Hell aint half full. Hear me. Ye carry war of a madman's making onto a foreign land. Yell wake more than the dogs.

Rich is a big McCarthy head. For Benny and Cam, it's their first taste, and we're going straight to the top shelf: the 1985 epic historical novel Blood Meridian; or, The Evening Redness in the West.

In this discussion we cover the first half of the book (chapters 1-12) as a meditation on violence, manifest destiny, self-mythology, and McCarthy's own cunning plot to positioning himself within the literary canon.

At the centre of it all there is the judge: a towering, hairless enigma who might be a false god, or a devil... or something even worse.

CHAPTERS

• (00:00:00) quick background
• (00:06:07) introducing the Kid and the judge
• 00:12:46) why did Captain White’s expedition fail so badly?
• (00:24:54) Comanche war party run-on sentence fever dream
• (00:34:12) Sometime come the mother, sometime come the wolf
• (00:42:00) the strangely egalitarian Glanton Gang
• (00:56:13) Judge Holden piss-infused gunpowder volcano massacre
• (01:15:19) Decoding the story of the harness-maker and the traveller
• (01:28:01) Goodhart’s law in scalp-hunting bounties
• (01:34:48) First impressions of McCarthy
• (01:37:32) Listener mail: Knausgaard and autofiction rant revisited

WRITE US:

We love listener feedback. Send us a note at douevenlit@gmail.com to correct our bad takes, add your own, or just say hi.

NEXT ON THE READING LIST:

The Odyssey - Homer (Emily Wilson translation)

A bit of festive fun looking back on the year that was.

Which books have stayed with us? Which were forgettable? What was the best reading/watching we did outside of book club? What did we learn about podcasting? Are we gonna keep posting this stuff in public?

and MORE

CHAPTERS

• (00:00:00) festive chit chat
• (00:07:35) Revealing our favourite books of the year
• 00:34:13) Biggest STINKER of the year
• (00:48:25) Our #1 (non-book club) book/essay/blog
• (00:59:39) Favourite film or TV
• (01:10:05) Navel-gazing on the book club meta and podcasting lessons learned

WRITE US:

We love listener feedback. Send us a note at douevenlit@gmail.com to correct our bad takes, add your own, or just say hi.

NEXT ON THE READING LIST:

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

The Odyssey - Homer (Emily Wilson translation)

A paradox: how can an author—say, Walker Percy—get the reader to care about a protagonist—say, Binx Bolling—who is stuck in a malaise and doesn't himself particularly care about anything?

A corollary: how can a book club have an engaging discussion when they don't particularly care about said book and said protagonist?

Honestly you might as well skip the first 10 minutes or so in which we half-assedly try to talk about the actual plot elements.

Luckily Cam saves the day with an impromptu lecture on Kierkegaard and we get to yapping about the meaning of life instead:

• Is it patronising to claim that everyone is living in a state of despair?
• Is self-gratification and individualism actually bad?
• What are the main avenues for having a meaningful life?
• How does society stigmatise or incentivise meaning-making activities?
• Has the existentialist project more or less been a success?
• Which of Popper's three worlds does 'meaning' fall into?

I can't be bothered doing chapter markers for this one so just take a leap of faith you cowards

WRITE US:

We love listener feedback. Send us a note at douevenlit@gmail.com to correct our bad takes, add your own, or just say hi.

NEXT ON THE READING LIST:

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

The Odyssey - Homer (Emily Wilson translation)