Missed Live Chat
Stupid work!

Judging by the content of the three books we've examined thus far, I think it's fair to say that anyone who's put out by ethically unpleasant protagonists is in the wrong book club…

I would imagine using the Feebs as inspirational fodder is the same thing to Hudson as exploiting them on his used-car lot. He knows what they need better than they do, and he's bound and determined to prove it, whether that's selling them a car, or making them a movie.

Artist or Asshole?

Troy Duffy, anyone?

Fittingly, this book has about as much commercial viability as The Man Who Got Away.

Excellently done, Mayday.

LadyUranus, I've felt similarly about Daniel Plainview after watching There Will Be Blood, and asked myself the same question. The answer is "yes." While both Mr. Hudson and Mr. Plainview take their respective drives for success to horrible extremes, that instinct that subordinates interpersonal responsibilities…

Fenton, that's a really good point about the ending. I was struck by the cyclical nature of the ending, of how the action switches back to the impassive, anonymous Hollywood traffic that opens the novel, but I missed the significance of Richard's joining that traffic.

I dunno, Mother was one of the weakest elements of the book for me. Willeford had to direct us to Richard's Oedipal desires with several flashing neon signs (Exactly how many times is Richard going to talk about his mother's breasts? How many sloppy tongue kisses?). Mother just came across to me as an unnecessarily…

I'm sorry, I'm a bit confused. Does "fantasy" really belong with "erotica" or "medical thriller" as a literary genre of ill repute? I mean, I've read very little fantasy literature, so it's a serious question.

Typical, perhaps if you had typed your post all in caps, your irony would have been more convincing.

Is simply ordering a used copy off the internet out of the question? That seems to be the most surefire way to go when it comes to cult crime fiction.

C'mon peeps, Gould's Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan.

@Xochi: I think I can top that. One of my bullshit upper division classes was a Humanities course that bore the neutral title of "Thought and Image", but lo and behold, when I arrive to said class, I find the class is really about "The Aesthetics of the Garden." The Garden of Eden, Japanese zen gardens, gardens of the…

The chat got rescheduled to take place a couple of hours earlier. The change happened around Tuesday, I believe.

You can google an interview the NY Times did with him back in 1992 to promote All the Pretty Horses. It was the last interview he would do until appearing on Oprah's show to promote the Road, if I'm not mistaken.

Maybe the Kid's failure to even try to kill the Judge is SUPPOSED to strike the reader as strange and irrational. There has been talk in earlier threads of the apparently immortal nature of the Judge (McCarthy takes pains to emphasize how he looks exactly the same when he meets the Kid decades later at the Dance), how…

"What is truth?"-Pontius Pilate (as quoted from Jesus Christ Superstar)

@Ged: That may be McCarthy exercising some more of his Melville love. Moby Dick also carries an alternate title (The Whale).