Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 6, 2018 21:25:24 GMT
My friend's reading this for the first time and each time we talk about it I'm reminded of how truly, utterly fantastic this book is. The chapter where Tobin describes to the kid how The Judge first appears to Glanton's group is so damn well written and unnerving I feel like looking over my shoulder when reading it, like an evil presence is around. The last line of that section is so haunting, when the kid asks Tobin what he's a judge of and the ex-priest just warns him to be quiet or else he'll overhear...damn. And the ending of the book is somehow even more disturbing than that scene.
|
|
|
|
Post by stephen on Jun 6, 2018 22:28:16 GMT
Best novel ever written by my reckoning. I've also been working on a screenplay adaptation over the last couple of years for the hell of it. It's fun (and tough) to try and parse it down to a cinematic language without losing that sort of grand, dizzying, Old Testament-esque sensibility that makes it such a wonderful work.
Yeah, Chapter 10 is the greatest chapter in literary history. "Piss for your very souls" indeed.
|
|
|
|
Post by pacinoyes on Jun 7, 2018 7:04:25 GMT
Not only is it a very great book, its one of the few that I return to again and again. The book stays with you, as time goes on it seems more embedded in the fabric of American history and mythology, unforgettable and haunting.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 7, 2018 15:48:17 GMT
I think part of what makes the ending of the chapter I described so unsettling to me is that Tobin is sitting there, recounting this long and detailed story about The Judge, but when the kid asks him this simple question the ex-priest gets all "hush, enough of that now" in case they're overheard. What kind of nightmare logic is that anyway? That section feels so dreamlike with the kid standing in for the reader/dreamer. And the dream ends before the kid can clarify what he really wants to know. I just can't get over how good this scene is.
On another note, I think Tobin's fate going unaccounted for is one of the few (only?) bits of optimism by the end of the novel. The last chapter is so unbelievably dark and horrifying I wonder if this sometimes goes unnoticed.
|
|
|
|
Post by stephen on Jun 7, 2018 16:54:18 GMT
I think part of what makes the ending of the chapter I described so unsettling to me is that Tobin is sitting there, recounting this long and detailed story about The Judge, but when the kid asks him this simple question the ex-priest gets all "hush, enough of that now" in case they're overheard. What kind of nightmare logic is that anyway? That section feels so dreamlike with the kid standing in for the reader/dreamer. And the dream ends before the kid can clarify what he really wants to know. I just can't get over how good this scene is. On another note, I think Tobin's fate going unaccounted for is one of the few (only?) bits of optimism by the end of the novel. The last chapter is so unbelievably dark and horrifying I wonder if this sometimes goes unnoticed. I actually don't think it's optimistic at all that we don't know what happens to Tobin, much in the same way that we don't know what transpires in the jakes at the end of the novel. I think it's highly probable that his old nemesis, The Judge, got to him. For what it's worth, in my screenplay adaptation, I did try to highlight Tobin disappearing rather than simply vanishing from the text. In terms of characters going unaccounted for, what happened to the idiot? |
|
