Just finished Blood Meridian. What work of his do I read next?

>>9916442
Take a break and read someone else and then return to the border trilogy. I say take a break because everything worth doing that he does as an author he does best in BM. All his other stuff seems paltry and derivative when read in its shadow.

You are ready for his magnum opus: Suttree.

>>9916462
Agreed. In both respects.

>>9916442
>What work of his do I read next?

Doesn't matter, it's going to be a reread of BM regardless.

>>9916442
child of god

Latitudinal Anal Mucus

>>9916480
Which is itself a reconfiguring of Moby Dick. Unlike Suttree, which sets its eyes on Huckleberry Finn.

>>9916442
the hebrew bible

>>9916617
The Kid = Ishmael
Toadvine = Queequeg
Glanton = Starbuck
The Judge = Ahab
???? = Moby Dick

Something like that? Or is the judge Moby Dick and Glanton is Ahab?

>>9917253
Hilarious. I don't know about Glanton/Starbuck but this is legit. Also, Holden seems to be as much the whale as Ahab

If you're anything like me the next thing you'll read is the final few pages of Blood Meridian again, and and again, and again trying to make sense of the ending.

Was the man who said "don't go in there" the kid (now the man)? Was the (remains of) bear girl in the outhouse?

Was the kid a secret pedo and all the missing children along the way were his fault, and not the judge's as we were meant to believe. (the fact that he hires a dwarf prostitute supports this, kinda)

Or did the judge just brutally rape/murder the kid and leave, with a complete stranger commenting on the awfulness.

>>9917253

i would say that glanton and the judge are ahab and that the judge and the savages are the whale.
any other speculation can be well enough done by this video you are all pretending not to have seen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgyZ4ia25gg

>>9917307
The ending is definitely pretty difficult to put out of one's mind. I always figured the Kid was the one stealing the kids throughout, but since he was still a "kid" he was innocent. In the end, he was a man, and tried to overcome his perversity by hiring a dwarf prostitute (because now as an adult he is morally responsible for his actions). The Judge seemed to represent, to me, among many other things, the temptation of of moral compromise. Whenever one of the gang really gives into the Judge, they end up dead. Anyways, the Kid fails with the hooker, and thus "gives into" the Judge by following his baser instincts and stealing the little girl from the bear show. This is him choosing evil and irredeemable moral failure over what is good but less fun and less easy. I thus think it is the Kid/Man who is dead in the jakes. After he raped (and probably killed) the girl he went to the pisser and the Judge hugs him in--the two become one, the Kid/man becomes subsumed by temptation and its consequences--and so the Judge kills him. Up to that point, he had the "alien spark" in him of morality, something otherworldly and godlike and not sullied by base material desires, which lead only to woe and evil. But his decision after his impotent encounter with the dwarf, a substitute for his true pedophilic desire, to rape and kill the little girl snuffs out this flame. The Judge, the temper, the devil, has emerged victorious: the last member of the Glanton gang has given into evil and unforgivable moral compromise.