bc I share it to a large degree. Re his writing, I too love his word choice & unusual sentence structure & descriptions. I also love what I call his biblical imagery & themes tho I’m decidedly not religious & as far as I know neither was CM. The Road to me is a Christ allegory in that the father can be seen as a Christ figure & the son a symbol for humankind. And then his themes of good vs evil could also fall into the broader biblical theme. Anyway, I’ll read & reread his books!! Thanks again!!

@BookishTexan 5 ай бұрын

Thank you for the great comment. All of the McCarthy books you have read are ones that are examples of the McCarthy that I like. They are all light on philosophy, largely absent of long portentous monologues, but contain great stories, characters, and beautiful writing. Its the other McCarthy novels that I dislike because they are often the opposite. I don't mind the bleakness. I mind the McCarthy fans (not you) that seem to obsess on McCarthy's philosophy and revere him as some kind of sage prophet. You comment had given me an idea for another McCarthy video.

@JamesRuchala 6 ай бұрын

Hard to believe McCarthy let any characters survive into a second book in the first place.

@BookishTexan 6 ай бұрын

Very good point. But he took care of that oversight in the third book.😁

@bbbartolo 5 ай бұрын

A friend has read all of McCarthy's oeuvre and was blown away by Blood Meridian. I read All the Pretty Horses years ago and never went for more; I think I pegged him as an "overgrown Boy Scout," how a lit professor once referred to Hemingway. The year I read Horses I wrote Barry Hannah to say that his Bats out of Hell outweighed what I'd read by both DeLillo and McCarthy, and Hannah wrote back to say "I like the way I beat out Cormac" (obviously a friend). I think it was the romantic philosophy that put me off vs. Hannah's more comic take on life. I complained about Hannah's weird story titles, though, to which he said he was probably reacting to "authors who carve a big L (for literature) on their chests" which I thought was a veiled reference to Cormac himself.

@BookishTexan 5 ай бұрын

Hard for me not to defend Hemingway a bit here, but I feel no compulsion to defend McCarthy. I don’t think any author is a must read and certainly not Cormac. If Hannah’s comment was a dig at him it was an excellent one.

@bbbartolo 5 ай бұрын

@@BookishTexan My lit professor was full of praise for Hemingway otherwise, just not his macho values, which I agreed were his limitation.

@BookishTexan 5 ай бұрын

@@bbbartolo Agree completely.

@davidnovakreadspoetry 5 ай бұрын

I’ve never read this author, but just saw something to suggest _Blood Meridian_ is it. I don’t know if I should.

@BookishTexan 5 ай бұрын

I think Blood Meridian is easily McCarthy's best book and a truly great novel. It is very violent and dark.

@stuartmoore1064 5 ай бұрын

I'm reminded of Ayn Rand and her characters that go on and on, sometimes for 50 pages, with her philosophy. I guess the McCarthy books I have read (Suttree, No Country For Old Men, The Road) did not do this (?) because I can't remember any of that silliness.

@BookishTexan 5 ай бұрын

Those books are largely free of the philosophizing, though there is a hint of it at the end of The Road and No Country.

@1book1review 5 ай бұрын

This is one author I have always been quite happy to skip. It was nice to hear your thoughts on him.

@BookishTexan 5 ай бұрын

Thank you. I fully support your decision to skip McCarthy.🤓

@Watchoutforwerewolves 6 ай бұрын

I haven't read any of his books besides Sunset Limited, which I loved. I started a few of his others, breezing through a few pages at the library. I have to admit it didn't fit the mood of time for me to digest it, one day.

@BookishTexan 6 ай бұрын

He is capable of writing very good to great books. Cities if the Plain isn’t one of them.

@amyofhearthridge 6 ай бұрын

A project that no one else remembers. 😂 I’ve only read The Road. 😮 That was plenty for me. 🤣This was interesting! 🤔

@BookishTexan 6 ай бұрын

Thank you. The Road is a lot. To be honest it’s a pretty good distillation of McCarthy’s themes and style so since you’ve read it you probably don’t need to go on if it wasn’t your thing.

@Boxer309 6 ай бұрын

Great observations, and I would agree, that of the 3 stories in the trilogy, 'Cities of the Plains' was my least favorite, though I personally regard 'The Border Trilogy' as an excellent example of great literature. But, I must add that using the expression 'slept together' to imply something very different is so unnecessary. We're all adults here. No need to mislead or entirely misrepresent.

@BookishTexan 6 ай бұрын

Thank you. I certainly think All the Pretty Horses and the first section of The Crossing are very good and wouldn’t quibble over the term great. About my use of “slept together” I don’t script my videos, but I had the same reaction while watching in editing but I didn’t feel like it was worth reshooting. I wondered why that phrase is what came out instead of “had sex” came out. It wasn’t an intentional choice, but maybe subconsciously I hesitated to be more graphic because of McCarthy’s own tender treatment of it or because what is more memorable from the text is the closeness and the embracing. It’s a mystery to me too.

@Boxer309 6 ай бұрын

I completely understand your choice of words there, and of course, the true meaning of the phrase is well understood, but what if we really do have a situation where they did 'sleep together'..... how would we say it without confusion the reader🤔 Interesting conversation and thanks for your reply👍

@TimeTravelReads 6 ай бұрын

Dude bro lit eh? I'll have to check out that list of criteria. I've never read Cornac McCarthy. I can't say that I want to. Someday I would like to read some literature just to say that I've read some books in the cannon, but if I have to read him, I think I'll read All the Pretty Horses or something like that.

@BookishTexan 6 ай бұрын

All the Pretty Horses is a good place to start with McCarthy. I think I went over Steve’s definition of dude bro lit in my video about All the Pretty Horses.

@TimeTravelReads 6 ай бұрын

@@BookishTexan I just found Steve's video. I think that's really interesting.

@scottgraham1143 6 ай бұрын

I think you've got it spot on. You describe everthing I love and hate about him too. I decided not to read Cities of the Plain because I found the end of The Crossing so depressing.

@BookishTexan 6 ай бұрын

I found about 2/3s of The Crossing to be depressing and tedious. Thanks for the kind comment.

@tectorgorch8698 2 ай бұрын

Wow, I had the identical response to the trilogy. First book was the best by far but I hated it when the hero turned into Rambo/MacGuyver while escaping the Mexican officer. I bailed on the third one about halfway through when the girl is escaping her pimp, barefoot, having epileptic seizure, and I thought what next, will she step on a rake? Oh well.....

@BookishTexan 2 ай бұрын

Glad to know that we agree. McCarthy put everything but a rake in her way.

@toddkimm7502 2 ай бұрын

I appreciate your viewpoint and this video. I was really enjoying Cities of yhe Plains until the big dog massacre. It's not just the stupid violence; the quality of the writing bottoms out too (a long way to fall), which is the higgest indictment.

@BookishTexan 2 ай бұрын

Thank you for your great comment. I agree with all of it.

@anotherbibliophilereads 5 ай бұрын

I read the Border Trilogy in the 00s. I have a vague memory of that long conversation at the end. It is mid tier McCarthy for me.

@BookishTexan 5 ай бұрын

I think if I average the books out that I agree with you.

@ariannefowler455 6 ай бұрын

I've only read The Road. I read it a couple months after giving birth to my first child and maybe it was the hormones but the ending of The Road was traumatizing! I have not been able to bring myself to read anything else by this author.

@BookishTexan 6 ай бұрын

I think The Road is a pretty good distillation of McCarthy's themes and style so you've probably got a good idea of what a lot of his work is about.

@bighardbooks770 6 ай бұрын

I like McCarthy, I like him, a lot. But, without Faulkner there'd be no Cormic McCarthy, et al. Good one, Brian. Ive never read _Cities of the Plane,_ and do nt want to.

@BookishTexan 6 ай бұрын

That’s true about Faulkner. Clearly I don’t think you are missing anything by not reading Cities of the Plain.

@TheTrueRandomGamer 3 ай бұрын

I'm not sure why the characterization of McCarthy as a nihilist persists. To be frank, your understanding of his philosophy comes across as very reductive and shallow.

@BookishTexan 3 ай бұрын

I believe I said his philosophy as “a kind of nihilism” and then described what I meant. I also pointed out that McCarthy’s philosophizing is tedious and my least favorite aspect of his work. So you’re probably right that my analysis of it is shallow because I don’t care what it is and I think it ruins his books.

@TheTrueRandomGamer 3 ай бұрын

"You know one of the more interesting aspects of McCarthy as a writer? It actually ruins his books." You might want to consider putting more time and effort into understanding what you don't like before making such a sweeping statement. Otherwise, people who do so have no reason to take you seriously.

@BookishTexan 3 ай бұрын

@@TheTrueRandomGamer You might want to accept that I don’t have to like the same things as you. It’s a maturity thing I suppose. Maybe spend some time contemplating whether or not you are the actual center of the universe whose opinions are fact and whose tastes the rest of us have to follow.

@TheTrueRandomGamer 3 ай бұрын

You might want to accept that "ruins all of his books" is a qualitative statement which people are free to criticize when you demonstrate a lack of knowledge. Maybe consider the idea that I expect intellectual discipline in literary analysis, whether or not it happens to line up with what I personally like.

@joshyaks 5 ай бұрын

Some nicely balanced thoughts! The only Cormac McCarthy book I've read is The Road, which I read not long after the birth of my first son and was quite impressed by. Having learned just a little bit more about the author in the years since - about his obsession with the "manly man", his apparent fondness for violence, and how impressed he seemed to be with his own intelligence - I'm left wondering what I'd think about The Road if I were to reread it now.

@BookishTexan 5 ай бұрын

I think your assessment of McCarthy as a person is spot on. I also think McCarthy is a great example of an unlikeable person who was capable of producing good, and at least once, a great book. The Road distills McCarthy’s themes and style really well and I think it’s a good book.

@ryanthomas7119 5 ай бұрын

The prostitite Magdelana is 16 in the book and Cole is 20

@BookishTexan 5 ай бұрын

Thank you.

@davidnovakreadspoetry 6 ай бұрын

Just on the face of it _Cities_ doesn’t sound like it would be for me. Well, nihilism was never my bag.

@BookishTexan 6 ай бұрын

It is definitely not the place to start with McCarthy and if you’ve read the first two books m the trilogy skipping this one is also a good idea.

@BooksForever 6 ай бұрын

“… or …” lol Nice meta humor in your title.

@BookishTexan 6 ай бұрын

Thanks for noticing.

@BookishTexan 6 ай бұрын

Thanks for noticing.

@CasperLCat 4 ай бұрын

And then there’s the endless untranslated Spanish …

@BookishTexan 4 ай бұрын

That too!😁

@barrymoore4470 6 ай бұрын

McCarthy is certainly one of the great stylists of English prose, which is at least one thing to love about him.

@BookishTexan 6 ай бұрын

I agree.

@bengolden9402 2 ай бұрын

I found your criticism decent particularly about the animal cruelty I found it super unnecessary in the book. Unfortunately you're a spurs fan so I can't agree with you on anything

@BookishTexan 2 ай бұрын

At least you know that as a Spurs fan I am used to suffering.

@Khatoon170 5 ай бұрын

How are you doing mr Brian . Thank you for your wonderful cultural literary. Honestly when we were kids we watched cartoon adventures of Tom Sawyer adventures by mark Twain dubbed into Arabic. Even more than 35 years new generations enjoy to watch our classical cartoons . Can you imagine American series dynasty we watch episode at night after finishing our homework at middle school. In the morning at class we mentioned events of last episode. I gathered main theme of novel and author biography briefly here it’s cities of plain plot summary john Grady cole and billy parham youthful wandering have ended . Two protagonists wind up working together on ranch outside El Paso , place we soon learn is to be shut down into army base . Their infrequent journey as across border are now to who’re housed in Juarez. Novel title comes from Old Testament in reference to sinful cities of sodom , Gomorrah locals ( gensis 19: 29 ) . This novel have reception favorably in New York Times though reviewer criticized McCarthy violent prose and arcane language observing. One begins to miss simple evocation of cowboy life that is so stirring in earlier novels .

@BookishTexan 5 ай бұрын

Hello Khatoon! I am doing well and I hope you are as well. Thank you for sharing your story about watching cartoon versions of Mark Twain’s work. I can’t imagine American kids caring as much about those stories as you and your friends did. Thank you also for the information about the tithe Cities of the Plain being a reference to Sodom and Gomorrah.