I’ve been an avid reader for my life. Hell, way back decades ago, when I went to University, I majored in English Literature. For whatever reason, I’ve been scared of reading his books. I’ve just read/heard too many “It was great, I’ll never read it again” type reviews. Made me think that reading one (or more) of his works would be similar to watching Graveyard of the Fireflies.
Start with Sutree. It’s laugh out loud funny in places, and doesn’t have any of the existencial dread of The Road or exquisite horror of Blood Meridian.
The Border Trilogy next, then No Country.
I’ve read Blood Meridian 3 times - waiting to get my book club hooked for the 4th. It’s… Amazing.
I don’t think I’ll read The Road again.
I will add those to my pile of books to be read. I’ve had The Road on the stack for awhile, but just haven’t felt emotionally ready for it. I’ll try Sutree and go from there.
Blood Meridian is absolutely incredible. If you love literature it’s worth the suffering for sure. The audiobook version is a great experience too, the narrator completely nails it and brings the dense language alive.
definitely worth the suffering haha. My suggestion to anyone who wants to read his material, specifically the Border Trilogy or Blood Meridian, read them on an eBook reader. Something that you can copy/paste the parts that are written in Spanish. I did a re-read of his work a few years ago this way, and it made his already difficult reading experience much easier being able to Google search the non-English portions
Such a shame, I read the road years ago and it still haunts me. Terrific writer. Not been able to bring myself round to watch the film adaptations
Damn, sad to hear. Incredibly unique writer. Heard he was working on the screenplay for Blood Meridian recently with John Hillcoat, I hope they were able to get some good work done on that, I would love to see that book attempted on the big screen. RIP
There have been many attempts to adapt blood meridian, I still cant see how it would work unless it was like 6 hours long but I would love to see it given a real, high budget, big name attempt.
It would be a very difficult watch, but sometimes thats a good thing.
Absolutely, I don’t know how it could be crammed into a single film. Maybe a two-parter, but even then it seems too ambitious. That’s why its such a tragedy, as the original author was working on a screenplay for it. He’d be the man to get the job done. And John Hillcoat directed the film version of The Road and he also did The Proposition, so I feel like with the two of them working on it it’s closer than ever before to being a reality. Here’s hoping for a good film outcome to arguably his best work.
