Actual unedited singular sentence from this shitty book:

>They crossed before the sun and vanished one by one and reappeared again and they were black in the sun and they rode out of that vanished sea like burnt phantoms with the legs of the animals kicking up the spume that was not real and they were lost in the sun and lost in the lake and they shimmered and slurred together and separated again and they augmented by planes in lurid avatars and began to coalesce and there began to appear above them in the dawn-broached sky a hellish likeness of their ranks riding huge and inverted and the horses' legs incredibly elongate trampling down the high thin cirrus and the howling antiwarriors pendant from their mounts immense and chimeric and the high wild cries carrying that flat and barren pan like the cries of souls broke through some misweave in the weft of things into the world below.

>>24505059 (OP)
That's pretty amazing, thanks for motivating to buy the hardcover version.

>>24505059 (OP)
You just combined fragments from multiple passages. It's pathetic that you spent 30 minutes doing this.

>>24505100
Are you sure about that? Check for yourself. It's on chapter 9.

>>24505059 (OP)
I really don't appreciate the fact that /lit/ has its own HUD affordable housing program in the form of Blood Meridian and Shadow of the Torcher threads for retards who've read 2 books since graduation to call home.

Drives down IQ values.

>>24505059 (OP)
>singular
Do you really mean this, or do you just mean "single"?

>>24505420
Huh? I remembered the last line being preceded by some other passage

>>24505453
pedantic
>>24505059 (OP)
this is a visual scene and i can see you need help:
the sun is the horizon but low enough that the natives on their horses are able to move into the searing light of the very same sun. they shuffle in and out of the brightness on the horizon as they move toward the narrator and, as they move into the suns rays, the riders look black against the light, their horses cast long-legged shadows across the playa which form strangely proportioned mutant shadows of man and horse ("chimeras" here). their cries disrupt the harmony between their physical selves and their cast "hellish likeness." or vice versa, whose to say.

questions?

>>24505486
>questions?
yes, what is a run-on sentence?

>>24505514
>replied to the wrong anon
the fact that you ask that means that you know you braindead faggot

>>24505059 (OP)
I don’t love this, but clearly the intent is to pummel and evoke bloody psychedelia.

>>24505518
so you know the problem then

>>24505521
>24505521
wittle baby needs pewiods and commas... oh and wittle baby needs simpwe wowds

>>24505059 (OP)
is there some context that justifies this? is the one giving the description sun-addled or somesuch?

>>24505526
Not an argument.

Here's another unedited sentence from the book (jannies you cannot ban me for racism, I'm just quoting the book)

>Now as he was concluding this speech there passed in the road a nigger drawing a funeral hearse for one of his own kind and it was painted pink and the nigger was dressed in clothes of every color like a carnival clown and the young man pointed out this nigger passing in the road and he said that even a black nigger...

>>24505543
absolute cinema.

>>24505540
the context is the rest of the novel
>>24505543
>Not an argument.
neither were any of your replies

>>24505059 (OP)
That's a great sentence, a fantastic one even. Not sure what's your problem with it.

>>24505543
Post the rest, coward
>...Said that even a crazy black nigger was not less than a man among men. And then the old man's son stood up and began an oration himself, pointing out at the road and calling for a place to be made for the nigger. He used those words. That a place be made. Of course by this time the nigger and hearse had passed on from sight. With this the old man repented all over again and swore that the boy was right and the old woman who was seated by the fire was amazed at all she had heard and when the guest announced that the time had come for his departure she had tears in her eyes and the little girl came out from behind the bed and clung to his clothes.

>>24505059 (OP)
bro thinks he's cicero

>>24505059 (OP)
Probably using polysyndenton to imitate the bible

One of the only 4 or 5 yankee novels worth anything on the page and you guys keep complaining lol. Read that shit in english as a 15 y/o frog and it was a breeze. Good shit really.

>>24505665
>One of the only 4 or 5 yankee novels worth anything
Melville alone provided 3.

>>24505059 (OP)
That's beautiful imagery. Are you low IQ?

>>24505059 (OP)
The GOAT. Melville would be proud.

>>24505674
Melville was a one hit wonder
>>24505659
If Bible was written like this no one would read it, but I surely would. Probably the only Bible I'd read.

I really cannot stand his style of writing, feels like someone constantly trying to pad as much redundant over-explanation into fucking nothing. Get onto the point.

>>24505709
you've clearly never read melville, son

>>24505100
>>24505420
He made you look like a right mug, didn't he?

goddamn i just got filtered, reread 5 times and still didin't get it. And I was planing on reading this after my current book.
It's over.

>>24505805
>reread 5 times and still filtered
you're downright distilled by now

>>24505805
ah, blood meridian, monsieur? that novel is the sark and chaparral of literature, the filament whereon rode the remuda of highbrow, corraled out of some destitute hacienda upon the arroya, quirting and splurting with main and with pyrolatrous coagulate of lobated grandiloquence. our eyes rode over the pages, monsieur, of that slatribed azotea like argonauts of suttee, juzgados of swole, bights and systoles of walleyed and tyrolean and carbolic and tectite and scurvid and querent and creosote and scapular malpais and shellalagh. we scalped, monsieur, the gantlet of its esker and led our naked bodies into the rebozos of its mennonite and siliceous fauna, wallowing in the jasper and the carnelian like archimandrites, teamsters, combers of cassinette scoria, centroids of holothurian chancre, with pizzles of enfiladed indigo panic grass in the saltbush of our vigas, true commodores of the written page, rebuses, monsieur, we were the mygale spiders too and the devonian and debouched pulque that settled on the frizzen studebakers, listening the wolves howling in the desert while we saw the judge rise out of a thicket of corbelled arches, whinstone, cairn, cholla, lemurs, femurs, leantos, moonblanched nacre, uncottered fistulas of groaning osnaburg and kelp, isomers of fluepipe and halms awap of griddle, guisado, pelancillo.

>>24505509
if he's so focused on visual detail he should've made a movie, not write 200 word sentences

>>24505907
A movie couldn't do it justice. The figurative suggestions are just as important as the referrents.

>>24505059 (OP)
I consider suttree his best, but I read bm in a can in the california desert doing final training before a deployment and goddamn that shit got me foaming at the mouth ready to kill sand niggers, rape their women, and use their babies as baseballs. His style does aggravate me sometimes, but I'm telling you truly you can't beat that atmosphere to read this book. Hungry, sweating, ready to kill, and afraid to die.

>>24505907
Visual vivacity, while whelming to the reader, is but a part of the picture. A writer's task is to brandish the bardic lyre; from sweetest sonnets to the marching drumbeat of biblical cadence, his goal should be not unlike that of a musician - to compose scintillating sentences that engage the reader's ear. Not necessarily pleasing, Schoenvinsky and Xenderecki are more drum than hum, raw and grating, but they do produce unique soundscapes. Such is the McCarthean way, and he's hardly unique in stretching the English tongue to and beyond the utmost bound of human thought (looking at you, Joyce).
Open your mind and ear and read more. Listen to the songs the words on page can form. It will open a whole new avenue of enjoyment as a reader for you.

>>24505955
Mccarthy's page do look the cleanest and most serene.

>>24505957
The "cleanest and most serene" to an illiterate or someone used to reading a foreign script maybe. The absence of punctuation is extremely jarring to a native English reader, on par, or worse than the different spellings found in older unstandardized English texts. The man is dead, but maybe he still climaxed in the afterlife from your vigorous wordjob.

>>24505972
Highly ironic when you are writing pretentious word salads yourself. Would you rather have me suck off a favorite of yours? Name him. I might.

>>24505977
Eric Carle

>>24505983
A very hunger caterpillar is a terrible book. You win. I lose

>>24505977
No irony. My post was entirely sincere, this the literature board not /tv/, so I took a minute to post in proper English out of respect to you, the board, and myself. Otherwise I would have just called you a niggerfaggot and posted some sneed shit. One of my favorites that I believe you will such off? Fitzgerald. Tender is the night is my favorite of his.

>>24505977
John Hawkes

>>24505995
I don't like Fitzgerald

>>24506000
>Checked
I don't like you.

>>24505996
Deserved all the plaudits that the much less talented hacks that took over postmodernism for their little group in the 60s received. The real heir to Faulkner.

Faggots posting in a bait thread post after post newfaggots biting and taking the bait punctuation reared it's ugly head over the horizon oldfags littered the ground periods and commas turned incels into fake women faster than whatever does that he SPAT

The black reared his head at the sight of the lubricious form of the judge's pale phallus serpentine it wandered gazing out into the world as an infant unborn and yet undesired brought into the world cold and pale and unbreathing. Its pillaric form shone brightly in the void the pillar stood mute upon the black promontory a monolith wrought in obscene geometry. The Judge took to a foul chimeric cacophany of grunting as his member penetrated serene the fistula of the niggers anus dark and unmoving in that sea of serpentine parades the Judge set to stirring up the very soul and the thrice uncottered dreams of the buck were fetched as if a pulque upon the sunborn indigo infant of the world yet unawakened in this land or any other. His breaking came forth as if unbidden into that old night the shadows long and gristled as each thrust was delivered ungouged and unrequited it's eldritch desire can be found buried deep within the hearts of men. As some titan cherubim this pale form let out a cry in the tongues not of man or beast but like to an infernal register unheard in this world since that brought forth tears from the eyes of the watchers and were rendered as stars that danced like naked pygmies upon the bastion of Babylon.The watchers members taken also in hand at their opportunity to arrive unbidden into the bastion of that forsaken womb to bring forth not a child of god but a buck rendered broken upon the firmament which would render the dreams of that infernal race delivered asunder unto the world, writhing and unformed but yet natural in the land that conjured it.

>>24506193
I read the first line of your post and emailed my congresswoman to reinstate the electric chair and provide public tampons for the viewing public.

>>24506254
>reinstate the electric chair
For people such as me?

>>24505059 (OP)
Who would read this gibberish voluntarily?

>>24506500
pseuds, apparently

Universally that person’s acumen is esteemed very little perceptive concerning whatsoever matters are being held as most profitably by mortals with sapience endowed to be studied who is ignorant of that which the most in doctrine erudite and certainly by reason of that in them high mind’s ornament deserving of veneration constantly maintain when by general consent they affirm that other circumstances being equal by no exterior splendour is the prosperity of a nation more efficaciously asserted than by the measure of how far forward may have progressed the tribute of its solicitude for that proliferent continuance which of evils the original if it be absent when fortunately present constitutes the certain sign of omnipollent nature’s incorrupted benefaction. For who is there who anything of some significance has apprehended but is conscious that that exterior splendour may be the surface of a downwardtending lutulent reality or on the contrary anyone so is there unilluminated as not to perceive that as no nature’s boon can contend against the bounty of increase so it behoves every most just citizen to become the exhortator and admonisher of his semblables and to tremble lest what had in the past been by the nation excellently commenced might be in the future not with similar excellence accomplished if an inverecund habit shall have gradually traduced the honourable by ancestors transmitted customs to that thither of profundity that that one was audacious excessively who would have the hardihood to rise affirming that no more odious offence can for anyone be than to oblivious neglect to consign that evangel simultaneously command and promise which on all mortals with prophecy of abundance or with diminution’s menace that exalted of reiteratedly procreating function ever irrevocably enjoined?

>>24505059 (OP)
Imagine if some new writer posted an excerpt like that on /wg/, everyone would call it shit and unreadable

>>24505059 (OP)
it imitates Moby Dick in many ways, this is one of them

>>24507362
nobody cares about that glorified encyclopedia. i've noticed those obsessed with seafaring books are not seafaring people.

>>24505509
I think it’s rather specifically some type of mirage occurring, which can happen from some unique visual/optical phenomenon in the desert, since it explicitly that “lurid avatars” of them are appearing above them in the sky and seeming to trample down the cirrus clouds.

>>24507367
Moby Dick is better than Blood Meridian

>>24506843
Imagine if my grandmother had wheels. She would be a bicycle.

>>24507374
try again

>>24505665
It's garbage.
Read Updike, Hemingway, Faulkner or Nabokov (Lolita is an American novel).
>McCarthy relies more on barrages of hit-and-miss verbiage than on careful use of just the right words.

>>24507362
Their styles are worlds apart
>>24507438
>updike
Lol. Be butthurt somewhere else, retard

>>24506843
Maybe because retards on 4chan are not the curators of great writing to begin with? They need Harold bloom telling them for a decade what is good and what is not

there arent any line breaks
so this nigga just be yappin
the fk

>>24505059 (OP)
This shit reads like it was written by a 12 yo

>>24507392
No need to imagine, I already rode her to town and back.

>>24505059 (OP)
Cormac McChildmolester

>>24505059 (OP)
Never read the book, but that passage did conjure a fairly clear image in my mind. Just let it wash over you.

>>24507412
why? I'm right

>>24505059 (OP)
I read this book ten years ago and the prose here is even better than I remember, thanks anon, I'll do a reread for you.

>>24507628
Moby dick is poor man's Blood meridian

>>24507367
Moby-Dick is my all-time favourite novel.

>>24507654
It's funny because it's literally the exact opposite. Moby Dick is everything McCarthy wished Blood Meridian could have been.

>>24505059 (OP)
>>24505543
>>24505571
>>24507615
all based thank you cormac

>>24507696
Lol

The meandering and exhausting nature of the sentence in my mind communicates the grueling and exhausting experience of travailing in the desert. You can almost feel the heatstroke setting in as you read it. The whole book puts more value in presenting itself as a work of art than it does proper grammar and syntax.

>>24505540
There is nothing that justifies it. It's the narrator describing it, not a character. Some anons like >>24507749 might cope and say it's on purpose cause it's supposed to make you feel tired and in a haze, but the ENTIRE book is like this. Even when the characters are resting and safe, the prose never improves.

>amateurs here think the prose is supposed to be representative of character feelings or situation
It's time to progress beyond free indirect discourse

>>24507615
She was 17

>>24507677
most likely because some old boomer told you it should be.

>>24505543
Babby needs his pewiod

>>24505907
>Another plotfag filtered

>>24507759
the narrator is a character
>>24507373
sure, i think the scene itself represents the mirror/mirage effect and the reader should be able to picture a hazy, squiggled group of riders on the horizon of some dry desert environment and whether that's the mirror image or the actual riders themselves literally, its ultimately both

>>24507951
>the narrator is a character
Not in this case.

>>24506193
this is genius

>it's shitty because it has a long sentence

>>24505059 (OP)
Blood Meridian is such a masterpiece. Can't wait to read it again

Moby Dick is my favorite book but I just don't get BM. There's a lot to read into it, but rather too much, as though it doesn't truly have meaning, but is just a pool of murk or a lumpy cloud, the mind creating dissolving symbols and patterns in the noise. It's too much for me. The Whale was mightier, with more mass.

>People defending this shit ITT
When you look at the Top 100 I can it really shouldn't be surprising

>it's shitty because other people have read it

>>24509959
Did you finish it? For me a lot of it didn't come together until the end.

>>24509959
Cool story bro. Peppers are my favorite pizza topping, and Super Metroid is my favorite game, but I enjoyed BM.

>>24505571
The point of posting that quote wasn't to imply the author was being racist, but just how retarded and silly the sentence was structured.
That sentence would get mocked even on /pol/ as a low quality shitpost.

>>24511205
>the sentence would get mocked among retards
Sure. I will back you up on that

>>24505059 (OP)
Things like this make me realise the novel was a mistake. Or maybe just Americans are the mistake.

>>24505509
>pedantic
They’re entirely different words ESL retard. Go back to /v/.

>>24505845
Someone put far too much effort into this.

>>24509960
I can only think of a few bad apples that should be removed, namely Camus, Orwell and genreshit. Stoner, while decent, shouldn't be anywhere that high. The list also lacks James.

>>24506193

>>24507536
>Though in many natural objects, whiteness refiningly enhances beauty, as if imparting some special virtue of its own, as in marbles, japonicas, and pearls; and though various nations have in some way recognized a certain royal preeminence in this hue; even the barbaric, grand old kings of Pegu placing the title “Lord of the White Elephants” above all their other magniloquent ascriptions of dominion; and the modern kings of Siam unfurling the same snow-white quadruped in the royal standard; and the Hanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a snow-white charger; and the great Austrian Empire, Caesarian, heir to overlording Rome, having for the imperial color the same imperial hue; and though this pre-eminence in it applies to the human race itself, giving the white man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe; and though, besides all this, whiteness has been even made significant of gladness, for among the Romans a white stone marked a joyful day; and though in other mortal sympathies and symbolizings, this same hue is made the emblem of many touching, noble things- the innocence of brides, the benignity of age; though among the Red Men of America the giving of the white belt of wampum was the deepest pledge of honor; though in many climes, whiteness typifies the majesty of Justice in the ermine of the Judge, and contributes to the daily state of kings and queens drawn by milk-white steeds; though even in the higher mysteries of the most august religions it has been made the symbol of the divine spotlessness and power; by the Persian fire worshippers, the white forked flame being held the holiest on the altar; and in the Greek mythologies, Great Jove himself being made incarnate in a snow-white bull; and though to the noble Iroquois, the midwinter sacrifice of the sacred White Dog was by far the holiest festival of their theology, that spotless, faithful creature being held the purest envoy they could send to the Great Spirit with the annual tidings of their own fidelity; and though directly from the Latin word for white, all Christian priests derive the name of one part of their sacred vesture, the alb or tunic, worn beneath the cassock; and though among the holy pomps of the Romish faith, white is specially employed in the celebration of the Passion of our Lord; though in the Vision of St. John, white robes are given to the redeemed, and the four-and-twenty elders stand clothed in white before the great-white throne, and the Holy One that sitteth there white like wool; yet for all these accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, and honorable, and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in blood.

>>24511940
I don't understand the point you're trying to make. The sentence in the OP and this one are worlds apart in style.

>>24511940
>colons
>commas
ngmi

>>24510105
>>24509773
Post age and the last time you had sex.

>>24511940
one of the best chapters in moby dick, and it's still the best american novel

>>24505059 (OP)
based

>>24511986
it's a well known fact that blood meridian has many parallels to moby dick. I thought this might be one of those. Honestly i don't give a shit. the phrase "not dying on this hill" comes to mind. You win the argument. bye

>>24513419
24, yesterday.

>>24516869
Were you the top or bottom?

what the fuck is this aislop

I'm currently reading the book (and enjoying it a lot!). While I don't have a problem with the occasional long-winded sentences such as the one in the OP, and, in fact, find them very evocative and fitting for the overall tone of the novel, there have been two instances so far (I've just read past the midpoint of the story) where the writing style irked me somewhat, namely, the following two passages, taken from different parts of the book:
>They were in good spirits, scrubbed and combed, clean shirts all. Each foreseeing a night of drink, perhaps of love. How many youths have come home cold and dead from just such nights and just such plans.
>Sproule sat without moving. The kid looked at him but he would look away. He was wounded in an enemy country far from home and although his eyes took in the alien stones about yet the greater void beyond seemed to swallow up his soul.
Now, the novel is generally written in a rather dry, matter-of-fact way, and in, as McCarthy himself put it, "simple declarative sentences". There are admittedly odd examples of complex and flowery sentences but those are mostly reserved for very specific purposes and are used very sparingly. There is an omnipotent narrator to be sure but one almost entirely devoid of judgement or the desire to probe the inner workings of his characters, his focus being exclusively on what happened, leaving interpretation to the reader. I find that this style works wonderfully for the experience I believe McCarthy intended to create, which is why the two examples above are so jarring to me in their uncharacteristic sentimentality. The author, if ever so briefly, suddenly starts philosophizing and adopts an almost preachy tone and that makes the passages feel like they're from a different narrative altogether and takes me out of the experience. Perhaps if there were more moments like that they wouldn't stand out as much but these two were the only ones across almost two hundred pages I've read so far.

Regardless, I find the book absolutely wonderful in its descriptiveness and its ability to conjure images of carnage and depravity! It's a wonder to me there hasn't been a film adaptation and the book is believed by some to be impossible to adapt.

>>24517040
Although the narrator is omnipotent and impersonal, don't treat him as separate from the narrative.
>There are admittedly odd examples of complex and flowery sentences but those are mostly reserved for very specific purposes and are used very sparingly.
I wouldn't say that. Most of the book has prose that's quite dense. I believe what you mean is that the narrator maintains his distance even in these ornate offerings, which i think he does. Occasionally he indulges sentiment (another example being Glanton's introspection).

>>24517040
>>24517044
you boys won't like this but this is the actual narrator

>>24517044
>don't treat him as separate from the narrative.
That's actually a good way to put what I was trying to say. There isn't an identifiable narrator for the most part so the few instances where he does suddenly offer his own opinions on something (or just becomes more reflective in general) caught me off guard.
>I wouldn't say that. Most of the book has prose that's quite dense.
I guess I meant "long" more so than "complex and flowery" (the latter would indeed apply to most of the book). The one in the OP is probably one of the longest sentences in the entire novel, another good example being that other famous description of the Indian horde ("a legion of horribles"). Interesting how the longer sentences were used for almost identical purposes in both cases.
>Occasionally he indulges sentiment (another example being Glanton's introspection).
I don't think I've read that part yet. Maybe once I've finished the novel, those introspective parts will have fallen more in line with the overall style for me.

>>24517109
Keep marching, anon. This here. For you. The first page of the very first draft of Blood meridian. A very explicit unreliable and meta narrator initially. It's still there but Mccarthy has hid him better in the final book. It's one of Mccarthy's remarkable creations, not just here but in other books too, an Omniscient yet unreliable narrator. The unreliability is not of fact or in the witholding of information, but of interpretation. The narrator knows everything, except the meaning of all of this. That's what i believe the occasional personal closeness to the narrative is meant to convey. The narrator is not the author of the fiction. Here's The Judge talking about something similar (you would come to it eventually):
>The judge watched him. He began to point out various men in the room and to ask if these men were here for a good time or if indeed they knew why they were here at all.
>Everbody dont have to have a reason to be someplace.
>That's so, said the judge. They do not have to have a reason. But order is not set aside because of their indifference. He regarded the judge warily.
>Let me put it this way, said the judge. If it is so that they themselves have no reason and yet are indeed here must they not be here by reason of some other? And if this is so can you guess who that other might be?
>This is an orchestration for an event. For a dance in fact. The participants will be apprised of their roles at the proper time. For now it is enough that they have arrived. As the dance is the thing with which we are concerned and contains complete within itself its own arrangement and history and finale there is no necessity that the dancers contain these things within themselves as well. In any event the history of all is not the history of each nor indeed the sum of those histories and none here can finally comprehend the reason for his presence for he has no way of knowing even in what the event consists

>>24505059 (OP)
Get on with it!