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Cormac McCarthy's personal library

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Cormac McCarthy's personal library

#71

Post by idoubtit »

wewxjfq wrote: post #53

> They were guessing it contained upwards of 20,000 volumes. By comparison, Ernest Hemingway, considered a voracious book collector, left behind a personal library of 9,000. Reminds me: I once read a listicle about famous people with large personal libraries. Most were writers and had collections in the lower thousands, a few reached into the tens of thousands. The person with by far the most books was Karl Lagerfeld…

Among the famous writers that I know through their writings, I'd expect Jorge Luis Borges and Umberto Eco to have read many thousands of books, because that wide culture was a major element of their fictions. The later did have 50,000 books at home, but the former became blind and probably didn't own many books.

With simple math, reading 2 books each week leads to at most 7,000 over a lifetime. If Denny McCarthy's guess is right (read 85% of 20k), his older brother read about 4 to 5 books a week, every week, from teenager to his old age.

Re: Cormac McCarthy's personal library

#72

Post by lourendotco »

random_moonwalk wrote: post #68

Are there any collections of annotated pages from books belonging to well-known authors that have been made available online? I'd be interested to get some impression of how they engaged with the material, whatever it is.

you could start here https://archive.ph/M2H3s here you can find an archive of hannah arendt's marginalia and annotations https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/hapl_marginalia_all/

Re: Cormac McCarthy's personal library

#73

Post by justupvoting »

BrenBarn wrote: post #58
bexsella wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that the ending of the book is optimistic despite the event that precedes it. An imperfect father wants the best for his child, and does the best he can with the hand he's dealt. In a dying world of cannibals and worse, there are people who are good, and whose surroundings don't poison their view on what it means to be good. "Do you carry the fire?" is, to my mind, an incredibly optimistic sentiment.

The ending is definitely the most optimistic part of the book, but on balance I think the overall picture is still excruciatingly bleak. It gives me the impression that any optimism of the part of the characters is likely unwarranted. They're still doomed.

The point is that everyone is doomed (even if you imagine we can survive the civilization-murdering tools we've cobbled up, we can't outrun physics), but that even at our most vulnerable, since the book occurs during a period directly after Armageddon, it is possible for some goodness in us to persist.

I don't want to spoil, but the optimism isn't for the characters, it's for we the reader, and the species.

The thimble of fire joins the wider flame. Goodness survives even there, and even then.

Re: Cormac McCarthy's personal library

#74

Post by elephant81 »

octygen wrote: post #5
lomase wrote: post #3

The Road is one of the most powerful books I have ever read. I could not stop reading it, but at the same time I hated how it made me feel. I stoped reading novels for years after finishing it.

The Road is my favorite fathering book ever. I have recommended it to all my dad friends. Audiobook is excellent too.

I've read it twice. Once as a naive 16-year-old. Once, as a young father. Profoundly upsetting the second time.

Re: Cormac McCarthy's personal library

#76

Post by 47282847 »

metadat wrote: post #33
aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that’s an allusion to the Gnostic demiurge.

For the uninitiated (like me!): TL;DR: An old testament reference to the "malevolent god". E.g. "god in the old testament wasn't so nice or forgiving.." > In Gnosticism, the Demiurge is the lesser creator god who fashioned the material world and is often seen as the God of the Old Testament, Yahweh. Unlike the supreme, unknowable God, the Demiurge is ignorant, imperfect, and sometimes malevolent, responsible for the…

The allegorical parents and the internalized judge to overcome.

Re: Cormac McCarthy's personal library

#78

Post by ycombinete »

blast wrote: post #47
aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the only book I’ve read where I came upon a passage that literally caused my jaw to drop.

Do you remember which one?

It is most certainly the feed-people in the basement scene. I felt dizzy after reading that.

Re: Cormac McCarthy's personal library

#79

Post by justupvoting »

blast wrote: post #57
tehnub wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like the book itself isn't nihilistic but there may be nihilistic characters in it, which doesn't seem like something worth criticizing it over.

How do you tell that a book with nihilistic characters isn't a nihilistic book? The difference is obvious in principle, but I'm not sure it is in practice.

I can't think of a single character in the book for whom nihilism is their defining trait, and certainly not the primary characters. The effort to preserve goodness in the world only really matters when it's hard, when it comes at cost. The book turns that up to 11, but that is why it is hopeful.

If you want to read McCarthy doing nihilism, maybe try the sunset limited.

"You give up the world line by line. Stoically. And then one day you realize that your courage is farcical. It doesn't mean anything. You've become an accomplice in your own annihilation and there is nothing you can do about it. Everything you do closes a door somewhere ahead of you. And finally there is only one door left."

Re: Cormac McCarthy's personal library

#80

Post by justupvoting »

mirabilis wrote: post #16
JKCalhoun wrote: post #4

"McCarthy’s detractors, meanwhile, found his writing overly mannered, his characters overly masculine, and accused him of relishing the violence he wrote about so vividly." Yeah, maybe his detractors were on to something. I haven't even started "The Road" because of its reputation. I have only read "Child of God" and wondered why someone might write about the worst among us. But then I'm not a fan of Quentin Tarantin…

Haven’t read “The Road” yet, but I was able to take the time to read “Blood Meridian” this year— I don’t think I would describe the violence depicted as “relished.” It came across as vivid in an arduous, can’t-look-away-from-the-wreckage-so-bear-witness way, and I was really intrigued by how the Kid’s POV dissolves during the worst of it. And about “why someone might write about the worst among us”—the glory-seeking…

I think McCarthy is one of the greatest American writers, but I will say my two main gripes with him are his tendency to drift over the line into overwrought (sometimes the biblical language is incredibly powerful, sometimes not), and his utter inability to write women.

He did ok with Alicia in his last couple books, but even there he flounders some. "If I had a baby I wouldn't care about reality"? Hmm, ok?

"His face was all covered in girljuice"? C'mon bud.

But no writer is flawless.

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