Cormac McCarthy has died

June 13, 2023 1:33 PM

Cormac McCarthy, a critically acclaimed author with a singular voice, has died. McCarthy was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for The Road.

Bibliography

posted by theora55 (117 comments total)

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posted by Dr. Twist at 1:35 PM on June 13, 2023

The Road was haunting and brilliant.

It's sad to see him go, but what a talent.

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posted by dfm500 at 1:35 PM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

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posted by Splunge at 1:35 PM on June 13, 2023

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posted by yangj08 at 1:37 PM on June 13, 2023

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posted by kbanas at 1:39 PM on June 13, 2023

Ah damn. My to-read list for this year includes The Passenger and Stella Maris, and then the triple-punch of Arms and the Man, Moby DIck, and Blood Meridian. Those'll hit differently now.

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posted by nushustu at 1:39 PM on June 13, 2023

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posted by gauche at 1:39 PM on June 13, 2023

“Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.”
—Cormac McCarthy, The Road

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posted by Fizz at 1:39 PM on June 13, 2023 [20 favorites]

The Road was incredible. I remember sitting in the corner of a Big Boy reading it, just openly weeping, and the waitress was like, "Uh.. how... was your food, sir?" and I had to apologize.

I was (and am) too dumb for Blood Meridian, but that's not Cormac's problem. Well, nothing's his problem anymore.
posted by kbanas at 1:40 PM on June 13, 2023 [11 favorites]

"The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show..."
posted by mcdoublewide at 1:41 PM on June 13, 2023 [11 favorites]

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posted by rhizome at 1:42 PM on June 13, 2023

“What could a child know of the darkness of God’s plan? Or how flesh is so frail it is hardly more than a dream.” - Suttree
posted by lumpy at 1:43 PM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]

Wow, he was 89? I somehow thought of him more as a peer age than my parents' age.

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posted by hippybear at 1:44 PM on June 13, 2023 [5 favorites]

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posted by riruro at 1:46 PM on June 13, 2023

Nothing I can say can do justice to his talent. It's sad to see his passing, but it's also heartening that he lived (for the current era) a fairly long life and was able to continue producing absolutely beautiful, poetic works of prose even in his last few years.

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posted by tclark at 1:48 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

such a long and interesting life with a taste of violence and brutality in the writing. Never did try Blood Meridian after reading The Road made me unbearably morose and sitting in the corner sad.
posted by drewbage1847 at 1:50 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

I am gutted. Cormac McCarthy, oh man, what a giant - a visionary genius who could weave a really goddamn good tale. The first time I read him back in high school his words just grabbed me by the gut and made me see the world differently. Blood Meridian. It kept me up nights, questioning what we humans are capable of, for better or worse. Oh, and The Road? Well, that was just pure gold - a masterpiece that made me feel every bit of heartache and hope - every page a poem, every word so exquisitely chosen as to cut like a knife.

He's gone now, and the world's a little darker for it. But, hell, what a legacy he left behind.

"Every step you take is forever. You can't make it go away. None of it." - 'No Country for Old Men'
posted by crayon at 1:50 PM on June 13, 2023 [8 favorites]

They were watching, out there past men's knowing, where stars are drowning and whales ferry their vast souls through the black and seamless sea. - Blood Meridian
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posted by kneecapped at 1:53 PM on June 13, 2023 [11 favorites]

He wrote his own eulogy in every book, on every page, with every missing quotation mark, but it's still weird to know that we won't see another.

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posted by Etrigan at 1:56 PM on June 13, 2023 [13 favorites]

RIP a true giant of literature. I still have a few books in his back catalogue to work through, but I'll never forget the opening monologue in No Country For Old Men:

The papers said it was a crime of passion and he told me there wasnt no passion to it....he told me that he had been planning to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out hed do it again. Said he knew he was going to hell. Told it to me out of his own mouth....I really believe that he knew he was goin to be in hell in fifteen minutes. I believe that....What do you say to a man that by his own admission has no soul? Why would you say anything? Ive thought about it a good deal. But he wasnt nothin compared to what was coming down the pike.

And just like that - I was hooked.
posted by fortitude25 at 1:58 PM on June 13, 2023 [9 favorites]

You can't see a missing quotation mark.
posted by hippybear at 1:58 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

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The Judge is one of the greatest villains in American literature and arguably literature in general.

Ben Nichols (the singer of Lucero) wrote a little concept EP for Blood Meridian called The Last Pale Light in the West that I'll be listening to tonight.
posted by East14thTaco at 1:59 PM on June 13, 2023 [12 favorites]

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posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:00 PM on June 13, 2023

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posted by notyou at 2:01 PM on June 13, 2023

The judge wins again

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posted by theory at 2:02 PM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

All the Pretty Horses was my intro to McCarthy, back in a day when all of my circle of friends were likely to be reading the book of the moment. He was a singular talent, capable of hooking a reader in the opening passages and never letting up. He had a way with characters, a way with dialogue, and a way with poetic prose and that's a rare combination in any era.
I read The Passenger earlier this year and while it wasn't peak CM, it had enough of what made him memorable to be worth the time.
I'm sorry to hear of his passing, and a bit bummed to think that Pynchon, whom I also greatly admire, is not as likely to give us a parting shot.
posted by OHenryPacey at 2:05 PM on June 13, 2023 [6 favorites]

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posted by Silvery Fish at 2:08 PM on June 13, 2023

“How surely are the dead beyond death. Death is what the living carry with them. A state of dread, like some uncanny foretaste of a bitter memory. But the dead do not remember and nothingness is not a curse. Far from it.” ― Cormac McCarthy, Suttree
posted by chavenet at 2:09 PM on June 13, 2023 [8 favorites]

I just bought All the Pretty Horses after cross-checking a couple of best-of lists. I've read and enjoyed No Country for Old Men. Any skippable books?
posted by kirkaracha at 2:09 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

Pynchon is writing all the time and releases works on a surprise basis. I'm not sure anyone saw Bleeding Edge coming out, let along Inherent Vice. Yes, it's been over a decade from Bleeding Edge, but Gravity's Rainbow to Vineland was nearly 20 years. So he might still have a thing for us. Nobody ever knows with Pynchon.
posted by hippybear at 2:09 PM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]

there isn't a dot big enough.
posted by remembrancer at 2:10 PM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]

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posted by Rustic Etruscan at 2:12 PM on June 13, 2023

All the Pretty Horses was my intro. Damn, that man could write sentences. No. That's not correct: what he did was to sculpt language. He made bones and muscles and blood out of words to build characters and worlds and points of view.

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posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 2:13 PM on June 13, 2023 [5 favorites]

Here's an ungated version of the NYT story.

The arrest of T seems to have blown the Times' adjectival gasket; Dwight Garner notes CM's "lush taciturnity" and "raggedly ornate early novels" in his second paragraph.
posted by chavenet at 2:13 PM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

Any skippable books?

No.
posted by chavenet at 2:14 PM on June 13, 2023 [8 favorites]

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posted by BlackLeotardFront at 2:15 PM on June 13, 2023

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posted by condour75 at 2:26 PM on June 13, 2023

"Whether in my book or not, every man is tabernacled in every other and he in exchange and so on in an endless complexity of being and witness to the uttermost edge of the world."
posted by remembrancer at 2:26 PM on June 13, 2023 [5 favorites]

A favorite teacher of Joyce had a class - My Favorite Books. One of them was Child of God by McCarthy. Yes, it takes place in the hill country of East Tennessee. The characters were all residents of the area. The events and actions were all quite believable. But… when I finished the book, I felt like I had been taken to an utterly strange world, like some science fiction place. Alien. And quite disturbing. It’s the only thing of McCarthy’s I’ve read. I read it in the early 90’s. The book is still there in the back of my mind, like some dark creature. I don’t know if I should thank him. But I’m glad I read it. Literature in the right hands can really have an impact.

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posted by njohnson23 at 2:29 PM on June 13, 2023 [7 favorites]

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posted by bumpkin at 2:34 PM on June 13, 2023

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posted by synecdoche at 2:39 PM on June 13, 2023

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posted by wicked_sassy at 2:43 PM on June 13, 2023

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posted by mygothlaundry at 2:45 PM on June 13, 2023

I'm not a horse person and I can't recall the title, but the scene where the rider nurses a gunshot horse through the night really stuck with me

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posted by elkevelvet at 2:51 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

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posted by k3ninho at 2:55 PM on June 13, 2023

I really like, and have reread more than once, Blood Meridian, Suttree, and Child of God. I liked the border trilogy but haven't ever reread it. The Road didn't do a lot for me but I should give it a second read and see if this time it captures me more.
posted by Dip Flash at 3:01 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

━🙞━⚫︎━🙜━
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:04 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

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posted by Bartonius at 3:04 PM on June 13, 2023

I was on the way back from DC to Arizona and needed something to read on the flight back. I knew the name but had never read any of his work. Started reading The Road on the flight and had to stop part way. I was just getting too emotional in my seat. When I finally got at home I finished it. I have never had an emotional reaction to a story like I did then. I've read No Countey and All the Pretty Horses since then. Still need to try and get through Blood Meridian.

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posted by nestor_makhno at 3:13 PM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

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The Road is one of the defining books of my life. Blood Meridian not too far behind. What a loss.
posted by glaucon at 3:15 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

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posted by JoeXIII007 at 3:15 PM on June 13, 2023

I first encountered his work when taking the AP Literature exam way back in the 90s. They included a segment from "The Crossing" and asked us to interpret it and... it was by far the most difficult part of the exam. Imagine being 18 years old and encountering McCarthy's prose for the first time and being asked, "now summarize what this writer is doing." I gave it my best shot. When I talked with others who took the same test, they agreed with me.

So I graduate from college with a BA in British & American Literature. I feel like, okay I'm going to buy this book and I'm going to read this passage in context and I bet this time it will all be so clear. HA! Instead, I left the book with more questions than answers, dazzled and left with a haunting feeling that no other book has ever given me.
posted by HunterFelt at 3:18 PM on June 13, 2023 [9 favorites]

MetaFilter: I left with more questions than answers
posted by hippybear at 3:20 PM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

Another typewriter goes silent.

Child of God scared the crap out of me in much the same way that Faulkner's Sanctuary did. So different but so similar.
posted by scratch at 3:24 PM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

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For those who care, the two short stories he published as a student can be found in the Spring 2009 issues of The Phoenix, the University of Tennessee student literary magazine. It was their fiftieth anniversary retrospective.
posted by Ignorantsavage at 3:36 PM on June 13, 2023 [5 favorites]

A friend of mine once said that you aren't a true Cormac McCarthy fan until you've read Blood Meridian.

It was one of the the few books I've ever read where sometimes I just had to put it down and stop reading, it was so intense.
posted by ITravelMontana at 3:40 PM on June 13, 2023 [6 favorites]

Judge Holden in Blood Meridian is the most chilling character I've ever read. Scarier than ever today because much of the political right aspires to his violence and licentiousness.
posted by Lyme Drop at 3:44 PM on June 13, 2023 [8 favorites]

I first read All The Pretty Horses and was blown away. What delicious incredible sentences. Then I started The Road and had to put it down because it scared me. In my father's later years, after I'd had children myself, he was always urging me to try again. I didn't want to afraid of what Cormac McCarthy might do to me. After his death I read somewhere that one could honor and remember people by reading the books they enjoyed so I picked it up again. I read it in one sitting transfixed. I was terrified the whole time that the boy was going to die but that's kind of the point. McCarthy didn't hurt me. Instead he left me with a small fire of hope. I realize now that my father was trying to bridge a gap between us and connect over how hard it is to raise a child and protect them from this world. I would so much like to talk to him about it but like Cormac McCarthy he's gone forever.

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posted by Alcedinidae at 3:49 PM on June 13, 2023 [21 favorites]

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posted by aught at 4:02 PM on June 13, 2023

My sister, whose reading recommendations have never steered me wrong, told me about The Road, and I got myself a copy, and in some kind of masochistic episode, I read it in a day with “f#a# infinity” playing on repeat.

It affected me in ways I am probably still unwinding.

Blood Meridian is going to get a reread at some point; I haven’t been ready to tackle it again. It’s something for a book that ugly to be written in prose that beautiful.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 4:04 PM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

Wow, he was 89? I somehow thought of him more as a peer age than my parents' age.

That's funny, because he was 89 (at least!) from the moment I first read a word. I mean that in a neutral way (I enjoyed his writing immensely, but I mean my clocking his age in a neutral way).
posted by atomicstone at 4:05 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

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posted by clavdivs at 4:06 PM on June 13, 2023

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posted by djseafood at 4:07 PM on June 13, 2023

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posted by socialjusticeworrier at 4:16 PM on June 13, 2023

I read Blood Meridian about sixth months ago, and it remains on my mind. I have reread the second half of the final chapter about a dozen times because it is just so staggeringly, astoundingly good; and then there is the final paragraph, which has got to be one of the greatest final paragraphs of all time. I'm not sure I know a novel with a more perfect ending. It was the most violent novel I've ever read, and that made it extra-hard at times, but the payoff was totally worth it. What a read. What a writer!

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posted by /\/\/\/ at 4:38 PM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]

I've only read The Road. I became a better parent (father at the time) because of it. Maybe this is the year to read more.
posted by kokaku at 4:44 PM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

I was probably thirteen when I stumbled on the Vintage Contemporary edition of Suttree at the local bookshop. I cracked it open and encountered the first paragraph:

Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the streets lie black and steaming in the wake of the watertrucks and now when the drunk and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in the grim perimeters about, now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you.

My eyes widened. I kept reading. I didn't know what half the words meant:

Old stone walls unplumbed by weathers, lodged in their striae fossil bones, limestone scarabs rucked in the floor of this once inland sea. Thin dark trees through yon iron palings where the dead keep their own small metropolis. Curious marble architecture, stele and obelisk and cross and little rainworn stones where names grow dim with years. Earth packed with samples of the casketmaker's trade, the dusty bones and rotted silk, the deathwear stained with carrion. Out there under the blue lamplight the trolleytracks run on to darkness, curved like cock-heels in the pinchbeck dusk. The steel leaks back the day's heat, you can feel it through the floors of your shoes.

But it felt like a secret world and a secret way of describing that world and I was hooked. Looking back with partially-jaundiced eyes I can see the prose might be a bit purple, a bit much. But this was early-to-mid career McCarthy. The masterworks were about to come, one after the other until his genius was undeniable. He made me want to seek out books that showed how weird and complex and fragile and wondrous the world was, and he made me want to go out and be in that world and come back with stories to tell.

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posted by gwint at 4:49 PM on June 13, 2023 [14 favorites]

All the Pretty Horses has my very favorite prose, unfortunately I think my copy of the book is very far away. It is literally the only time I have ever written something on the pages of a book, to mark that passage. (I remember it was a description of the look in the eyes of a dying/dead deer, absolutely the most beautiful thing I had ever read in my entire life at that point).
posted by LizBoBiz at 5:06 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

There’s a line in blood meridian about how a turtle got its head chopped off and the neck looked like a “cunt”. What a fucking genius.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:22 PM on June 13, 2023

I gave up on Blood Meridian after a passage about a battle’s aftermath that I remember as “the savages raped the anglo saxons.” Pretty ugly, but Metafilter seems to be voting for me to try again. Suggestions on where to start? The Road seems like the absolute bleakest.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 5:45 PM on June 13, 2023

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posted by Unioncat at 6:36 PM on June 13, 2023

Somewhere the Judge smiles.
posted by doctornemo at 6:44 PM on June 13, 2023

There’s a line in blood meridian about how a turtle got its head chopped off and the neck looked like a “cunt”. What a fucking genius.

I'm not aware of him explicitly disavowing any of it, but there's a lot of language in his earlier books that doesn't show up in his later books. (Caveat: I haven't read his two newest books and don't know what those are like in terms of language.)
posted by Dip Flash at 6:51 PM on June 13, 2023

To clarify, I’m 100% serious and he has nothing to apologize for. I’ve read Blood Meridian a couple times and that image sticks with me.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:27 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

Suggestions on where to start? The Road seems like the absolute bleakest.

By my memory, Child of God takes that crown.

No Country For Old Men has its bleakness, like they all do, but it had an obscured optimism to it by my memory. Probably the best you will get for that, and it's also short and easy to read and great.
posted by billjings at 7:36 PM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

I wonder if anyone is preparing to ship his body to the radio preacher from the border trilogy.
posted by oldnumberseven at 7:38 PM on June 13, 2023

Blood Meridian was my first of his and it astonished me: the combination of history and myth, the Judge, those sentences! It also felt like one of the most violent books I've ever read.
posted by doctornemo at 8:01 PM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

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posted by Halloween Jack at 8:15 PM on June 13, 2023

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posted by thermogenesis at 8:16 PM on June 13, 2023

If you're into audiobooks, Tom Stechschulte's readings of Child of God, The Road, and No Country for Old Men are terrific.
posted by dobbs at 8:20 PM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

I just wanted to add my favourite McCarthy line (All the pretty horses), sums up my youth...

Loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing.

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posted by a non e mouse at 8:35 PM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

As great as Blood Meridian is my favorite is also The Road.

I read it in a day with “f#a# infinity” playing on repeat.

How odd. I had the same experience, but with Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada, along with a few other discs in the changer.

I'd agree that ultimately none of the novels are skippable, but here's a plea not to forget about Outer Dark. Emphasis on 'dark.'
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:39 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

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posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 8:48 PM on June 13, 2023

In addition to all the aforementioned qualities of his writing, I’ll add the he wrote some of the most natural dialogue I’ve read. None of his punctuation quirks proved an impediment once you let the flow of the prose carry you.
posted by barrett caulk at 9:27 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

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posted by jabo at 9:49 PM on June 13, 2023

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posted by flabdablet at 10:24 PM on June 13, 2023

Since I'm a horror fan, I guess it's no surprise Blood Meridian is my favorite of his. It's a genuine horrorshow, a parade of atrocities, described in some of the most elegant, sparse, and evocative prose I've ever read, and all the more horrific for it. Never has the term "mythic resonance" been so appropriate, and Judge Holden is one of the scariest, most awe-inspiring (in the original sense of the term) characters in literature.

I'm going to have to go back and read it again, I think, it's been a while, although there are passages that still stick with me, perhaps especially the ending.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 10:30 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

I’ve only read The Road and it was the hardest book I’ve ever read. I remember about halfway through, I couldn’t take it any more; the crushing despair in the book was getting to me. Was there any hope?

Any?

At all?

I needed there to be some hope or optimism in order to continue. In an attempt to find out, I read the last page.

Temporarily satisfied, I continued with the book reassured in the knowledge there would, in fact, be some relief at the end.

Reader, there was not any relief. The book does not let up, or give anything approaching a happy ending. But I’ll tell you this — that last page turned all that despair into a thing of beauty.

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posted by Big Al 8000 at 10:41 PM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]

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posted by hap_hazard at 10:51 PM on June 13, 2023

Only Pynchon is left.
posted by kickingtheground at 11:32 PM on June 13, 2023

The judge wins again

yep

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posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:36 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

I am grateful for all the words and for the film adaptation of No Country for old men.
posted by ersatz at 12:16 AM on June 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

Only Pynchon is left.

A-and DeLillo
posted by chavenet at 12:34 AM on June 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

I feel like Blood Meridian changed me as a person. I only read it in my mid/late 20s but it was so unlike anything else I'd read, so bleak and beautiful and impenetrable. And this was after I'd read The Road and No Country for Old Men.

When I read books or watch movies, I don't tend to have the impulse to interpret things and discover their "meaning". I let the images and story wash over me and I am attracted to mood, atmosphere and moments rather than message and meaning. I will never understand or get the full meaning of Blood Meridian (and I've read plenty of interpretations by folks much smarter), but like the kid who can't read but carries a bible with him, I am unable to let go.

So much so that I have a quote tattooed on me: "When God made man the Devil was at his elbow".

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posted by slimepuppy at 1:28 AM on June 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

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posted by detachd at 3:53 AM on June 14, 2023

I bought Suttree and Blood Meridian last month, Suttree especially gonna hit different now. I think much like he wrote, so I have a love/hate relationship with his style as I find it very difficult to follow, but what a legacy. RIP
posted by daysocks at 4:44 AM on June 14, 2023

He wasn't afraid to show the ugly underneath.

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posted by tommasz at 4:55 AM on June 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

Only Pynchon is left.

I've never been a Pynchon guy as he reminds me of someone I loathe.

Not at all similar in content, but for style, some people may wish to check out Norwegian writer Jon Fosse. Some of his novels stretch hundreds of pages and some of his stories stretch multiple novels, all without much punctuation. No periods, quotation marks, exclamation marks, etc. He'll use a comma, but that's about it.

I recommend Septology (NYB, NYT),
posted by dobbs at 4:56 AM on June 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

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posted by From Bklyn at 6:33 AM on June 14, 2023

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posted by dlugoczaj at 6:56 AM on June 14, 2023

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posted by SonInLawOfSam at 8:43 AM on June 14, 2023

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posted by cool breeze at 9:30 AM on June 14, 2023

I'm not sure what club authors are being qualified for, but William Vollmann is 63 and doing fine as far as I know.
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:27 AM on June 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

I find that sharing that The Road is, hands down, my very favorite book about parenting is an absolutely killer way to weed out the people who will make good friends from those who probably don't want to waste their time with me.
posted by catesbie at 11:35 AM on June 14, 2023 [4 favorites]

. a thousand times over, he was the absolute best in my opinion. I've never re-read any other author as much as I've re-read McCarthy.

"... Suggestions on where to start? The Road seems like the absolute bleakest.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 5:45 PM on June 13 [+] [!] "

LOL sorry to say it but The Road is by FAR his LEAST bleak and MOST hopeful book by about a million. Actually Suttree may be less bleak, but not hopeful at all.
posted by youthenrage at 11:37 AM on June 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

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No one knew the devil better
posted by macrael at 1:28 PM on June 14, 2023

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posted by adekllny at 5:41 PM on June 14, 2023

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I'm still bummed he never wrote the poignant coming of age novel bout being an Irish Catholic New England lawyer's kid who grew up in Jim Crow-era Knoxille and reinventing himself as the literary cowboy of the apocalypse, but I'm okay being the only person who ever wanted that. My dad is a little younger than Cormac but he also spent some of his growing-up years in Knoxville a the son of a newspaperman doing his own kind of literary reinvention. So there's always been something about the McCarthy mythos that felt kinda, sorta familiar in its way.

I never loved McCarthy's books s so much once his books started drifting west, narratively speaking, or post-apocalyptic (my least favorite genre) but I love a lot of his novels. And Suttree is one of my absolutely all time favorites.
posted by thivaia at 7:37 PM on June 14, 2023

I read All The Pretty Horses when I was a living in rural Central America, riding horses, and continued on with the whole border trilogy. Loved them all, by far my favorites of his although others are great, too. I don't think The Road is bleak- I mean yes the setting is a nightmare but it's about a father's love and the inherent goodness of the boy despite the circumstances.
posted by emd3737 at 8:19 PM on June 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

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posted by dbiedny at 10:11 PM on June 14, 2023

Not at all similar in content, but for style, some people may wish to check out Norwegian writer Jon Fosse.

"This late recognition is unfortunate, if superficially understandable. Fosse’s writing is bleak, impassive, mournful, circuitous, almost insistently inscrutable." (NYRB)

oh yess that'll do nicely. thanks for mentioning Fosse.
posted by chavenet at 1:56 AM on June 15, 2023

fucking watermelons
posted by nofundy at 6:25 AM on June 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Can anyone recommend some Fosse books? I’ll note that if you liked Cormac’s westerns and haven’t ready Lonesome Dove, you should.
posted by glaucon at 9:57 AM on June 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

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posted by exlotuseater at 11:41 AM on June 15, 2023

I'm terrified of reading The Road. It's been at the bottom of my book pile for a solid decade. It comes to the top, I put it at the bottom. I've seen the movie, it broke me. It did not help that I had a son about the age of the kid in the movie. I'm not sure I could bear it.

I saw the road at like midnight-2am at the end of a long day and I stayed up to watch 2 more movies to wash it out of my mind. I'm not saying it was *bad* but it was extremely intense. It felt real in a way most apocalypse fiction doesn't.
posted by RustyBrooks at 7:37 PM on June 15, 2023

Cormac McCarthy, the end of an era in American literature
[El Pais, Spain (in English)]
posted by chavenet at 9:47 AM on June 19, 2023

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posted by Mutant Lobsters from Riverhead at 3:43 PM on June 19, 2023