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bolido_sentimental  1yr ago (text post)   3350 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 25, 2022

Merry Christmas, everyone!

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Merry Christmas, everyone. So, what are you reading?

I'm starting Balaji Srinivasan's The Network State. From skimming it, it looks like it touches on lots of contemporary things.

Finished Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Enthralling despite the brutal subject matter, it had this kind of meditative cinematic quality. Probably half the allusions and references were over my head, but the stark account of events cut with poetic landscape paintings hit the spot. Days later I'm still turning over some of the chapters in my head.

I read it about four years ago. It is fantastic. I liked it much better than The Road. It is also the hardest book I've ever read, but I'm not a native English speaker, so that might be why.

Ben Nichols made an album inspired by it, but I feel like it completely misses the mark. I listened to the soundtrack for The Revenant a lot while reading it. It just captures the feeling of dread and despair so well.

If you have any thoughts on the ending, I would love to hear them. I've read a few interpretations online, but they are not really in line with my own understanding and I didn't find them very convincing either.

soundtrack for The Revenant

Yeah, that fits. I thought of Earth, and was surprised to learn they'd also done an inspired-by album. The subtitle, "Printing in the Infernal Method", is from William Blake, which recalls the film Dead Man.

thoughts on the ending

Assume you're referring to the epilogue? I also found it perplexing and looked online for interpretations.

One: "Perhaps the digger is a figure for the novelist himself, striking fire out of the dead holes of history, bearing witness, though it is not at all clear that those following understand."

but that sort of meta-commentary feels unnecessary, self-centered, and incongruous with the preceding novel. I dunno. Maybe?

Others: That the post digger represents the coming of civilization and the end of the bloody, evening redness, (Epilogue: "In the dawn"), or that it represents the opposite - the continuation of that philosophy after the night.

I honestly don't know. I think the fact that so many interpretations disagree so wildly means it was intentionally left ambiguous. Like you, none of the ones I read seemed right.

I've never heard of Earth, but I'm gonna give them a listen.

I was actually thinking more of what happens after the judge and the man meets in the end. You can see my reply to Southkraut.

I am also kind of lost on the epilogue, but I think you are right that it is intentionally ambiguous.

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