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anorexorcist
Title: Polar Bear
Joined: May 21 2008
Location: The Cock and Plucket
Posts: 2131
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Has anyone read this? I am going to pick it up tonight. Same author as No Country For Old Men, I loved the movie but never read the novel. I'm pretty excited about the movie of the same name being made so this time I figured I'd read the book first.
Entertainment Weekly named it the Best Book(fiction or non-fiction) of the last 25 years and it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, so with heavy accolades I am pretty excited to start reading.
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Doddsino
Joined: Oct 01 2009
Posts: 5316
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I've heard good things as well, but haven't picked it up
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SoldierHawk
Moderator
Title: Warrior-Poet
Joined: Jan 15 2009
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 6085
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Its an excellent read. You gotta be prepared for a lot of ugliness though; Cormack McCarthy is not a gentle author in the slightest.
If you enjoy it, though, I highly recommend "No Country For Old Men," and then move on to (what I think is) McCarthy's best book, "Blood Meridian." It will fucking haunt your dreams, but its an amazing experience to read it.
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William Shakespeare wrote: |
Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. |
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GPFontaine
Joined: Dec 06 2007
Location: Connecticut
Posts: 11244
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The road is fuckin' hard,
The road is fuckin' tough-ah,
There's no question that-eh
It is rough, rough stuff.
It's the fuckin' road my friend
But it's the only road I know.
When I'm lunchin' on a tasty boosh
Right after the show.
You g-go go go!
The road is fuckin' hard
It's also really fuckin' tough,
There's no question that
It don't take no guff.
The road is a be-a-itch my friend
But it's the only fuckin' road I know,
When I'm snackin' on a tasty boosh
Right after the show.
You g-go go go!
I met a tasty baby in Michigan.
We screwed two times then I left.
Sometimes I think of my baby in Michigan.
Why can't I stay in one place
For more than two days.
Why?!
Because I'm talkin' about the road. [5X]
Road!
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Mr. Magog
Title: Swell Individual
Joined: Oct 10 2009
Location: Greenville, SC
Posts: 104
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I've been reading it...almost done. Can't help but notice Cormac McCarthy takes himself entirely too seriously. Just the way he words things occasionally, I guess. Maybe it's just me. Like he's just trying to show you how awesome his grip on the english language is or something. I mean, on the back of the book it has a quote that reads, "The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, 'each the other's world entire,' are sustained by love." Come on. "Each the other's world entire,"? Who speaks like that? To be fair, once the story starts picking up he cuts the bullshit down a little. Overall, this is why I prefer Chuck Palahniuk to alot of writers nowadays.
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SoldierHawk
Moderator
Title: Warrior-Poet
Joined: Jan 15 2009
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 6085
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^ Well, he does sound a bit pretentious yeah, but I honestly think that's just the way he writes. Its not some attempt to take himself uberseriously. Different writers hear different voices in their heads when they sit down to put words on paper, and I think that's just what he hears translated onto the page. I know when I write I tend to be a little pretentious and much more formal than writing here, or speaking. He COULD just be bucking for some kind of literary award, but, given his subject matter, I don't think that's high on his list of things he wants to accomplish.
If you want to read someone who takes themselves WAY to seriously, check out Thomas Pynchon sometime. The man is a mad genius (mad as in 'batshit insane'), but ohmygod does he know it, and it makes his books even more difficult to get through than they need to be.
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William Shakespeare wrote: |
Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. |
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Mr. Magog
Title: Swell Individual
Joined: Oct 10 2009
Location: Greenville, SC
Posts: 104
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PRETENTIOUS! That was the word I was looking for. Thank you. Even with all that, I would still recommend the book. I've enjoyed it.
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anorexorcist
Title: Polar Bear
Joined: May 21 2008
Location: The Cock and Plucket
Posts: 2131
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I just finished it and I really enjoyed it. It can get a bit hard to read, he sure as shit doesn't hold back on the gruesome details.
As for the "pretentiousness", it didn't bother me at all. When people talk about pretentiousness it's almost like they just want something to bitch about. Half of the great quotes of all time sound pretentious as all hell but no one complains about them because they are profound as I believe this book to be.
It's hard to explain exactly what I liked about it because it was certainly not a very happy story, there is hope to it but that doesn't make it happy.
I'm hoping for a sequel as I think he left it at a point where a sequel would make sense and would still be interesting but I'm almost positive there won't be one.
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Lawyers, Guns and Money |
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Mr. Magog
Title: Swell Individual
Joined: Oct 10 2009
Location: Greenville, SC
Posts: 104
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I wasn't just looking for something to bitch about. I guess I just like stories to by straightforward. Just a preference. Like I said, I enjoyed it overall and look forward to the sequel (Mad Max: The Early Years) myself.
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aeonic
Title: Sporadic Poster
Joined: Nov 19 2009
Location: Kissimmee, FL
Posts: 2747
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I thought that I was going to love this book, considering I'm a huge post apocalyptic fiction type fan. Instead, I ended up initiating several aborted attempts to get past the first twenty or so pages and finally took the goddamn thing to my local used bookstore (the delicious Bookmans) and got like a buck or two for it. Why, you ask?
Because Cormac McCarthy, apparently, is a tardo.
Okay, maybe that's a little too much, but seriously? I don't care if you're the best fucking storyteller in the whole world, if you can't write a full sentence, take a fucking English class. Go to community college and try Comp 101. Here's an example of McCarthy's stellar grasp of language:
When it was light enough to use the binoculars he glassed the valley below. Everything paling away into the murk. The soft ash blowing in loose swirls over the blacktop. He studied what he could see. The segments of road down there among the dead trees. Looking for anything of color. Any movement. Any trace of standing smoke. He lowered the glasses and pulled down the cotton mask from his face and wiped his nose on the back of his wrist and then glassed the country again. Then he just sat there holding the binoculars and watching the ashen daylight congeal over the land. He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.
Grade school kids can do way better than that. Congratulations, Cormac, I now officially hate you more than Sarah Palin but still less than Barack Obama (barely, but still less).
So if you want to write like Cormac McCarthy, giant douche (and no relation to McCallister, at least from what I'm aware of), here's what you do:
Take a normal sentence and chop it into five roughly equal parts. It makes it seem like you've got more to say, even if you're just describing something as simple as using binoculars to check for anything out of the ordinary. Three times more to say, in fact, is what it seems to net you.
Forget about commas. Instead, just put AND between everything you want to cover in a sentence. In fact, while you're at it, forget all about parenthetical notation or quotation marks as well. Even though it flies in the face of common grammar rules, use colons to denote when someone's speaking. It makes you seem unique.
Once you've done this and gotten your book on Oprah's book club, congratulations! Kick back and roll around on your big pile of stupid people's money. Much like Mr. Magog, give me Palahniuk any day, especially Rant. True, it's dystopian futurist more than post apocalyptic, but probably my favorite book of all time.
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Who likes role-playing games? Me. Way too goddamn much. |
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Mr. Magog
Title: Swell Individual
Joined: Oct 10 2009
Location: Greenville, SC
Posts: 104
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Jesus, aeonic, you hit the nail on head!
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