Yeah, I know, Britt has volunteered herself for having played that role, and I am not here to argue against her arguments. What I am here for is to elaborate on something that I first read in Tracy Daugherty's new biography of Cormac McCarthy.

Daugherty says that friends noted that Barbara O'Brien's memoir remained in a prominent place on McCarthy's bookshelf, which warranted an investigation into it. [The McCarthy Books Project might have a lot to say about this, but I just now listened to the latest Reading McCarthy podcast, and nobody mentioned it.]

Barbara O'Brien's Operators and Things: The Inner Life of a Schizophrenic was published back in 1958. It garnered good reviews from such as William F. Buckley and from maverick psychiatrist R. D. Laing.

The author of The Divided Mind, R. D. Laing is mentioned in McCarthy's Stella Maris and was a forerunner of Iain McGilchrist's The Master and His Emissary which some of us here, Parslow and I particularly, used to help interpret The Passenger/Stella Maris.

O'Brien's book is a memoir of her psychotic break and of her recovery by talking it out with a psychiatrist, pretty much like Alice. She begins to see the Operators as "spectral operators," a phrase McCarthy uses. The operators are like appointed archons, in control of this material vale, and O'Brien's often humorous conversations with them will remind you of Stella Maris.

Is this strange? Stand by, I have yet to get to the stranger parts of this.

I can plainly see how McCarthy used Operators and Things to craft Stella Maris way back when. But if you read that book now (and it is a romp!), you will find in it a detective story within a detective story.

Who was Barbara O'Brien? The trail, fore and aft, leads us through a maze of other works, some of which I've already read--and some yet to find. The narrative here takes you to Philip K. Dick's Vulcan's Hammer, to Laurence A. Rickels' I Think I Am Philip K. Dick which devotes an entire chapter to Operators and Things. Lots of other books are referenced, a boon to rare book lovers.

One of my favorite book archivists, Robert Nedelkoff, names Operators and Things in his list of the twelve most neglected books of all time (you can visit his bookblog at neglectedbooks.com).

O'Brien's and Alice's Operators are very much like the "aliens" mentioned toward the end of Ken Grimwood's classic novel, Replay, who play tricks on human histories for their own amusement. I've heard that Grimwood's last novel was planned to be about these Operators. "Other Dimensional" folk with a cynical sense of humor. Aliens hilarious.

Some of the Alien Abduction people claim that O'Brien was one of their fellow abductees, according to one of the forewords in the Kindle edition. This reminds me of Oiler's conversation with Bobby early on in The Passenger.

I wonder if McCarthy himself ever tried to follow O'Brien's trail. In that McCarthy letter someone posted a week or two ago, McCarthy had mentioned Carlos Castaneda's work, saying that whether those books were authentic or simply novels, he enjoyed them anyway. Perhaps he felt the same way about O'Brien's memoir.

What a hoot!

Cormackians (not "mackies," what the hell, Daugherty), I have just posted the episode (on the Reading McCarthy podcast) recorded last summer on the McCarthy Library Project.

From the show notes:

After Cormac McCarthy’s death in June of 2023, his surviving family members were hit with a very complicated question: What in the world are we to do with all these books? In addition to the thousands upon thousands in his house, there were storage lockers in Santa Fe and El Paso. At the same time, leadership in the Cormac McCarthy society was asking, how can we further preserve and sustain the author’s legacy? And so Dr. Stacey Peebles rounded up a gang of Cormackian compatriots, and aided most of all by the Brothers Elmore (Drs. Jon and Rick, respectively) the group descended upon McCarthy’s house to catalog and go through and help classify the more than 20,000 books in the late McCarthy’s possession.  

Guests on this episode of Reading McCarthy include Dr. Stacey Peebles, the author of Cormac McCarthy's Maps and Mazes: Tracing the Critical Reception, which will be out this fall, as well as The War Comes with You: Enduring War in Life, Fiction, and Fantasy, Cormac McCarthy and Performance: Page, Stage, Screen, and Welcome to the Suck: Narrating the American Soldier's Experience in Iraq.

Joining her are the Brothers Elmore: Dr. Jonathan Elmore is co-author of An Introduction to African and Afro-Diasporic Peoples and Influences in British Literature and Culture before the Industrial Revolution (ALG); the editor of Fiction and the Sixth Mass Extinction: Narrative in an Era of Loss, (Lexington) and co-editor of The Evolving Project of Cormac McCarthy (LSU) and New Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy: Encountering The Passenger and Stella Maris (USC Press).

His brother Dr. Rick Elmore is the coeditor of The Biopolitics of Punishment: Derrida and Foucault (Northwestern UP), The Evolving Project of Cormac McCarthy (LSU Press), and New Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy: Encountering The Passenger and Stella Maris (USC Press). His articles and essays have appeared in Politics & Policy, Symplokē, Symposium, Mississippi Quarterly, among others.

The episode link is here.

The work is a discussion between an atheistic nihilism and Christianity, though really, it could be any theism or religious belief or conviction. On the surface, nihilism is the clear winner of the debate. White’s arguments are well-articulated and sharply pointed at Black’s beliefs with Black is unable to effectively counter or retort any of them. Many reviews or interpretations that I’ve seen say that White’s arguments planted the seeds of doubt that could eventually shatter Black’s faith, with his closing questioning at God hinting at this possible fate.

White‘s reasoning is solid and his logic is sound, but that’s just it, it’s all logic, all reason. Not only does White represent someone well-equipped with educated reason well-honed after decades of academia, he represents all of Western argumentative tradition, which has its foundations in Aristotlean reason, reason which is the greatest asset of the mind. White says it himself that he believed in the primacy of the intellect.

Black is nowhere near this level of wielding reason. He punches above his weight considering his background, but he’s not at White’s level. In many ways, Black represents the common person, sort of analogue to Tolstoy’s idealization of the peasant class, but not as naive.

The ending of the story could have his belief shaken, but the reason he is unable to counter White well is also what saves him from sharing his fate. In my opinion, White’s arguments are unlikely to find purchase in Black simply because Black does not place that much importance on reason as he does faith. He is still articulate enough to ask what the purpose of these ”reasonable” beliefs are if they don’t keep you from offing yourself. Are White’s direct answers to this question reasonable? Yes, but only within his worldview where reason, and reason alone, is king.

Epistemic humility is at the core of the Christian belief, probably more than any other spiritual tradition. Black does not understand how something that sounds reasonable could still bring men to do what he believes are grave mortal sins, but that lack of knowing why is fine to live with in his framework. Christianity does not demand you know exactly why everything happens the way it does, and ironically, this very mentality (which is what White believes in) only leads to believing in the opposite, where White confesses that some things just happen for no reason.

The book could have easily been written by a Christian apologist showing the dangers of placing too much stock in reason. Something hinted at in the discussion is the vanity of knowledge, that by knowing more, one runs the danger of sacrificing faith in things for a sort of hubris that what one knows (or could know) is required before placing faith in something.

Boethius wrote the Consolation of Philosophy, a Socratic dialogue between himself and a figure named Lady Philosophy. At its core is the classic theodicy of Boethius asking Lady Philosophy why bad things happen to good people. At the end of multiple books explaining how and why these things came to be, using reason primarily as the vehicle for this discussion, ultimately Philosophy reaches her completion. There is only so far reason can go to explain the world. Indeed, even for something to sound reasonable, there must be faith placed somewhere. Black has faith in God with reason following suit where appropriate. White has faith in reason alone, in the primacy of the intellect.

To use a Biblical allegory, it is fair to judge a tree by the fruit it bears. What the Sunset Limited does is show the fruits each tree bears. We only have this life to give. Which fruits would you rather have?

This is probably NOT Cormac’s inspiration for Blood Meridian but it sure as shit reflects a similar story.

First stanza :
Oh the snot has caked against my pants

it turned into crystal

There’s a bluebird sitting on a branch

I guess I’ll take my pistol

I’ve got it in my hand

Because he’s on my land

Forever Changes might be the darkest music of the late sixties

Suck it Jim Morrison.

There have been many literary analysis done on the meaning of the title of Blood Meridian itself; a challenge to enlightenment assumptions of historical teleological progress and civilization, a deconstruction of the American specific notions of Manifest Destiny and westward expansion, etc.

One that I have yet to come across is how the title of the book and the ideas within it connect to the ideas of the historian Ibn Khaldun. Ibn Khaldun was a 14th century thinker who in his famous work The Muqaddimah postulated a cyclical theory of history based on frontier-settlement dynamics which characterized most of the premodern world. In brief, frontier wild zones allow hardy peoples to develop the traits associated with collective action and conquest which leads to them conquering more effete settled peoples. Over generations, the initial conditions that forged such a group and its power base is dissipated as a result of being tamed by settled living and the ease of the consumptive and sumptuous life that comes with it. In effect, the moment of triumph locks in the decay and degradation to occur. “His spirit is exhausted at the peak of his achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening…”. Politically and militarily, this is so in Khaldun’s thought as well who ties degradation to vitality and power and not merely morality.

This of course has a strong premodern sensibility as most societies of the past understood the association between the frontier, hardship, warfare and power. In fact, most would readily agree with most of Judge Holden’s assumptions regarding vitality and warfare. The title though seems to imply a normative judgment as well with a moral dimension and this seems to me to be the break with premodernity.

It’s an open question of how modernity and its processes reinforce or sever the kinds of historical cycles such as Khaldun’s framework. McCarthy seems to have a stance on this in the epilogue in which mechanization, measurement, extraction and industrial mastery may lead to a fine tuning of the frontier qualities that initially had tamed the land. He seems to imply that the machine and its processes that can tend to itself a thousand years is part of the process of civilized man’s degradation.

These are just some preliminary thoughts that tie premodern thinkers on history to the text and McCarthys own view of history and civilization.

Basically it demonstrates Tom Hardy's world view that God and Religion are fundamentally what keeps you alive and that something that is considered sacred "God" is no more safe than an animal that you kill for survival. The same way he views people

I finished the Tracy Daugherty biography. I have several thoughts on it but really felt saddened by the way he appears to have treated his Father and Mother. McCarthy Sr apparently read his books, fought with reviewers who posted negative opinions on his work, and sent him money no questions asked till he was well into his 40's. Yet, McCarthy did not even bother to see him when he was dying. His mother's reactions to his dad's death and how she didn't appear to hold a grudge against McCarthy's callousness were also heartbreaking.

I just finished The Road and wanted to share my thoughts. For context I decided to read it because of the unnamed boy and father journey across the wasteland because I'm writing a book about an unnamed boy and a knight travelling through a decaying kingdom. While plot wise both are vastly different it was how McCarthy handled the characters decay, time passing and overall descriptions that intrigued me.

Even though I was reading mostly for craft and learning I did enjoy it and found a sort of comfort when I got into the flow of reading his prose. His descriptions are simple enough to picture and the grey, bleak landscape was haunting and scary to imagine what it would be like traversing such a world.

Worse still is the biggest threat of the book. Starvation. Yes there are cannibals and killers but they weren't all that present and the biggest problem was simply that there was almost nothing left and that's terrifying to imagine. Also the ashy weather, sickness and overall lack of resources adds up to a sad journey where death feels better than continuing on.

The ending almost brought me to tears, I won't spoil it for those who haven't read it but I think the book delivered on its premise. I give it 4 stars and would recommend it for anyone thats into a grounded post apocalyptic bleak world.

I know this book has probably been covered many times before but I'm interested in reader's thoughts on it both positive and negative. What did you like most about this book? What resonated with you or what didn't? I'm eager to read what people here think about it.

Don’t judge the video by the cover. I would definitely recommend it, the art was very nice.

Hello!

Just wanting to see everyone favorite BM art! Hoping to see some I haven't seen before.

Thanks in advance!

Cormac is one of my favorite writers. I’ve read Suttree, Blood Meridian, ATPH, and The Crossing.

I’ve also read a lot of Faulkner (Light in August, TSAF, As I Lay Dying, and Absalom, Absalom).

McCarthy’s connection to Faulkner is apparently so obvious that not only is he listed as one of the man’s main influences, but even the covers of his books say that Cormac is the successor to the Faulknerian tradition.

And I gotta say after reading 8 works by these two authors, I really don’t see it at all.

At a pure prose level, Cormac is completely different from Faulkner. Cormac crafts sentences like a blacksmith while Faulkner for the most part is shooting from the hip (albeit very well).

From a literary approach perspective, Cormac focuses almost completely on present action, scene blocking (like the tender scenes between Billy and Boyd or the orchestral scenes of Suttree in bars with his friends). Faulkner focuses on the past, something which McCarthy rarely ever explored in his characters explicitly (we don’t find out Suttree had a kid until like halfway through the book).

The main difference is interiority. I would say McCarthy uses the least interiority of any writer I’ve ever read (even less than Hemingway). Faulkner’s books are like 80% interiority at least.

The only similarity I notice is how they treat the setting. Both really treat the setting like another character, especially the temporal placement of the story. However, there are many other authors that do this besides Faulkner that McCarthy would’ve had access to.

If anything, Paul Bowles seems to have influenced McCarthy far more than Faulkner.

Yes they’re both from the South, obviously. I don’t think that’s a real unifying characteristic though, and if it is, it’s so such a surface level comparison it almost is not worth discussing.

Can anybody let me know what I’m missing?

And they support theory about Passenger being coma dream and Bobby's death during coma neatly.

I just read the mulefoot scene. I could live another century. I don’t believe I could forget it.

Love to see this. Poor print, but when I looked for it years ago I couldn't find it at all. The Drinking scene is especially good. Brad Dourif, Ned Beaty....a lot of good acting.

I saw the interview. I just want to know why Lawrence Krauss, who is otherwise proud and all, was afraid and scared of Cormac McCarthy? Was it CM's knowledge and understanding of things that made LK down his voice and be respectful and all?

From the painting "Lecture on Geology by Judge Holden," by Samuel Chamberlain.

Never noticed this cool detail in the background. As in Chamberlain's memoir (and later, in McCarthy's work) this setting was a lecture from Holden to the Glanton Gang (no others there) so some of these guys are likely other named characters.

Maybe that's John Joel himself shown there too? The Delawares? Davy Brown looking skeptical off to the side?

Cormac surely studied this painting. Maybe it informed his descriptions, and maybe even some of the personality traits he depicted.

Is Jackson's serape dyed with cochineal or has he been scalping? What's that in his hand?

Anybody knows if there is a good hardcover copy of
1. Suttree
2. Child of God
3. outer dark

I don’t wanna buy folio Society and I cannot afford the original first edition because they all go over $1000. There’s also suntup edition, but too expensive 😅

If you have not yet read Tracy Daugherty's biography of Cormac McCarthy, you definitely should, as well as some of the books referenced in it.

Daugherty says that several McCarthy friends noticed this book prominently on McCarthy's shelf: Barbara O'Brien's 1958 memoir, Operators and Things, which tells of her psychotic break and her conversations with the spectral operators in her unconscious, often humorous in the mode of Stella Maris. A must-read available at Amazon.

Milan Kundera's The Art of the Novel, which McCarthy read and admired, is another must-have. Now on my most-beloved shelf with some others of the same ilk, to read and reread whenever my old war wounds might be troubling me in the night. Right now, between the King James Bible and Andrew Klavan's The Truth and Beauty.

I'm a seasonal reader and I studied the biblical Nephilim as a prelude to Halloween and the spooky season, in conjunction with Paul Stobbs' The Nephilim Looked Like Clowns, Tim Powers' Declare, Stephen King's It, and some other interesting riffs.

I bought and read Stephen King's Danse Macabre: An Essential Overview of the Horror Genre in first edition hardcover, decades ago when it first came out, and I decided to read it again this year. I couldn't find it, so perhaps I gave it away or took it to Half-Priced Books.

So I downloaded a copy from my local library, and I'm so glad that I did. This new edition of the work includes add-ons from King, reviewing many books and movies that came out since the first edition. It is a pleasure to read.

Stephen King, like Cormac McCarthy, was well versed in the Freudian concepts of Id, Ego, and Superego and he interprets books and movies with this in mind (see Kindle page 90 in this new edition). I see No Country for Old Men as the conflict between Chigurh, the ant-on-sugar Id vs. Sheriff Bell, the Superego. Moss is the Ego, responding to darkness on one side and light on the other. Conflated with Bell Theory, among other things.

Another interesting facet of McCarthy's work is the lone survivor motif, which at times parallels Melville's survivor escaping on top of the coffin at the end of Moby Dick, which quotes Job 1:17 &c. This also resonates with William Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, about the endurance of the human spirit.

THE END OF THE PASSENGER/FAULKNER/THE HUMAN SPIRIT : r/cormacmccarthy

This came to mind yesterday when my wife and I were at the movies, watching the Brad Pitt movie, Heart of the Beast, a Jack London-styled tale of naturalism. The best dog movie we'd seen since the horror film entitled Good Boy. I loved it, and I enjoy thinking about it.

McCarthy's friend and future biographer, Laurence Gonzales, is an expert on survival stories, and you should read his several works that feature them, both the narrative tales he tells and the instructive how-to advice that he offers.

I can see where his philosophy relates to Cormac McCarthy's own depends-on-what-day-you-ask-me individual existential frame of mind. It is naive certainty which is the danger.

Reading their other works, I have now become a fan of both Tracy Daugherty and Laurence Gonzales. I recommend both.

I dont know why, and I am not even finished with the book. I am just on page 70

But the passage about her opening the case to the violin and playing it and breaking down during it was the fist time a fictional piece evoked a emotional reaction in me.

Like I never cried before today reading something or watching a show

The last line of Hemingway's short story Indian Camp reads: ".... he felt quite sure that he would never die."

Has this been talked about here? Must have been by now, right? Academic paper/s? Threads? I tried searching around, but "never die" and "indian camp" trip over themselves in this sub.

Back to the quote, is this another direct lift/rework/homage source for CMac? à la his famed quote books are made out of books? And, if so, what is to be made of it?

Given the subject matter of Indian Camp, of a youth's witnessing of bloodshed and racism, and the cold human interaction all within/throughout those horrors, and the lies the mind tells itself post-trauma, BM seems to be tied to this short story. I mean, the Father-son relationship… the child is the father of the man. The kid in BM has a father who WONT show him anything, including the bloody world, unlike the father in Indian Camp, so the kid must go looking for it himself - and he finds the judge who will never die... im bricking this big time, but there IS something there...

Just kicking this can after reading the Hem short story just now. Any takers? Wanna toepunt this around?

There's the rainbow trout connection between the end of The Road and Hemingway's Big Two-Hearted River, too, pointed out in the Reading McCarthy podcast on Hemingway... so we know CMac has done this before.

Was excited to hear Scott's announcement on the Reading McCarthy podcast of his new book, which collects content from some of his conversations on McCarthy's Southern novels.

https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/reading-cormac-mccarthy/?srsltid=AU7gw4VnbI_qIG0Ag2rxqsxjRQP35IvN4cUcBhy5JgG7NQ1m1TdPpgzk

I love the podcast and find myself revisiting episodes when I revisit the books.