This book is incredibly vapid and matter-of-fact, most of the characters are insufferable, and I just don’t care about rich people problems.

People find it funny… I guess Mrs. Bennett and Mr. Collins, two of the most insufferable characters, are the funniest?

The prose is really repetitive. I can’t believe someone likened it to Moby Dick in recommending it to me.

The only two characters with any excuse of character development have their character stifled constantly by their shyness and fear of acting in a poorly mannered way. Their interactions with each other are great, but are dangled in front of the reader like a carrot on a stick and then promptly resolved in just a few pages.

Do any of you like this book? I really want to know what I missed. I have never read such a critically acclaimed book and come out the other end so resentful.

o7

Trump delivered to us this uncanny video in which he denounces the killing of Kirk and blames the left’s rhetoric as the sole cause of this unfathomable act.

Am I crazy, or is this obviously AI?

He was shot in the neck and is presumably dead, as a staggering loss of blood was reportedly observed.

Watched the movie last night with no knowledge of it except for the director’s last film. I was expecting another kinda campy high school horror film like Talk To Me, and that was not what I got; what I got was leagues better.

This movie surpassed every expectation and continued to blow me away as it progressed.

The casting was perfect. I would change nothing there. Sora Wong and Jonah Wren Philips deliver remarkable performances.

The pacing was remarkable; the last movie to keep me so locked in was Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite, and I don’t think any movie excepting The Lighthouse has filled me with such an overwhelming and compounding sense of anxiety and dread, and the antagonist is loathsome to an insane degree.

I did not find the cinematography particularly remarkable, but the tape nailed the snuff film vibe perfectly and the scenes of violence were next level and hauntingly vivid.

There are a few “trademark horror movie stupidity” moments (phone left unlocked on the bed), but they do not ever put the characters at a disadvantage to my recollection, which was super refreshing.

Also refreshing and something that I tremendously appreciate is the lack of jump scares.

I particularly liked how unique this movie’s approach is to common tropes of the genre. Despite the cursed media and ritual tropes, this movie oozes with originality in every aspect, and I was never certain of the outcome of its events.

Thought it would be fun to see what you all come up with on a whim. Try not to think about it too much; the spontaneity is what makes it fun!

Mine:

Darkness on sunny days, brightness in the dark. Every day.

The beginning of this little think piece of mine will cover the ending of the book, as I believe the ending is the glue that binds the rest of the novel together. I’ll then add some general thoughts about plot, pacing, and prose.

The epilogue, consistent with the rest of the book, is metaphor in its most profound form. In my mind, the holes taken from the earth represent the progress of humanity. Humanity as a whole brings hell about the natural land it inhabits and destroys God’s creations indiscriminately, but an infinitesimal number of men lead the charge. Those who are not leading have no choice but to comply. The holes have already been carved, and their contents incinerated; as followers, we have no choice but to watch our step, lest we twist an ankle.

As for the last chapter, I will not pore over the whole thing. Instead, I’ll say that it is clear the judge is supposed to represent God to some degree (literal or otherwise). At the very least, his character is used as an example of how power and knowledge harnessed by capable hands is able to commit atrocities on a biblical scale; and just as the christian god accrues followers, and just as the christian god’s philosophies oft end up causing more harm than good, so too does the judge accrue followers, and so too do his philosophies, grand and astute as they may be, result in harm. Perhaps the judge is an allegory for Manifest Destiny.

I do wonder what significance the imbecile holds. The judge requires a follower of some sort, and so bereft of that, he resorts to the imbecile, perhaps?

As for the rest of the book, I do have a few bones to pick.

I really am not one for this writing style. I see it as a hindrance. It’s bearable, but people liken the prose to Moby Dick (brazenly displayed on the front AND back cover of the book), and frankly, this is an insult to Melville. Yes, the imagery is vivid, the subtext is rich, and the book gets very philosophical at points. But in his prose, McCarthy only holds a candle to Melville when the judge is speaking.

The lack of quotation marks coupled with the run-on sentences were novel and helped set the mood initially, but the more I read, the more these aspects came off as pretentious, needless obstruction.

The book also gets into a rut towards the middle: vivid depictions of nature, a taste of philosophy, an atrocity, a town, an atrocity, rinse and repeat. The book’s complete lack of emotion is harrowing, but also tends to make things blend together, especially in the middle.

All in all, this book definitely has weight, and I have lots to think about.

I’m curious as to what messages you all got from the book as a whole. What meaning did you glean from the tail end of the book? What do you think of the prose?

I can dive into thoughts on characters, specific events, etc. in the comments.

From Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy:

They posted guards atop the azotea and unsaddled the horses and drove them out to graze and the judge took one of the packanimals and emptied out the panniers and went off to explore the works.

In the afternoon he sat in the compound breaking ore samples with a hammer, the feldspar rich in red oxide of copper and native nuggets in whose organic lobations he purported to read news of the earth's origins, holding an extemporary lecture in geology to a small gathering who nodded and spat.

A few would quote him scripture to confound his ordering up of eons out of the ancient chaos and other apostate supposings.

The judge smiled.

Books lie, he said.

God dont lie.

No, said the judge. He does not. And these are his words.

He held up a chunk of rock.

He speaks in stones and trees, the bones of things.

The squatters in their rags nodded among themselves and were soon reckoning him correct, this man of learning, in all his speculations, and this the judge encouraged until

they were right proselytes of the new order whereupon he laughed at them for fools.

What does the last line entail? Are they fools for believing the judge in that gods words are the world, or is he laughing that they are so dumb as to believe scripture?

Thanks.