As a moderate McCarthy fan I will vouch for Blood Meridian. The Judge is an all-time character and I think it reaches the sort of mythological plane people ascribe to all his work (and has the benefit in this context of not including an Augusta Britt stand-in). Would be really interested to hear your take. All The Pretty Horses is a very conventional story beautifully told. Other than that idk.
tbh I think I may find him more readable now that his cult has been slightly weakened—it's unfair to hold somebody's fans against them and I try not to… but sometimes you just do lol. but I probably won't have time to read it for a while.
One of my old tutors that I’m friendly with had an association with the Santa Fe Institute, that woo-woo physics place where McCarthy hung out a lot the last couple decades of his life. I asked her if she ever met him.
“Yes… I will say the work is greater than the man.” She said he was obviously a creep and gave every new person he met a bunch of annoying tests like, if I remember correctly, “Newton or Einstein?” And there was absolutely a correct and incorrect answer and if you got it wrong he was basically done with you
Beautiful piece.
As a moderate McCarthy fan I will vouch for Blood Meridian. The Judge is an all-time character and I think it reaches the sort of mythological plane people ascribe to all his work (and has the benefit in this context of not including an Augusta Britt stand-in). Would be really interested to hear your take. All The Pretty Horses is a very conventional story beautifully told. Other than that idk.
tbh I think I may find him more readable now that his cult has been slightly weakened—it's unfair to hold somebody's fans against them and I try not to… but sometimes you just do lol. but I probably won't have time to read it for a while.
One of my old tutors that I’m friendly with had an association with the Santa Fe Institute, that woo-woo physics place where McCarthy hung out a lot the last couple decades of his life. I asked her if she ever met him.
“Yes… I will say the work is greater than the man.” She said he was obviously a creep and gave every new person he met a bunch of annoying tests like, if I remember correctly, “Newton or Einstein?” And there was absolutely a correct and incorrect answer and if you got it wrong he was basically done with you
thank you for this astonishing essay. It is reviving.
thank you!