How Cormac McCarthy's Religion Changed His Writing

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  • Опубліковано 26 лис 2024

КОМЕНТАРІ • 42

  • @WriteConscious
    @WriteConscious  Місяць тому

    🚀 I would love to help you understand McCarthy’s novels better in my Cormac McCarthy course & book club. On my Substack, you can access the Blood Meridian For Writers Course and McCarthy’s unreleased interview. Click here to join: writeconscious.substack.com
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    🤔My Favorite Cormac McCarthy Novel: amzn.to/3TVdzCQ
    Insta: instagram.com/writeconscious

  • @astronomer747
    @astronomer747 Рік тому +18

    Interesting. I took him to be just an atheist leaning agnostic who is nonetheless open to spiritual ideas. He is probably just one of those minds that sees the limitations in human thought and for whom intellectual certitude remains ever elusive. The smart atheists are the ones that are able to doubt their ideas and understand how other perspectives are rooted in aspects of human nature as well, and also that intellectual knowledge is not capable of obtaining a complete picture of life.

    • @WriteConscious
      @WriteConscious  Рік тому +2

      @pedorodek - You can read brains but can't access your own heart. You've polarized in the wrong direction and you've been blinded by your new power. Have fun lol!

    • @ethanhernandez9889
      @ethanhernandez9889 3 місяці тому

      @@WriteConsciouswhat does that mean?

  • @fireball43
    @fireball43 11 місяців тому +4

    It sucks that Spinoza was mentioned in the couldn’t care less interview, but was quickly brushed off. Wish we could have gotten something from McCarthy

  • @simpelman
    @simpelman Місяць тому +1

    Cormac McCarthy's writing is resembling a fever dream. And: Lots of normal people will not get all those meta references in his writing, but that's alright. I learn a lot from you, man.
    I don't think Cormac McCarthy is for the masses, it is kind of an acquired taste. I saw the movie: The Road, and he is kind of unforgiving, not your vanilla type of writer. lol

  • @MegaJackpinesavage
    @MegaJackpinesavage Рік тому +5

    ps --- "True words aren't eloquent; eloquent words aren't true." #81 -- Tao te Ching by Stephen Mitchell.

    • @WriteConscious
      @WriteConscious  Рік тому +1

      My teachings are easy to understand
      and easy to put into practice.
      Yet your intellect will never grasp them,
      and if you try to practice them, you'll fail.
      - # 70 Stephen Mitchell

    • @MegaJackpinesavage
      @MegaJackpinesavage Рік тому

      @@WriteConscious Not to worry -- the thought never crossed my mind.

  • @justinluther2924
    @justinluther2924 10 місяців тому +10

    "Shoutout to the mod who won't approve or let me post any of my things on that subreddit."
    Lol dead

  • @overtonwindowshopper
    @overtonwindowshopper 10 місяців тому +11

    McCarthy was just a classic lapsed Catholic imo. Deep thinker hounded by guilt

  • @BucketOfMarbles
    @BucketOfMarbles Рік тому +2

    I love what you said about Mormons leaving their faith, I attended the U of U also, what an excellent discovery

  • @Dapryor
    @Dapryor Рік тому +1

    Are there any mainstream writers that you enjoy reading?

    • @WriteConscious
      @WriteConscious  Рік тому +4

      Murakami, Ishiguro, Louise Erdrich, James Ellroy, Atwood, Walter Mosley, and T.C.Boyle are all mainstream authors I like. Read all of their books. I like probably 200+of other living fiction or poetry authors that I wouldn't call mainstream though!

  • @jonboatwright7777
    @jonboatwright7777 Рік тому +2

    Very interesting Breakdown. I believe I recall an interview with him in The Texas Monthly (?) around…2005ish…in which he spoke more favorably of a somewhat Christian belief. I don’t think I’m confusing that with Horton Foote but I’m not 100%. Cheers.

    • @WriteConscious
      @WriteConscious  Рік тому

      Must have been Foote! McCarthy never interviewed with them!

  • @TheGoodMD
    @TheGoodMD 9 місяців тому +2

    Would LOVE to see a video about your thoughts on Dostoevsky.

  • @YvesThePoet
    @YvesThePoet 9 місяців тому +1

    "Don't worry....you'll get one" lol!

  • @martinsanchez4827
    @martinsanchez4827 Місяць тому

    Like someone else has mentioned, he lapsed Irish Catholic.

  • @dislikebutton1718
    @dislikebutton1718 3 місяці тому +2

    True Christians wrestle with God, you almost have to to really build a relationship with God. Not just becoming a blind follower because it makes you feel good.

  • @stephenglasse9756
    @stephenglasse9756 Рік тому +2

    By the way, I've found that taking magnesium supplements helped my sleep. At least I think it was the magnesium. I was taking electrolyte water - salt, potassium and magnesium - and I think it was the magnesium.

    • @WriteConscious
      @WriteConscious  Рік тому +2

      Haha, funny you say that Stephen. Just started taking a magnesium supplement two days ago. It does make me feel very relaxed. However, I am good now! Yesterday was just an adjustment day to get me back to my 4am wake up time! Hopefully won't fall off the horse again. Electrolyte water changed my life. Thought I would have to quit teaching because I kept getting migraines, started taking them and haven't had a migraine at work in years lol.

    • @stephenglasse9756
      @stephenglasse9756 Рік тому

      @@WriteConscious awesome 👍 glad you're doing well now

  • @samuelcuellar1766
    @samuelcuellar1766 Рік тому +2

    dUh stOY ehvskee is what I got from dfw interview vids. Quien sabe?

  • @hossrodgers9746
    @hossrodgers9746 9 місяців тому +1

    he was not atheist. never professed atheism. he was agnostic if not closet catholic.

    • @WriteConscious
      @WriteConscious  9 місяців тому +2

      Never said he was an atheist?

    • @stephenglasse2743
      @stephenglasse2743 7 місяців тому

      @@WriteConscious he described himself as 'pretty much a materialist' in his interview with Krauss didn't he? However there are christian materialists like the metaphysician Peter van Inwagen! Is the ending of THE ROAD compatible with atheism? "once there were brook trout in the mountains...vermiculite patterns on their backs that were maps of the world in its becoming *maps and mazes* .." But maps and mazes are by definition *designed!*

    • @SSSadvakas
      @SSSadvakas 6 місяців тому +2

      @@stephenglasse2743 I read a post on reddit where someone who met his brother Denis McCarthy after the interview and asked him about the entire "mostly a materialist" quote and Denis responded that Cormac's views on god and metaphysics "depend on the day that you ask him". Basically the same response as he posited on Oprah.

    • @stephenglasse2743
      @stephenglasse2743 6 місяців тому +1

      @@SSSadvakas Yeah that's the impression I get. I think sometimes he looked at creation and art and philosophy and thought, 'Sure, God exists' and other times at all the suffering and the doctrines of Darwin and Krauss and was more sceptical. Probably similar to a lot of people.

    • @SSSadvakas
      @SSSadvakas 6 місяців тому

      @@stephenglasse2743 Men do not turn from God so easily. Not so easily. Deep in each man is the knowledge that something knows of his existence. Something knows, and cannot e fled nor hid from. To imagine otherwise is to imagine the unspeakable. It was never that this man ceased to believe in God. No. It was rather that he came to believe terrible things of him.
      - The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
      I'm sure he believed in God, but I'm not sure he was entirely sure that he was a purely benevolent entity. Cormac had a cosmology very close to that of Gnostic Christianity, and I think the question that really tackled him more than anything else was wether or not there was another opposite force to creation as we know it (Islam for example IMO provides a much more concise answer and framework for answering this question than Christianity IMO).
      Basically he was a Gnostic but he wasn't sure there was anybody beyond the Demiurge, his I'm basically a materialist response should be interpretated as "I don't think theres a secret platonic world beyond ours where God in a identifiable form resides, all concepts of good/evil and the like are inside of this world". However, I don't think he was always too sure (from where we get all the fire allusions in BM/The Road - hinting at there being trapped divine pneuma in our world.