Category Archives: philosophy

Suttree

Suttree influences

from books-and-movies-that-influenced-the-writing-of-suttree thread at http://www.cormacmccarthy.com

Davis Grubbs

Night of the Hunter

George Washington Harris

Sut Lovingood: Yarns Spun By a Nat’ral Born Durn’d Fool

William Faulkner

Sutpen in Absalom, Absalom! and The Reivers

William Shakespeare

(characters liked by Faulkner) Falstaff, Prince Hal, Nick Bottom, Mercutio, Huck Finn, Jim

Falstaff at Herne’s Oak, from “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” Act V, Scene v, James Stephanoff, 1832. Via Wikimedia.

Scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1848-1851). Titania and Bottom. Edwin Henry Landseer (1802–1873). Via Wikimedia.

Joseph Conrad

Dante Alighieri

James Joyce

Ulysses

Nelson Algren

The Neon Wilderness and A Walk on the Wild Side

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Walt Whitman

T.S. Eliot

W. B. Yeats

John Keats

Hermann Hesse

Siddhartha

Mark Twain

Huckleberry Finn

Herman Melville

H. L. Mencken

(Henry Louis Mencken) See The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1907)

Scopes Trial (1925)

The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes/The Scopes Monkey Trial and Tennessee’s Butler Act. (On human evolution)

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King Lear (I)

Shakespeare, William, and Stanley Wells. The History of King Lear. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.

 

To read:

Prometheus Vinctus by Aeschylus

Dirck van Baburen – Prometheus Being Chained by Vulcan. circa 1594/1595–1624). Via Wikimedia.

Introduction by Stanley Wells

“The folio is, after all, a derivative, adapted, and edited text.” p. 8

“Muir, however, notes eclipses of both sun and moon in 1601 ‘that would still be remembered by the audience’, and there was a partial eclipse of the moon in May 1603.” p. 12

Titus Andronicus he had already portrayed an elderly tyrant who goes mad” p. 14

To Read:

The Theme of the Three Caskets by Sigmund Freud

“proposes that the opening scene is based on an ancient myth of a man’s having to choose among three women, the third one represents death. footnote p. 16

Historia regum Britanniae

“written by the learned and imaginative monk Geoffrey of Monmouth” p. 17

Illumination of a 15th century manuscript of Historia Regum Britanniae showing king of the Britons Vortigern and Ambros watching the fight between two dragons. Via Wikimedia.

Gonorilla to the Duke of Cornwall, Regan to the Duke of Albania, or Albany, the northern part of Britain. Later Aganipus, King of the Franks, married the dowerless Cordeilla for love.” p. 17

Cordelia. 1888. William Frederick Yeames (1835–1918). Via Wikimedia.

Edwin Austin Abbey (1852–1911) King Lear, Cordelia’s Farewell. Metropolitan Museum of Art – New York, NY . Via Wikimedia.

“Aganippus raised an army to restore him to his kingdom; they succeeded, and three years later Lear died. (By this time he must have been very old indeed.) Cordeilla, widowed, buried her father at Leicester. Some years later her nephews rebelled against her, captured her, and put her in prison, where she committed suicide.” p. 17

to read:

Arcadia by Sir Philip Sidney

“In reading it, Shakespeare must have been struck by the relation between the Lear story and the episodes in Arcadia telling of a Paphlagonian king deposed and blinded by a wicked, illegitimate son but cherished by the natural son whom, under the influence of the bastard, he has cast off with orders-not obeyed-that he be killed.” p. 26

“Shakespeare is indebted to Arcadia for plot motifs and atmospheric effects rather than for language.” p. 26

“The Bible exerted a strong influence, even though Shakespeare has been at pains to locate his action in a non-Christian, pagan society; indeed, both the Book of Job and the parable of the Prodigal Son have been regarded as deep sources of the play.” p. 29

George Orwell essay: Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool.” p. 32

Tolstoy on Shakespeare wikipedia article

Tolstoy on Shakespeare; a critical essay on Shakespeare

“It might on the contrary be argued that Shakespeare’s opening scene is a masterpiece of dramatic exposition-almost a little play in its own right-and that its reduction and simplification of motive is one of the ways in which it establishes a mode in which symbol and emblem will have as important a part to play as psychological verisimilitude.” p. 33

Michael Gambon playing the Fool “That weekend I hurried to London Zoo to watch the chimps and became even more convinced that they had all the requisite qualities for the Fool-manic comic energy when in action, a disturbing sadness when in repose.” p. 42

“But the suffering diminishes when madness comes upon him. As Gloucester is to realize later in the play, madness can bring relief from suffering.” p. 45

footnote Howard Felperin “takes a contrary view: Gloucester ‘naïvely wishes he could go made like Lear, mistaking madness for a protection against pain when it is in fact an exposure to it.” p. 45

“Suffering teaches both men how they have misvalued their offspring, and leads them to acknowledge their own faults and to express humility.” p. 46

José Ribera, Ixion (1632). Oil on canvas, 220 x 301 cm. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Via Wikimedia.

See Ixion

literary context of ‘bound upon a wheel of fire‘ p.47

“The Wheel of Fire is part of the Aristotelian reading of a tragedy (e.g. plays), which includes the central flaw within a character.” wikipedia

“To its early audiences, the language of King Lear must have seemed very strange, as original in its day as that of James Joyce or Dylan Thomas in theirs.” p. 53

To read:

Dylan Thomas

poems: Do not go gentle into that good night, and And death shall have no dominion.

Margreta de Grazia “the play itself goes to extremes, pushing beyond the bounds of tragedy, particularly in its superfluous addition of Cordelia’s death.” p. 53

“What Tate did to Shakespeare was not essentially different from what Shakespeare had done to King Leir: Shakespeare had turned an old tragicomedy into a tragedy, Tate reversed the process. In doing do created a new, different play which, critics have increasingly argued, has its own artistic validity.” p. 62

King Leir play

Nahum Tate‘s King Lear adaptation

“But at the time Tate wrote, Shakespeare was not thought of as an immortal classic, but as a dramatist whose works, however admirable, required adaptation to fit them for the new theatrical and social circumstances of the time, as well as to changes in taste.” p. 62

Tate’s play “supplanted Shakespeare’s play in every performance given from 1681 to 1838.” p. 63

King Lear in the Tempest Tearing off his Robes. George Romney (1734-1802). Via wikiart.org

See John Runciman (1744-68), King Lear in the Storm (1767)

See Alexander Runciman (1736-85) King Lear on the Heath (1767)

“Barker insists that the storm is not in itself ‘dramatically important, only in its effect upon Lear’, and that the actor should ‘impersonate both Lear and-reflected in Lear-the storm’.” p. 72

King Lear (1970) Grigori Kozintsev

The Tale of Lear (1984) Tadashi Suzuki

King Lear (1987) Jean-Luc Godard

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King Lear (1971) Peter Brook

 

King Lear (1983) Michael Elliott

A king Lear of the Steppes (1870) Turgenev

King Lear’s Wife (1915/1920) Gordon Bottomley

Lear (1971) Edward Bond

Book: A Thousand Acres (1991) Jane Smiley

“The language of Shakespeare’s time was permeated by the Bible.” p. 87

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books 2016

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Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. New York: Bantam, 2009. Print. (First ed. 1895)

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Naipaul, V. S. A Bend in the River. New York: Vintage International, 1989. Print. (First ed. 1979)

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Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. Don Quijote De La Mancha. Madrid: Real Academia Españƒola, 2015. Print. (First ed. 1605)

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Faulkner, William. The Sound and The Fury. New York: Vintage International, 1990. Print. (1984 correction, first ed. 1929)

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Dahl, Roald. Boy: Tales of Childhood. Great Britain: Penguin, 1984. Print.

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Joyce, James. Dubliners. New York: Signet Classics, 2007. Print. (First ed. 1914.)

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Brooks, Max. World War Z: An Oral History of The Zombie War. New York: Broadway, 2006. Print.

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Aurelius, Marcus. Meditations. New York: Dover Thrift, 2016. (First ed. 1862. Written in the 100s.)

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Allen, Woody. Mere Anarchy. New York: Random House, 2007. Print.

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Greene, Graham. The Lawless Roads. London: Penguin, 1976. Print. (First Ed. 1939)

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Roth, Philip. Everyman. New York: Vintage International, 2006.

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Vallejos, Soledad. Trimarco: la mujer que lucha por todas las mujeres. Argentina: Aguilar, 2013. Print.

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Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? New York: Del Rey, 1996. (First. ed 1968)

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Guillebeau, Chris. The Happiness of Pursuit: Finding the Quest That Will Bring Purpose to Your Life. New York: Harmony Books, 2014. Print.

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Capote, Truman. In Cold Blood. New York, New York: Signet, 1965.

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Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. London, England: Penguin Classics, 2000. Print. [First ed. 1949.]

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Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Del Rey, 1991. (First Ed. 1953.)

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Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Restoring the Character Ethic. New York, N.Y.: Free Press, 2004. Print. (First ed. 1989).

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Gilbert, Elizabeth. Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia. New York, N.Y.; Penguin, 2007. Print. (First ed. 2006)

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Haddon, Mark. the curious incident of the dog in the night-time. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2004. Print. (First ed. 2003)

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Orwell, George. Animal Farm. New York, N.Y.: Signet Classics, 1996. Print. (First ed. 1945).

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O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York, N.Y.: Broadway Books, 1990. Print.

the-gardeners-son

McCarthy, Cormac. The Gardener’s Son: a screenplay. New York: HarperCollins, 1996. Print.

the-orchard-keeper

McCarthy, Cormac. The Orchard Keeper. New York, N.Y.: Vintage International, 1993. Print. (First ed. 1965).

naked-lunch

Burroughs, William. Naked Lunch. New York, N.Y.: Grove Press, 1966. Print.

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Elam, Kimberly. Geometry of Design: Studies in Proportion and Composition. New York: Princeton Architectural, 2001. Print.

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Friedlander, Gerald. Jewish Fairy Tales. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1997. Print.

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McCarthy, Cormac. Child of God. New York, N.Y.: Vintage International. 1993.

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Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1973.

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Graysmith, Robert. Zodiac: The Shocking True Story of The Nation’s Most Bizarre Mass Murderer. New York, NY: Berkley, 2007.

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Pirsig, Robert M. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. New York: Harper Torch, 2006. Print.

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Confucius, and D. C. Lau. The Analects (Lun Yü). Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979. Print.

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Wong, Stanford. Professional Video Poker. La Jolla: Pi Yee Press, 1994. Print.

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Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and The Sea. New York: Bantam, 1965. Print.

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LP: San Francisco

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Block, Bruce A. The Visual Story: Creating the Visual Structure of Film, TV and Digital Media. 2nd ed. Amsterdam: Focal/Elsevier, 2008. Print.

HenDream

Hwang, Sŏn-mi, Chi-Young Kim, and Nomoco. The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly: A Novel. U.S.: Penguin Books, 2013. Print.

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Murakami, Haruki. After the Quake. Trans. Jay Rubin. London: Vintage, 2007. Print.

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Turnbull, Stephen R., and Peter Dennis. Japanese Castles in Korea, 1592-98. Oxford: Osprey, 2007. Print.

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Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men. New York: Penguin, 1993. Print.

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Munro, Alice. Dear Life: Stories. New York: Vintage International, 2012. Print.

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Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom the Bell Tolls. New York.: Scribner, 2003. Print.

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Arai, Yoshio (Ed.). Great American Speeches 1775-1965. Tokyo, Japan.: The Hokuseido Press, 1994.

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Biskind, Peter. Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2011.

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Haruki Murakami. 村上 春樹 Norwegian Wood. (translated by Jay Rubin) 2011. Vintage Open-Market Edition. Published in Japanese in 1987.

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Hawking, Stephen and Leonard Mlodinow. The Grand Design.

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McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. New York: Vintage International, 2007. Print.

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Neruda, Pablo. Cantos ceremoniales. Buenos Aires: Losada, Tercera edición 23-XI-1977.

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Fitzgerald, F. Scott, and Guy Reynolds. The Great Gatsby. Ware: Wordsworth Classics, 2001. Print.

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McCarthy, Cormac. Suttree. New York. Vintage International. 1992.

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Fisher, Roger, William Ury, and Bruce Patton. Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving in. New York: Penguin, 2011. Print.

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Lowell, Ross. Matters of Light & Depth: Creating Memorable Images for Video, Film & Stills through Lighting. Philadelphia: Broad Street, 1992. Print.

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Read: Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. New York, NY, U.S.A.: Penguin, 1991. Print.

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Korean Picture Dictionary

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LP: Thailand: Bangkok, Ko Samet, Ayutthaya

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Cormac McCarthy reading list

To read

Fleeing Sodom and Gomorrah, Foster Bible. Via Wikimedia.

The Bible

Canterbury Tales, Woodcut 1484. Via Wikimedia.

Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and CriseydeThe Book of the Duchess

Satan presiding at the Infernal Council. 1824. John Martin. Via Wikimedia.

John Milton: Paradise Lost  Areopagitica

Shakespeare

Etching of Joseph O. Eaton’s portrait of Herman Melville. Via Wikimedia.

Herman Melville: Typee,Omoo,Moby-Dick 

William Faulkner

 

Flannery O’Connor Wise Blood, The Violent Bear It Away, A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Thomas Pynchon: V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity’s Rainbow, Mason & Dixon

MacKinlay Kantor: Andersonville, If the South Had Won the Civil War

Portrait of Dostoyevsky (Ф.М.Достоевского) by Vasily Perov, 1872. Via Wikimedia.

Ф.М.Достоевского Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Idiot, Demons, The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment  

Nobel Laureates 1989-1985

Camilo José Cela 1989

Spain (novel/short story) (see Generacion del 36 and tremendismo)

The Family of Pascual Duarte (La familia de Pascual Duarte), La colmenaSan Camilo, 1936 

نجيب محفوظ‎‎  Naguib Mahfouz 1988

Egypt (novel/short story/screenplay)

ثلاثية القاهرة The Cairo Trilogy (Palace Walk بين القصرين, Palace of Desire قصر الشوق, Sugar Street السكرية [Novels named after actual streets in Cairo,])

Ио́сиф Алекса́ндрович Бро́дский Joseph Brodsky 1987

US/Soviet Union (poetry/essay)

Less Than One: Selected EssaysCollected Poems in English, 1972–1999, To Urania : Selected Poems, 1965–1985

Akinwándé Oluwolé Babátúndé Sóyinká Wole Soyinka 1986

Nigeria (drama/novel/poetry)

Season of AnomyThe InterpretersDeath and the King’s Horseman

Claude Simon 1985

France/Madagascar (novel)

La Route des FlandresHistoireL’Acacia

Nobel Laureates 1994-1990

大江 健三郎 Kenzaburō Ōe 1994

Japan (novel)

Work: 個人的な体験 A Personal Matter, 万延元年のフットボール The Silent Cry

Toni Morrison 1993

US (novel)

Work: The Bluest EyeBelovedSong of Solomon

Derek Walcott 1992

Santa Lucia (poetry/drama)

Work: Dream on Monkey Mountain, Omeros,  

Nadine Gordimer 1991

South Africa (novel/short story)

Work: The ConservationistBurger’s DaughterJuly’s People

Octavio Paz 1990

Mexico (poetry/essay)

Work: Piedra de solSalamandraEl laberinto de la soledadVislumbres de la India

Nobel Laureates 1999-1995

Günter Grass 1999

Germany (novel, drama, graphic design) Nazi Germany

Work:  The Tin Drum, Cat and MouseDog Years (Danzig Trilogy

José Saramago 1998

Portugal (novel)

Work:  Memorial do Convento (Baltasar and Blimunda), O Evangelho Segundo Jesus Cristo (The Gospel According to Jesus Christ), Ensaio sobre a cegueira (Blindness), História do Cerco de Lisboa (The History of the Siege of Lisbon)   

Dario Fo 1997

Italy (drama)

Work: Guerra di popolo in Cile, Non Si Paga! Non Si Paga! (Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!, Il Papa e la strega (The Pope and the Witch)

Wisława Szymborska 1996

Poland (poetry)

Work: Love At First Sight poem (Watch Three Colors: Red), Here, View With a Grain of Salt: Selected Poems

Seamus Heaney 1995

UK/Ireland (poetry)

Work: Beowulf 1999 translationDeath of a NaturalistThe Spirit Level

NOBEL LAUREATES 2004-2000

Elfriede Jelinek 2004

Germany (drama/novel)

Die Klavierspielerin (The Piano Teacher), Die Kinder der Toten (The Children of the Dead)Greed, Lust

J. M. Coetzee 2003

South Africa (novel/essay)

Work: Boyhood, Life & Times of Michael KWaiting for the Barbarians 

Imre Kertész 2002

Hungary (novel)

Work: FatelessnessKaddish for an Unborn Child

Sir V. S. Naipaul 2001

Trinidad and Tobago/UK (novel)

Work: The Loss of El DoradoThe Enigma of ArrivalGuerrillas  

高行健 Gao Xingjian 2000

China/France (novel/screenwriter)

Work: 給我老爺買魚竿 Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather, 靈山 Soul Mountain一個人的聖經 One Man’s Bible

Nobel Laureates 2015-2010

Svetlana Alexievich 2015

Belarus (born in Ukraine SSR) (Soviet history/essay)

Work: Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

Patrick Modiano 2014

France (novel)

Work: Lacombe, Lucien (1974) (screenplay), The Occupation Trilogy

Alice Munro 2013

Canada (short story)

Work: Dance of the Happy Shades, Who Do You Think You Are?, The Progress of Love 

管謨業 Mo Yan 2012

China (novel/short story)

Work: 红高粱家族 Red Sorghum, 丰乳肥臀  Big Breasts & Wide Hips, 酒国 The Republic of Wine:

Tomas Tranströmer 2011

Sweden (poetry/translation)

Work: Baltics, For the Living and the Dead, The Great Enigma

Mario Vargas Llosa 2010

Peru/Spain (essay/novel)

La ciudad y los perros, García Márquez: historia de un deicidio (essay)

Silence

NY Times The Passion of Martin Scorsese article

To watch Silence (2016):

To read: Silence by Shūsaku Endō (1966)

“As the hours passed, the room, already dark, seemed to diminish around us, until it resembled a screening room, or a chapel, a place where questions of how to live are posed through stories and images.”
“The Italian-American Catholicism of the area was centered on street processions devoted to saints brought over from the old country: San Gandolfo for the Sicilians on Elizabeth Street, San Gennaro for the Neapolitans on Mulberry Street.”

Mulberry Street c. 1900. Via Wikimedia/Library of Congress.

To read: Don DeLillo

“Spiritual Exercises” of St. Ignatius of Loyola (founder of the Jesuits)

“The exercises, devised in the 1520s, invite the “exercitant” to use his imagination to place himself in the company of Jesus, at the foot of the cross, among tormented souls in hell.”

To read: Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola (1522–1524)

Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins

To watch again The Mission (1986) Roland Joffé

“A.O. Scott, now a chief film critic for The New York Times, once wrote that Scorsese approaches filmmaking as “a priestly avocation, a set of spiritual exercises embedded in technical problems.””

To watch Boxcar Bertha (1972), After Hours (1985), The Color of Money (1986)

To read: The Last Temptation of Christ (1955) by Nikos Kazantzakis

To watch again The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

 

“Like the novel, the picture interrogates the very idea of Christian martyrdom, by proposing that there are instances when martyrdom — the believer holding fast to Christ to the bitter end — is not holy or even right. It makes in the way of art the arguments made in defense of “Last Temptation”: that an act can’t be fully understood if the intentions behind it aren’t taken into account, and that a seeming act of profanation can be an act of devotion if done out of an underlying faith.”
“He will go to hell — but he will go to hell for their sake.”

To watch: La Strada (1954) Federico Fellini

bitacora. dic. 1

I wake up. Tiny claws scratching the wooden floor. A tongue lapping at the water. The dogs are ready to eat. Boil the water. Soften the food. I put Yolo in the pen. He demands to be set free. Chocolino come here. Treat time. Choco sit, down, beg, spiiiiiin, down, gidaria, eat. Repeat five times. Then his plate. Down. Gidaria. Eat. He wolfs it down.
Out the door. Elevator from the 5th floor to the first. The morning sun is bright. The city has already had a few hours to get started. I wait for 155.
The 155 is almost empty. I sit at the back on one of the single seats, and continue reading The Sound and The Fury. The 155 travels east. We cross the Suyeong at Millak. I look down at the water and try to come up something pretty. Nothing comes up. Just water moving toward more water. In India it would be spiritual. People get off at Centum. We turn north. I read. We turn at Jaesong and climb up toward Jangsan mountain. I hear the bus shift gears. People get off and on. A blue and white bus with red numbers driving up a city built on a mountain slope on a sunny morning in Korea. The market at Banyeo samdong, people with grocery bags, people reading their phones. We descend into Banyeo ildong. The view opens and a large slice of city appears framed by pine forests at each side, rows of tall monolithic white buildings beyond the basin of the Suyeong. The spine of the Geumjeongsan still green. The mountain disappears behind older and smaller houses. We enter Banyeon ildong. Narrow streets. A blue work truck parked at a tight corner. Honking. I read. We turn. The bus gathers speed. I hear the bus shift gears.  We careen down the strip until the overpass. The whiny bell announces a passenger stop. An old lady with curly hair waddles to the backdoor holding the handrails as if enjoying an adventure at a moving jungle gym. I get off at the elementary school. The yellow leaves of the unheng tree strewn on the sidewalk. I think of my dad and how once as a kid I pretended to be a blind boy or an old man, using an imaginary cane to prod my way around the subsuelo hallway of the hotel. My dad frowned and asked me, ¿te haci de ciego o de viejo? I pondered the question. I looked at the corral my dad had been chatting with before he’d decided to test my morals. His friend looked back at me, grinned and waited for my response. I looked at my dad. De viejo, I said. Ah, bien, porque algun dia vai a ser viejo. I buy an ice americano at Amico for 2,500 won. The lady that made it hands it to me and bends the end of my straw so I won’t have to. I sip and exit the coffee shop.

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