daily reminder every creative is a pervert

Might be one of my favorite novels oat man, for some reason the loose mystery mixed with the dialogues just hits different

listened to no country for old men audiobook this summer and im glad to know its pretty much a scene for scene retelling of the movie. its a great piece of work in both formats

hate to return to this thread because of this bump

Yeah it's a fascinating look into the personal life of such an influential and private author and I found myself unable to focus on large parts of it, it just doesn't seem edited at all

Basically:
42 year-old Cormac McCarthy meets Augusta Britt, a 16 year-old girl, she asks to sign her copy of The Orchard Keeper, she has a gun on her hip, she's been a runaway for many years, in and out of foster homes, has suffered a lot of abuse

She spends more time with McCarthy, she feels safe around him, he sends her h**** love letters, they have s***in a motel when she's 17 (she says today that she doesn't feel like a victim and enjoyed the experience, but nonetheless, it's not exactly the best thing a 42 year-old man could do)

The FBI and Britt's mother chase McCarthy on a statutory rape charge, McCarthy acquires Britt's birth certificate and forges a different birthdate, the pair flee to Mexico where Britt turns 18

Britt becomes an inspiration for all kinds of McCarthy characters, elements of her are invariably threaded throughout multiple characters in the same book, she would sing a lullaby to her toy stuffed kitten, that being 'All The Pretty Horses', her birthday appears in the opening pages of the same book, passages from his love letters to her appear modified in his work, she had many horses of her own, the specific horses in The Counselor being exactly modelled on hers, McCarthy never rode a horse, Britt showed him how

She grew apart from him as she became more of an influence on his work, she didn't like becoming an abstraction, their relationship ended but the two would still meet, although she felt like he was doing research for his material when they did, she'd check out his latest books to see 'how she was doing', the characters most obviously modelled on her were often dead by the end

The two remained friends, he proposed marriage to her twice (his proposal appearing verbatim in The Counsellor), but neither resulted in anything, they were close until the end, McCarthy felt like he wasted his last years at the Santa Fe institute

The last words on McCarthy's typewriter when he died were 'I don't know, Frank, I say we just leave him hangin' there'

TL;DR: Cormac McCarthy has s***with a minor as a middle-aged man, develops into lifelong relationship, she permeates every single one of his works

Whew, my dawg came through appreciate that boss

No worries king

(Tho I did get legit whiplash reading that at first thinking you were talking about McCarthy lmao)

Also worth noting he first met her by a motel pool and ah

Ok I’m debating on whether to read Suttree or The Crossing which do yall prefer?

still gotta get to Suttree but The Crossing is probably my favorite McCarthy novel

especially the first section

if you haven't read All The Pretty Horses yet start with that tho, the whole Border Trilogy is worth it

Yeah I was wondering whether I could start with The Crossing instead of All The Pretty Horses because the stories only seem to intertwine in the 3rd book. The Crossing seemed more interesting to me than ATPH.

you definitely could, but ATPH is definitely worth reading too imo and not too long or challenging

Phillip K D*** vs Cormac McCarthy in a Pederast Nightmare Husband cage match

The person that wrote the article wants to f*** this woman so bad it’s unbelievable

Gore Vidal: 'Now I want this to be a good clean fight'

Wow that article is a bombshell that somehow completely changes my opinion of him while also not changing anything at all

CMac coming back from a huge gap compared to PKD, starting to put some numbers on the board

“Jeez, I guess the 1970s was exactly the nightmare I thought it was, with no hyperbole at all” - something I feel more and more

Cryin old blud wuz mad as s*** lmao

There's a lot of stuff in that article that doesn't line up with facts we know of, Britt's recollection of her copy of The Orchard Keeper having McCarthy's portrait in it just couldn't have been true

But man, short of Britt forgetting her own birthdate, it's never good to have the best possible outcome be 'This was actually his SECOND grooming attempt (at least!)'

I mean I always felt like there was no way just a talented author could have dreamt up Judge Holden

It had to be darker than that

I'm not defending him in any way, but have you looked into the connections between the Judge and Gnostic ideas. The ties between the two throughout the book are fascinating. He leaned on those to write the Judge.

Oh nah I mean he was still totally a literary creation

But Cormac was always so acquainted and familiar with human darkness that I knew it had to come from somewhere… even if he was just an observer… and I felt like nothing in his life story ever explained it

Interested to know how he felt like he wasted his time at the Santa Fe Institute I always thought he enjoyed it there

Article was terrible tbh. Bro was fawning all over that woman and didn’t ask her a serious question.

Ok I read the first 50 pages of ATPH and this s*** reads like a coming of age novel. I need something a little bit bleaker man, think I’m just gonna read The Crossing first

just read another one of his novels like The Road, No Country, or Child of God. Crossing is a sequel to ATPH