Why is it so shit?

Guy doesn't even use punctuation wtf

Punctuation is overrated when you're intelligent enough you don't even need it

>I don't need an um tell a in the rain - only stupid people get wet

>tfw Judge Holden rapes the kid at the end

>tfw the Judge was a pedophile all along

>tfw there's no proper ending and it's all up to interpretation

It gave me that heart sinking feeling so often that I felt nauseous while reading and depersonalised and alienated for days after finishing it, I really don't know if it was good but no piece of literature has ever made me feel like that.

The only part that bothered me was the Judge buying the puppies just to kill them and the bear dancing it's heart out while being shot to death.

The absolute least important aspect of his nature. It's an afterthought, a sidecar, an ancillary evil taken up because why not. When you get to the point where you believe god to be war in the sense that it is the arbiter or reality though its capacity to silence, and most likely are some sort of liminal demiurge, then pedophilia is no big thing.

I was just shocked when I realized all the missing children throughout the book were taken by him.

The end is the postscript. What happened between the man and the judge works well as a mystery.

There's really nothing more horrifying than what your imagination can come up with in the absence of the explanation.

>it's
Honestly, bro?
You should give up

taken, raped, and killed

wow fuck you for the spoilers

I think you're in the wrong thread, friend.

Why does he get a pass for writing poor sentences that include 'and' at least three times?

This is gonna sound edgy but Cormac's edginess didn't get me in this book because I'd already read about child rape, human trafficking, brutal murders, brainwashing, serial killers etc. before this indepth ... for research reasons, I'm not a sociopath, trust me...

Anyway, I found myself unsurprised at all the violence in the book as a result, unaffected. Because this had no effect on me, I found most of the book emotionally flat and think McCarthy relies too much on shock effect. The only people he can really affect are those who haven't really visualized/read of/though of such violence and brutality before. this is already what I felt when I'd read that shit I just talked about before .. and that stuff wasn't written by any artists or poets.

So, all in all, I think McCarthy went the wrong way in this book and that trying to shock the reader with gruesomeness isn't quite an artistic thing to do. Wonderful style, emotionally meaningless book beyond all the violence IMO. No, the effect some people say this book had on them, IMO, is greater when you read about shit like that happening in the real world.

that poor bear fucked me up so bad

I had to stop reading for a bit. Then I find out that the bear's child caretaker was raped and murdered after holding the bear in her arms as it died. The ending was more brutal than the rest of the novel IMO. Sure the babies strung up by their jaws was bad, but to see Holden's sheer lack of empathy was something entirely different, especially after thinking he was sort of cool during the book.

If you want an inward focused exploration of the same brutality read Suttree.

He was headed into a deep Joycean style before he swerves into apocalyptic, biblical style of BM.

>especially after thinking he was sort of cool during the book.

lol you mean when he raped and murdered that child outside the ruin? Or when he kept a mentally retarded teenager as a catamite on a leash?

Do we ever know for sure that he raped the retard? Or is it just implied?

>and they road on and he spat and they murdered niggers and he ate a bean tortilla. ye

Two burros.

The puppies did bother me. Anything that Toadvine was bothered by I ended up being bothered by. Although the rapes in the gore after a battle made me squirm a little.

>baby jerky drying on a wire
>dancing bear shot mid-act
>leashed mongoloid catamite
>puréed puppies
>raping while wallowing in fresh gore
>apotheotic yet ambiguous ending with suggested sodomy, scatophilia and dismemberment
>tortillas y burros y falta de comas
Anything else I should mentally brace myself against before I dive in?

The bear was dancing, dancing. He wanted to see it would ever die

The pacing will either make or break you. Some people dive straight into the novel thinking it'll be edgy shock value throughout when it's genuinely not. Just be prepared for the book's pacing outlasting the book's length.

Also beautiful prose.

Just read it already, user. You may know certain passages now but you do not know the journey or the consequences of those events.

don't give up before you read chapter 10. Enjoy the scripture like language of the book

Expect the ratio of descriptions of land with nothing happening to perverse acts, to be 100 to 1.
The book is great, especially in retrospect, but reads like it has 300 more pages than it does.
While reading I became very bored a large number of times, and fell asleep quite a few times.

Obviously this book has made quite an impact if we're going to talk about it this often. No matter if you love it or hate it.

Good job McCarthy

Thank you, lads. To think I wasn't even expecting serious answers. I am looking forward to a slow paced book rich with solemn descriptions of a larger than life land of men. It's just the detailed gore that I'm not looking forward to. Yes, I know it plays a part. I want to mentally prepare my feeble, sissy mind to all the decapitated kittens and cheerful necrophilia that the ol' cruel cobmuncher felt he had to throw in.

>There's really nothing more horrifying than what your imagination can come up with in the absence of the explanation.
otter nonsense, the ending is hack work

Nothing wrong with the pacing though. I don't get it. Do Americans have ADD when people have to defend Blood Meridian's "pacing"?

What a fucking joke of a federation