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Jun. 3rd, 2009 11:00 am1. Blood Meridian's antecedents include what? Obviously Moby Dick. I'd say "Young Goodman Brown" and "My Kinsman Major Molineux" are also structural sources, and presumably Aguirre. Banville adds Dante and Homer, Bloom would say Shakespeare and maybe Milton. The Trial seems to me to be at least as important. Once I mentioned the book seemed like a hellified Faerie Queene, and maybe one could say as much re. Huck Finn. The two burst-out scenes in Karamazov contribute: Jesus v. Inquisitor in the jail, the devil needling Ivan. Would he have read any Carpentier? And Faulkner, but what thing more than others in Faulkner? And I keep failing to think of something prior to Catch-22 that anticipates the falling away of friends and enemies alike, and in droves, in the 2nd halves of both BM and Suttree - that Gashlycrumb Tinies effect.
Oh, wait, that's in Crying of Lot 49, which shows many other signs of being a presence here (the silly-ass parts of the book so neatly obscure its greatness). Lot 49 effect, then, or trysterosion or something.
2. Reminds me: in the Kroger parking lot yesterday I mentioned that there should be a word for the specific disappointment you feel when the radio starts playing "Under Pressure" but then Vanilla Ice is there. And my wife agreed and said "why don't you BLOG about it" - her scorn and amusement were all for the word, I hope, which always makes her laugh. Quod erat bloggandum.
1. Back to McCarthy: seemed like there were some specific tributes to predecessors, at points - the phrase 'as he lay dying,' the judge travelling with the idiot being compared with a king exiled by his own stupidity accompanied by his fool, a 'unanimous dark' echoing Borges' 'unanimous night', a ridge that looks like a white whale. So discrete that I can't tell if the Faulkner and Borges ones are even there, or anyway deliberate.
Oh, wait, that's in Crying of Lot 49, which shows many other signs of being a presence here (the silly-ass parts of the book so neatly obscure its greatness). Lot 49 effect, then, or trysterosion or something.
2. Reminds me: in the Kroger parking lot yesterday I mentioned that there should be a word for the specific disappointment you feel when the radio starts playing "Under Pressure" but then Vanilla Ice is there. And my wife agreed and said "why don't you BLOG about it" - her scorn and amusement were all for the word, I hope, which always makes her laugh. Quod erat bloggandum.
1. Back to McCarthy: seemed like there were some specific tributes to predecessors, at points - the phrase 'as he lay dying,' the judge travelling with the idiot being compared with a king exiled by his own stupidity accompanied by his fool, a 'unanimous dark' echoing Borges' 'unanimous night', a ridge that looks like a white whale. So discrete that I can't tell if the Faulkner and Borges ones are even there, or anyway deliberate.
