Cormac McCarthy on Robert Oppenheimer
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- čas přidán 6. 11. 2022
- Today we will be watching a clip and having a discussion on Cormac McCarthy’s thoughts on Robert Oppenheimer. At some level, McCarthy and Oppenheimer are dyads and shadows of each other! Oppenheimer appears in Cormac McCarthy's novel "The Passenger" and in this video, we will also discuss Oppenheimer's schizophrenia in relation to Alicia's schizophrenia in "The Passenger." We will also be discussing Robert Oppenheimer's favorite books.
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Cormac McCarthy is an American writer who we consider one of the greatest authors of all time. He was born in Rhode Island but was raised and wrote his initial works in Tennessee. However, his most famous (and best) works were written in the Southwestern United States. Below are some links and my opinion on all his books!
Book Name: Stella Maris
Author: Cormac McCarthy
Publication Date: December 6th, 2022
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Rating: 8/10
Purchase link to support Write Conscious: amzn.to/3YaZa5r
Book Name: The Passenger
Author: Cormac McCarthy
Publication Date: October 2022
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Rating: 8.5/10
Purchase link to support Write Conscious: amzn.to/3YiEdFN
Book Name: The Road
Author: Cormac McCarthy
Publication Date: September 2006
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Rating: 7/10
Purchase link to support Write Conscious: amzn.to/3xfGuW8
Book Name: No Country For Old Men
Author: Cormac McCarthy
Publication Date: July 2005
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Rating: 7/10
Purchase link to support Write Conscious: amzn.to/3JZD3KW
Book Name: Cities of the Plain
Author: Cormac McCarthy
Publication Date: May 1998
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Rating: 8/10
Purchase link to support Write Conscious: amzn.to/3lqAreJ
Book Name: The Crossing
Author: Cormac McCarthy
Publication Date: June 1994
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Rating: 10/10
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Book Name: All the Pretty Horses
Author: Cormac McCarthy
Publication Date: May 1992
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Rating: 9/10
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Book Name: Blood Meridian
Author: Cormac McCarthy
Publication Date: April 1985
Publisher: Random House
Rating: 10/10
Purchase link to support Write Conscious: amzn.to/3RKMEY2
Book Name: Suttree
Author: Cormac McCarthy
Publication Date: May 1979
Publisher: Random House
Rating: 9.5/10
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Book Name: Child of God
Author: Cormac McCarthy
Publication Date: 1973
Publisher: Random House
Rating: 6.5
Purchase link to support Write Conscious: amzn.to/3jDOFc0
I read a little about O’s children-a boy and his younger sister who was born during the stay at Los Alamos. They had big problems: boy didn’t finish high school, became a carpenter, recluse, lives on ranch of his dad’s in isolated area of Arizona. Daughter graduated college, landed in Virgin Islands, trying to be a translater. She and brother harassed by intelligence agencies. Two failed marriages and suicide at age 33. Sounds like a tragedy from which McCarthy might have gotten inspiration 🤠
Outside of William Burroughs, Cormac McCarthy is one of the most frightening minds in literature. He has a singular imagination and will of execution of that imagination which absolutely terrifies me.
Well said!
His imagination terrorizes you, huh?
Once again, I am so happy I came across your channel and I’m really excited for all the different Cormac videos you mentioned in this video releasing soon
LETS GO! Recording a bunch today!!!
@@WriteConscious Yeah it’s great that you are creating this community here. I’m a 20y/o college student and don’t have any friends that share my literary interests😂. I’m curious though, as someone who loves deep reading and evidently is a huge fan of Cormac, how would you define your music taste?
-Jack
Hey, I'm 29 and spent years in English departments and still barely have any friends that share my literary interests lol. So, here are my main genres
Conscious Rap
Desert Rock
Indian Classical
Ambient
Psychedelic Jazz
Progressive Classical (Nils Frahm's "Spaces" for example)
How about you? If you make music you can send it to my email and I'll listen!
I think Macbeth is the most McCarthyesque Shakespeare text. Not just for the violence and murder of a Blood Meridian, but in all McCarthys books the specter of violent death is called up as though it were a dark gnostic force with a will of its own and the characters must cope with its power. Llewelyn and John Grady Cole see it up close and personal. Llewelyn has seen war but this violence of an Anton chigurh is on another level. I think Hamlet is a close second but Hamlet doesn’t really have to deal with this force.
Love it! Great comment Carmen! Macbeth is very McCarthyesque! I probably leaned to Hamlet because I just watched the 4 hour 1996 movie version yesterday lol!
Yes, I also would have referenced Macbeth. Dealing with the same chthonic forces and ending up with the same destructive results. And the story about Oppenheimer telling Truman they both have blood on their hands is just a reiteration of Lady Macbeth's madness unto death.
Love the Twin Peaks footage being used
Lol! Forgot to put when Gordon Cole is whistling in front of a nuclear bomb painting too 🤣
Wow way to make an artistic analysis of two great thinkers/artists at some level. Very interesting video!!!
THANKS SUMMER!!!
Very interesting connections. I'm not sure I will read the Passenger...loved Blood Meridian, the Road, Sunset Limited, may not want to go further, maybe Suttree, but love the influences you are citing. THANKS!!!
You should try "The Passenger." I think you will like it if you liked Blood Meridian and The Road.
@@WriteConscious i probably will, thank you. I now seem to want to read something with a sense of optimism. And Cormack is dark... but writes truly great sentences, often very visual imagery, which I love. The Oppenheimer connections are very inspiring, thank you for those.
@@WriteConscious 4 weeks later I await my copy of the Passenger to arrive...
Oppenheimer was misdiagnosed by a single psychiatrist as schizophrenic. This seems to mostly have been due to Oppenheimer's battle with depression and how eccentric he was. I don't think there are any real ties between Oppenheimer's misdiagnosis and Alicia. I would see Alicia's condition much more influenced with McCarthy's interest in the unconscious and a lot of research around mental illness and the unconscious that has been done by those close to him and the essay he wrote(The Kekulé Problem). It would be hard to say Alicia and Bobby's ties to mathematics and physics isn't directly due to the work McCarthy has done at the Santa Fe Institute, which was built right in the area where Oppenheimer spent a lot of time, so there are many direct connections between it all, however I don't think his misdiagnosis is what lead McCarthy to creating a character with this mental illness, that would be pushing a narrative a little to far for me.
That's why I said it was a big reach that there was a connection between Oppenheimer and Alicia lol. But, I agree he got misdiagnosed for sure. The psychoanalytics back then were screwing up so much! Thanks for commenting John! Hope all is well.
@@WriteConscious oh yeah, the diagnosis issues continue today. Great video again! Can't wait to see the next
For real though. With the growing problems I've seen the past six years with my students CBT was maybe a worse replacement lol. Thanks John!
@@WriteConscious Fully agree, I see it in my field all the time. People with the wrong diagnosis completely or getting no help at all when they clearly have an issue. Appreciate the comments
@@WriteConsciousThat wasn't a misdiagnosis, the word is expedient. 🎉
Thanks!
Ted! Thanks for all the support. Means a lot! One of the first donations on this channel. Trying to spread the best literature to the masses and you sharing your hard earned money with me means a lot brotha! LETS GO!
1:40 why you show a photo of Niels Bohr ?
Mistake!
I’ve heard a story about Oppenheimer going in to see Truman after the bomb, and in essence, Oppenheimer says to Truman that he’s got blood on his hands. Truman is upset by this and sort of says “you’ve got blood on your hands!? I’ve got blood on my hands.” What are you fucking talking about? And promptly escorts Oppenheimer out of the building. Truman told his handlers “don’t ever bring that fucking cretin around me again” his sentimentality makes me sick. I’m heavily paraphrasing, but this is, in essence, the story.
Yeah, I've heard that too! Sad that people at the top can't have candid conversations about what they're doing. But, if they did, they'd all probably go crazy with all the destruction and pain their orders created. Even if they were just orders.
Wow
I hope Cormac gets to see Oppenheimer by Christopher nolan!
Imagine seeing him in the theatre :O
@@WriteConscious welp this fuckin sucks. Rip 😥
Not Hamlet, compadre, but King Lear ! 🤔( "Green Fire", IngramSpark, Geoff Nelson Hill ) 🌈🦉
Schizophrenia explains a lot about Oppenheimer. I love the world, I must destroy the world. And I can't help myself. Hence, The Gita as balm to his troubled conscience.
Agreed! He was an early adopted of a westerner using eastern philosophy to soothe and cope trauma (also to uplift and become better.)
Write Conscious take a look at Manu Larcenet on the BD the road.
Most poets viewed the wasteland as garbage because it doesn’t actually express real things in there. It’s all just imagery with no context. Fantastic imagery but no thought. I like it, but gotta also respect what some very good poets told me.
Reading an authors entire opus absolutely makes one a scholar on that author. Perhaps not the most learned scholar, but your gatekeeping is absurd and a little embarrassing.
Hey William, I agree with you! Sorry for not clarifying more. That's my main goal with this channel. To turn non-academic scholars into scholars and help them start posting videos, podcasts, and blog posts on what they think. I was speaking about a problem in academia where scholars hop from author to author for publications to fuel their journey toward tenure. Then most of the time they grandstand as better than the citizen scholars like you and me.
I had a professor discover McCarthy and a year later he taught a course on it. I had a scholarship, but it would have cost me 2k to take the course. We read "The Road," "Blood Meridian," and "The Border Trilogy." It was one of the least informative courses I've taken! The course comprised 4 MULTIPLE CHOICE QUIZZES on McCarthy and he made attendance 25% of the grade (every other class was 10%.) He did this to create a captive audience of us. He never asked what we thought, and would 50% of the time brush over the monthly question someone dared to ask. However, this professor published two papers on McCarthy, gave a conference speech on McCarthy, and lists that course on his C.V. He wrote the papers from a philosophical perspective that he wrote all his papers about.
This guy is considered an "expert" by the world. Someone who reads all of McCarthy's work is considered a fan lol.
Read Bhagavad Gita bro...
lmao, I have many times and read multiple translations. Maybe comment on what I'm missing and help build the conversation!
@@WriteConscious In The Verse which Oppenheimer quotes"I am become Death..." The God Krishna is sounding like the God of Old testament..Yahwa... Omnipotent ,Ambivalent and Loving to those who come to his Shelter....
Thank you! What can we learn about Oppenheimer or his relation to Cormac from Krishna taking more Saturnian energy and Oppenheimer utilizing that?
Did, made a puppet theater from it even