Thanksgiving, 2003 by John Currin (b. 1962)
Thursday, November 24th.–This is Thanksgiving Day, a good old festival, and we have kept it with our hearts, and, besides, have made good cheer upon our turkey and pudding, and pies and custards, although none sat at our board but our two selves. There was a new and livelier sense, I think, that we have at last found a home, and that a new family has been gathered since the last Thanksgiving Day. There have been many bright, cold days latterly,–so cold that it has required a pretty rapid pace to keep one’s self warm a-walking. Day before yesterday I saw a party of boys skating on a pond of water that has overflowed a neighboring meadow. Running water has not yet frozen. Vegetation has quite come to a stand, except in a few sheltered spots. In a deep ditch we found a tall plant of the freshest and healthiest green, which looked as if it must have grown within the last few weeks. We wander among the wood-paths, which are very pleasant in the sunshine of the afternoons, the trees looking rich and warm,–such of them, I mean, as have retained their russet leaves; and where the leaves are strewn along the paths, or heaped plentifully in some hollow of the hills, the effect is not without a charm. To-day the morning rose with rain, which has since changed to snow and sleet; and now the landscape is as dreary as can well be imagined,–white, with the brownness of the soil and withered grass everywhere peeping out. The swollen river, of a leaden hue, drags itself sullenly along; and this may be termed the first winter’s day.
The Horn, 2014 by Neo Rauch (b. 1960)
Many Men, 1968 by Ben Shahn (1898-1969)
The First Thanksgiving, 1973 by Warrington Colescott (1921 – 2018)
A grave and dark-clad company!” quoth Goodman Brown. In truth, they were such. Among them, quivering to-and-fro, between gloom and splendor, appeared faces that would be seen, next day, at the council-board of the province, and others which, Sabbath after Sabbath, looked devoutly heavenward, and benignantly over the crowded pews, from the holiest pulpits in the land. Some affirm, that the lady of the governor was there. At least, there were high dames well known to her, and wives of honored husbands, and widows, a great multitude, and ancient maidens, all of excellent repute, and fair young girls, who trembled lest their mothers should espy them. Either the sudden gleams of light, flashing over the obscure field, bedazzled Goodman Brown, or he recognized a score of the church-members of Salem village, famous for their especial sanctity. Good old Deacon Gookin had arrived, and waited at the skirts of that venerable saint, his reverend pastor. But, irreverently consorting with these grave, reputable, and pious people, these elders of the church, these chaste dames and dewy virgins, there were men of dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given over to all mean and filthy vice, and suspected even of horrid crimes. It was strange to see, that the good shrank not from the wicked, nor were the sinners abashed by the saints. Scattered, also, among their pale-faced enemies, were the Indian priests, or powows, who had often scared their native forest with more hideous incantations than any known to English witchcraft.–From “Young Goodman Brown,” Nathaniel Hawthorne (1835)
Kangaroo Blank, 1988 by Imants Tillers (b. 1950)
Interviewer: You mention the influence of Faulkner. Who are some of the writers around at the moment who you admire and who influence you?
Hannah: Cormac McCarthy. It’s not just the language, although I can’t imagine loving his books without the special language. He’s one of the few writers who has a vision. Relentless. It’s very rough—almost fascistic, as nature is. Darwinian. But he gives such reverence to nature itself. I think that is why he seems atavistic; he likes the fact that there was a time when boulders, trees, mosses with lichens—all their individual names participated right next to man. And even though there are horrible things that happen in his books, he’s quite sure that we have disconnected ourselves from the good stuff. He can make a gorgeous, almost epic, page out of a man riding a horse through a half decent meadow somewhere in Mexico. Actually, it kind of makes me excited in a positive way—does not depress me as it does others—because it makes me a participant in the universe. You are no longer just a dead man, floating. You’re right there with the stars, smoke, the peace, and the beauty—as well as the violence. It makes you a player.
From a 1996 interview with Barry Hannah. Published in a 2011 issue of Mississippi Review.
Reading the Mountain, 2015 by Sergio Ceccotti (b. 1935)
[Editorial note: The following citations come from one-star Amazon reviews of Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Passenger. I think The Passenger is a brilliant, messy, baggy synthesis of much of the philosophical and aesthetic themes of McCarthy’s previous work; I loved it.
I’ve preserved the reviewers’ own styles of punctuation and spelling. More one-star Amazon reviews.]
jumble
I’m too old
Horrible sci fi
another gut-punch.
literary tricksterisms
this one is different in so many ways
the airplane is never mentioned again
a cluster mess of absolutely nothing
Virtue signaling
who is missing
Zero.
Zilch.
Nada.
rambling
confusing
nonsensical
300 pages of mostly sci-fi
nothing like his previous writings
This author has written several really good novels
The only mention of salvage diving to find a plane was in the beginning of the book.
nothing about it makes one happy to be reading it
Introspection with no development
mediocrity
absurdity
Incest
A plot with … no plot.
I literally threw it in the garbage
portions in italics about some person with flipper hands in some alter reality
Tedious chapters where a character we never meet argues with her imaginary friends.
the editor and McCarthy were both under the influence of something!
he has decided to eliminate quotation marks
these questions are never answered
disjointed
irregular
senseless
I am a fan of McCarthy
The only passenger is the reader
reads like two people on an acid trip
If you are an average reader then you will find this book difficult to read
Why is the plane in the river
lack of punctuation
time line confusing
no stars
ten zeros
lost and confused
made me feel stupid
one of Americas great writers
A lot of physics talk by men with questionable morals.
a sunken private jet in the Gulf of Mexico is the MacGuffin in this book
I’ve read two other Cormac McCarthy works: The Road, and No Country For Old Men. I enjoyed them both, although they were nothing special.
If this book had been submitted for publication by an unknown author it never would have been published
gassy dialogue about cars, tools, diving, drinking, the Deep State, hopeless forbidden love, and loss
I get the distinct impression that the publicists never read more than the beginning of the book.
Will I read the sequel? Probably, just to see if this novel can be redeemed.
not the action adventure novel that the jacket cover advertises
I was continuing out of spite.
life is too short
What story?
God, Please Give Me a New Name, 1985 by Raymond Pettibon (b. 1957)
Illustration for Moby-Dick, 2014 by Christophe Chabouté (b. 1967)
Four Studies of Frogs, by Jacques de Gheyn II (c.1565 –1629)
In the evening he saddled his horse and rode out west from the house. The wind was much abated and it was very cold and the sun sat blood red and elliptic under the reefs of bloodred cloud before him. He rode where he would always choose to ride, out where the western fork of the old Comanche road coming down out of the Kiowa country to the north passed through the westernmost section of the ranch and you could see the faint trace of it bearing south over the low prairie that lay between the north and middle forks of the Concho River. At the hour he’d always choose when the shadows were long and the ancient road was shaped before him in the rose and canted light like a dream of the past where the painted ponies and the riders of that lost nation came down out of the north with their faces chalked and their long hair plaited and each armed for war which was their life and the women and children and women with children at their breasts all of them pledged in blood and redeemable in blood only. When the wind was in the north you could hear them, the horses and the breath of the horses and the horses’ hooves that were shod in rawhide and the rattle of lances and the constant drag of the travois poles in the sand like the passing of some enormous serpent and the young boys naked on wild horses jaunty as circus riders and hazing wild horses before them and the dogs trotting with their tongues aloll and foot-slaves following half naked and sorely burdened and above all the low chant of their traveling song which the riders sang as they rode, nation and ghost of nation passing in a soft chorale across that mineral waste to darkness bearing lost to all history and all remembrance like a grail the sum of their secular and transitory and violent lives.
From Cormac McCarthy’s novel All the Pretty Horses—
—which I picked up again the other day to find a passage in connection to The Passenger and started rereading. The swelling rhythm of this passage would have knocked my socks off had I been wearing socks.
Cloud 2, 2017 by Robbie Cornelissen (b. 1954)
Biblioklept 