Cormac McCarthy
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- čas přidán 22. 06. 2024
- Reflections on, and a small tribute to, a favorite writer who incidentally had a strong influence on the language of the Cowboy Hávamál.
Jackson Crawford, Ph.D.: Sharing real expertise in Norse language and myth with people hungry to learn, free of both ivory tower elitism and the agendas of self-appointed gurus. Visit jacksonwcrawford.com/ (includes bio and linked list of all videos).
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Another quote from Cormac McCarthy that I really like about luck is "I got what I needed instead of what I wanted and that's just about the best kind of luck you can have."
Cormac McCarthy is one my favourite authors. His novels and writing have inspired my own books. The literary world lost one of the legends and he will become as much a mythical figure as the characters in his work.
McCarthy's writing speaks on elusive truths that reveal the cruel frailty and beauty of life and living.
I've never been quite so moved by any other written words.
I went to pick up a copy of Blood Meridian at Barnes and Noble yesterday. A kid helped me find it and told me McCarthy passed away. I had no idea. He is a great author.
I’ll have to come back to this because I’m late for a lecture but as someone whose life has also been irrevocably touched by this man’s work, I just wanted to share a line from The Crossing that I’ve thought about pretty much daily since I read it years ago: “What is lost when men die is not the world but only the image of the world in men’s hearts.” McCarthy’s words live in me as they do in many of us. They occupy a whole region of my inner landscape and they always will. Thanks for this reflection.
My version: “What is lost when men die is not the world but only the men who die.”
All The Pretty Horses is such an epic yarn. Totally agree from here in Santa Fe!
Suttree is my favourite novel of all time. I've never had such a deep and immersive experience through just words.
Don't feel obligated to respond, Dr. Crawford. Thank you for all your fine work. You are a boon to us all. From beautiful Madison, Wisconsin, here's wishing you... all the best.
Blood Meridian was the book that really taught me the power of literature. It's incisive, chilling, thought provoking. It parades around classical allusions like a grisly trophy from a manhunt. It's a book of serene beauty and maddening horror, and questions the nature of the soul. I find myself returning to it about once a year, and I find myself staggered every time.
I need to get around to his last two books. I've read all his others.
I really appreciate these more personal videos
To me…the last page of The Road is one of the greatest passages I’ve ever read in the English language.
I'd love to know more about McCarthy's engagement with early medieval literature. I know there is at least one article that examines McCarthy's depiction of the martial code in Blood Meridian alongside Beowulf. The judge's sermon on war is a kind of twist on the premise of trial by combat. Maybe its my own bias, but the monster in the cave from the opening nightmare in The Road - 'a great stone room where lay a black and ancient lake' - really evokes the lair of Grendel and his mother.
Outer Dark and especially Suttree really showcase McCarthy's medieval predilections... The latter artfully references the Saxons and is replete with little-known heraldic terms, e.g. addorse, aspectant.
The man's works have such an element of timelessness.
I read The Road in my senior year of high school. It had a tremendous impact on me. McCarthy will always be one of my favorites.
One of my favorite creators talking about one of my favorite authors. What a great day!
My favorite quote from No Country for Old Men is: "How many cats you got?" / "Depends on what you mean by 'got'".
A wonderful tribute. No surprise to learn that you're so steeped in this literary titan's corpus.
How interesting - I just finished The Road, my first Cormac, yesterday.
I just added All the Pretty Horses to my TBR. Thanks!
Like Professor Crawford suggest, read "The Crossing" first followed by ...Pretty Horses and "Cities of the Plain." These books are called the Border Trilogy but this must be some editor's marketing strategy because "The Crossing isn't related to the story of the two cowboys, John Grady Cole and Lacy Rollins.
I'm onto my 5th read of Blood Meridian. What a legend McCarthy was.
Good advice about maybe passing if you care about the characters. I had a 30 year career in mental health and endured a boatload of sacrifices for it because I care about people. All The Pretty Horses left me so depressed I put McCarthy down and never picked one of his books up again.
Apologies to Jackson, in spirit anyways, since he tends not to read through the comments!
You know things are cool when you discover so many ‘related’ and overlapping instances in life. Cormac, Gun Jesus, cowboys etc….Dr. Crawford is one that you just KNOW would be a cool dude to sit and have a steam and a bourbon with.
Likely not a bourbon because I believe Dr. Crawford is a teetotaler.
@@weepingscorpion8739 According to one of Dr. Crawford's videos, his former alcoholism ruined that episode of his life, forcing him to live one day at a time without alcohol, and lately the one reason he finds not to drink is what a pity it would be to have gone so long only to start back now.
All the best, Dr. Crawford.
@@kennethflorek8532 Yes, I remember him mentioning his alcoholism in one of his earlier videos (one of the porch ones, maybe?) but the details escaped me.
It was great hearing you discuss contemporary fiction and your relationship to it, I'd love to hear more!
The last few lines of The Road had a very strong impresion on me. I know them by heart like a poem. That's the only novel I've read from McCarthy. I had no idea he was such a major author in the english speaking world.
Thank you Dr Crawford for sharing McCarthy's beautiful quote. I have written it down and have it up by my desk along with other inspiring quotes.
Hope you have a relaxing time during your vacation😊
I love all of your videos, but this was a great little treat. And yes, that quote about luck is fantastic. Seems like it could be ripped straight out of Havamal
What a wonderful tribute to McCarthy. I watched a bit of the movie, "The Road". I have read some of of the book. I have picked up "All the Pretty Horses" but I haven't read it yet. I like the cover of the book and the name because I have been around horses my whole life. I must confess that even more than your Norse language and myths videos, I really love the videos' on your personal reflections, such as the Ranch Porch Series. I think you have potential to be a great author yourself if you took your career in that direction.
This was a very nice personal tribute to a wonderful writer. Thanks for sharing.
The Road was terrifyingly beautiful. Love your channel.
Love this tribute and share the sentiments!
You should definitely read Suttree Dr. Crawford, it truly is one of his greats despite being lesser known.
100% agreed. I consider *Blood Meridian* and *Suttree* to be the best American novels ever written.
Cormack Mcarthy changed my life and renewed my love of literature similar to the way david lynch renewed my love of film.
Your voice is amazing!
Funny thing is I felt in a similar manner to Dr Crawford. I did work up the courage and got a wonderful reply. In my opinon, the greatest tribute you can give an author is to amplify their voice.
You gotta read Suttree!
There have been a few mentions of 'Suttree', Yes Yes Yes👍Another one very much worthwhile is 'Outer Dark'..... Wow
Blood Meridian is the best American novel IMO
@@maxwelllegere1483 i read it and Being and Time while working midnights at a dead end job while struggling as a university student. for me, he is just letting the muses speak through him. but im also a bit eclectic as you may be able to tell 🙃
@@maxwelllegere1483 if i could throw two life changing books at you, The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh and Camus' The Stranger. if i had to throw in a third itd be A Rifleman Goes To War. all were important reads for me
I figure if I keep reading McCarthy I'll eventually remember how to speak Spanish. His favorite theme seems to be: if you cross the US-Mexico border, terrible things happen. Yet it somehow does not come across as either anti-Mexican or anti-American. I think McCarthy is one of the most thoughtful, intentional writers. It can be difficult to get the point, but there is always a point.
I had no idea that Cormac McCarthy had died. I've been reading Blood Meridian. McCarthy is nearly peerless.
Some stories echo in your heart for a long time.
Jackson Crawford's Blood Meridian CONFIRMED
...but seriously, I've had several cases where I put off writing to someone whose work I admired or made a point somewhere that stuck with me, and didn't, and then it became too late. Would it have put off their demise? No. Would they have responded? Depends, probably not. Would I have gained anything from them doing so? Doesn't matter - the nagging that I should have expressed something when I said I would ended up worse than having nothing from a letter or something go off into the ether (or the bin). Do it, even if it's saying something nice on an Internet post - and while we're on that topic thank you Dr. Crawford for this and everything else.
I have 'heard' "The Passenger" as an audio book and its companion piece, "Stella Maris" perhaps even more astounding. I just think his last works were his magnum opus. Now that he is dead we will never know who the 10th passenger was, because the way "The Passenger" ended, surely there was to be a third book. It is like Mozart's requiem.
I used to say I only read dead authors, except for Cormac McCarthy. Now I suppose I don't have an exception. Of his earlier work, I can't recommend Suttree highly enough.
I read "All the Pretty Horses" and the whole Border Trilogy before I even knew who Cormac McCarthy was. Truly brilliant.
He was a fine author.
i have read most of his books. the Crossing is my favourite. Cant handle the Passenger, though!
Unattested in my vocabulary! Hahah.
Wonderful tribute
I picked up my copy of The Road in Madison as well. Half Price Books on the East Side, not the airport. McCarthy never explains what caused the disaster, but I've assumed it was the Yellowstone Caldera exploding. The characters wouldn't have known, and it's best left unexplained. I believe I've read and listened to the audiobook of Blood Meridian six or seven times. Judge Holden is the greatest villain in the history of fictional villains...
No Country for Old Men is the first McCarthy book I read. I quickly dove in and devoured his other works. Child of God is the only one I just couldn't get through.
Read his books over and over and over….
"He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing."
Blood Meridian is my favorite novel.
Are you ever going to take the leap and write a novel, Dr. Crawford?
I'd ask how he avoided the Nobel Prize, but really I know.
Child of God.
I'll have to give "All The Pretty Horses". I read The Road but was ambivalent about it.
The Judge is one of the most evil characters in fictional history.
@Jackson Crawford Did you read The Sisters Brothers yet?
I seem to have read only the really apocalyptic stuff, which I’ve enjoyed/endured (probably not Child of God tbh). Maybe I should look at some of his less bleak stuff. Or is this going to be bleak too?
Did you learn to whisper in a sawmill?
Well, I'm about to make myself very unpopular, but I don't share the positive opinions for McCarthy's work. My main objection is that his characters are always victimized in an utterly pointless and arbitrary manner. Which I find bizarre from a man who is famous for wanting to write about life and death. That's great and all, but since his characters actions are often random or driven by forces beyond their control, and they are always victims of arbitrary and meaningless violence, suffering, and death, then what lesson are we to learn about life and death? I was already aware that people sometimes suffer seemingly random acts of mayhem. I was already aware that many millions of people suffer bad life outcomes through no fault of their own. And I was already aware that life is meaningless. So, it seems to me that if you want to speak about life and death from the perspective of a harsh realist, it would be how to give meaning to life, how to overcome your circumstances, and how to not be a victim. None of that is present in any McCarthy novel. It's all dark, pointless suffering. It's bizarre random stuff happening to the characters that they cannot escape. With all respect, I don't know how one could possibly be enriched, much less moved, by an author who is rubbing a steaming pile of Nihilism in your face.
For me it's not really about gleaning a philosophy about the world from what the characters go through. It's just about the nature of experience in and of itself. McCarthy's descriptions of life, of being in the world, are more vivid than anything I've read by any other writer. It makes me look at the world in new ways. Not 'the world' as in harsh realities and suffering, but the world as in birds, water, light, strangers going about their day, the ways people speak, the history in everything. The texture of life. I've never read another author who can capture it like he did. To tell dark stories among all this makes it even more powerful.
Made me think of one of my favourite passages from "Suttree" which is not very nihilistic:
He turned off the light and sat in the easy dark and listened to a rip in some rocky shoal, a gentle whispering in the reeds where the river ran. A figure came down from the fire and squatted in the grass and rose and went back. The willows at the far shore cut from the night a prospect of distant mountains dark against a paler sky. Halfmoon incandescent in her black galactic keyway, the heavens locked and wheeling. A sole star to the north pale and constant, the old wanderer’s beacon burning like a molten spike that tethered fast the Small Bear to the turning firmament. He closed his eyes and opened them and looked again. He was struck by the fidelity of this earth he inhabited and he bore it sudden love.
I’ve only read The Road. It was incredibly boring. Maybe half a dozen things happened the entire book.
Always meant to try some of the others though.
@@sione_etc Then clearly you haven't read Hemmingway. Personally, I think I could do better than McCarthy by the standard you've laid out, while also using proper grammar and punctuation. To each his own.
@@juliancate7089 😂😂 you sound fun. Just sharing my perspective, not trying to have a go at yours but yeah by all means turn it into a pissing match for no reason lmao
@@sione_etc When will I learn that people are thin-skinned? I knew you were not attacking my view. I knew you were just sharing your perspective. And so was I. There was nothing more to read into it, but you managed.
Kind words for yuu wun tyme ☝️⏱
Blood Meridian is mid tho