Blood Meridian

[Corpsey]

(Yes I know I contradicted myself there by talking about a book I can barely remember - but I remember the style, as any other reader of it will, and the judge's discussions of war, and the unremitting bleakness. )

 

[Leo]

young adult fiction for fedora teens.

I loved this book

 

[Corpsey]

I reckon luka's whole beef with it (aside from annoying droid) will be the (in his view) kitschy faux-KJB of the style.

It's a sort of anti-modernistic Romantic style which you wouldn't get in Burroughs, e.g. Or you may get it but it would be interspersed with different voices and styles to undercut it.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I do think the adjective "biblical" is overused. not misused, just overused.

obv there is a strong biblical, supernatural element in the Judge

but he's also writing about a time when religion was hugely more prominent and much closer to the surface of day to day life

and also a time when American founding myths were still being shaped

so that style is not merely an affectation

if you read for example The Killer Angels, Shaara mentions that he had to tone down the floridity and religiosity of the language people used cos it would sound absurd to modern readers

in Blood Meridian it's not so much in the dialogue but in the way the characters move through and see the world

the kid also recalls a figure like Johnny Appleseed, reimagined as a nihilistic antihero

and other American folks heroes like Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie, whose deaths at the Alamo are echo down to the doomed post-Mexican-American War expedition the kid is recruited into

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

you could accuse pretty much any "high art" literature of pretentiousness, it's almost a pointless charge

pessimism, certainly. wilful idk, that really depends on your view of the world, human nature, etc more than the book.

humorlessness I would disagree with tho. there's a fair bit of comedy in the first third or so before the kid joins Glanton's gang, mostly in the form of absurd encounters as he tries to navigate the world. his initial encounter with Toadvine for example. not that it's rife with laughs but there's a sense of the absurd that you would never find in for example Heart of Darkness which is unrelentingly serious, almost a more literary Upton Sinclair.

that absurdity is in fact what I think elevates to such heights. it undercuts all the high art Romanticism, floridity, whatever, the way acid cuts through fat.

 

[Corpsey]

I will accept all that, as I can't remember Blood Meridian very well but Heart of Darkness (which I read more recently) has moments of humour to it, too, albeit bleak, and a powerful sense of absurdity - thinking of the gunship endlessly and futiley shelling a piece of coastline, for example.

 

[Murphy]

Blood Meridian is the only CM story I’ve ever returned to, about 4 readings in four decades. Long enough to remember pulpit speeches (moving away from “biblical”), although saturation may have passed when tracts sit in your memory bank from the moment they were tattooed on. Seen too much violence on earth and it’s this factor which pushes the book past the threshold of trite rendering. The iron smell of blood. The sound and sickness of full velocity impacts from metal objects against limbs, maiming, killings, cyclical rounds of Control sadism. Enough to make you probe gnosticism as ontologically coherent

It cropped up in the book thread recently and had not long finished In Parenthesis, which seems its antithesis. Judge Holden vs The Queen of the Woods? Early to mid 80’s were grim for Cold War trash. Lost track of the film count. Burroughs still piercing through and Blood Meridian filtering out of so much clutter and disposable wank - Breakfast Club Ferris Bueller Red Dawn worlds of Weird Science and Ghostbusters (sorry, as traumatic as Ghostbusters is emblematic of innocence for some) - seems like a gift from this perspective, wisdom lurking in accelerating colonial madness. Cities of the Red Night has a wider spread and weirder touch but it hovers in similar worlds

It’s pulpy in a similar vein to The Sopranos, enculturation of violence etc far more stark and unsparing by withholding any humour, just plied with equally framed seams of restlessness and the mundane. Landscapes is a shit word, more juicy vistas brimming with shaded ochres contrasting with a clear authorial love of micro fauna and regional vastness. Season with characters smelling of unholy chutzpah?

First reading was a few days at every opportunity. Compared to DeLillo‘s interminable inanity it has pacing beyond the boring tag that’s far more subtle and crafted than a qliphothic dead baby tree. This seems like the same argument you could have about Le Cercle Rouge. It is undoubtedly pulp but my god, heaven in familiar yet foreign worlds

 

[Corpsey]

Anyway, my intention isn't to dispute BM's status as literature, it's only that Linebaugh's questioning of this made me ponder what it might mean to say it's only pulp beneath the style. (And the style in itself pulp of a sort.)

Here's Bloom waxing Bloomian over BM

Harold Bloom on Cormac McCarthy, True Heir to Melville and Faulkner

Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (1985) seems to me the authentic American apocalyptic novel, more relevant now than when it was written. The fulfilled renown of Moby-Dick and of As I Lay Dyi…

lithub.com

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

it's pretty easy, obvious (and again not untrue) to compare McCarthy and BM specifically to Melville, Faulkner, and Conrad

but the single work of art I'd actually compare Blood Meridian to is Elem Klimov's film Come and See

another bildungsroman about a youth trying to navigate and survive a world of absolute horror

there is tbf zero humor in Come and See but the horror of Nazi-occupied Belarus does, not infrequently, tip into absurdity

and its title comes directly from the Book of Revelation - an invitation to come and see the destruction wrought by Death (i.e. behold a pale horse)

you could say that Come and See depicts the Judge's worldview enacted, with Hitler in the role of Judge

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I don't really care what Harold Bloom did or didn't think, I mean whatever he's welcome to his opinions

his praise probably hurts a book's reputation if anything since he's so inextricable from a narrow dead white guy kind of canon

 

[Murphy]

Country by Michael Hughes is a reference point for big speech moments in a crisis and might be as nuanced a translation of history and myth in this form. Two Irish names in a thread references might further trigger Luka too

 

[Murphy]

it's pretty easy, obvious (and again not untrue) to compare McCarthy and BM specifically to Melville, Faulkner, and Conrad

but the single work of art I'd actually compare Blood Meridian to is Elem Klimov's film Come and See

another bildungsroman about a youth trying to navigate and survive a world of absolute horror

there is tbf zero humor in Come and See but the horror of Nazi-occupied Belarus does, not infrequently, tip into absurdity

and its title comes directly from the Book of Revelation - an invitation to come and see the destruction wrought by Death (i.e. behold a pale horse)

you could say that Come and See depicts the Judge's worldview enacted, with Hitler in the role of Judge

A hard watch, still. probably pulp for Cenobitical focus. The Ascent splits the protagonists into two and works in from different angles again, The Wasteland indicative too

 

[droid]

it's pretty easy, obvious (and again not untrue) to compare McCarthy and BM specifically to Melville, Faulkner, and Conrad

but the single work of art I'd actually compare Blood Meridian to is Elem Klimov's film Come and See

another bildungsroman about a youth trying to navigate and survive a world of absolute horror

there is tbf zero humor in Come and See but the horror of Nazi-occupied Belarus does, not infrequently, tip into absurdity

and its title comes directly from the Book of Revelation - an invitation to come and see the destruction wrought by Death (i.e. behold a pale horse)

you could say that Come and See depicts the Judge's worldview enacted, with Hitler in the role of Judge

Great comparison, but I would say that history itself depicts the judge's world view enacted, or at least that is the central thesis of the work. The judge is an avatar not only of the west and colonialism (and if you look at his speeches you will see the echoes and aspects of western exceptionalist thought interwoven and compressed into almost every line, almost literally at times - a superb feat of historical research), but of all of mankind - hence the comparable savagery of the natives and the (now said to be) apocryphal epigraph implying an unceasing 300,000 year history of blood and violence.

The book both promotes this thesis and attempts to prove it, but one thing I noticed the last time I read it is that the idea of war as god is not just contained within the plot and dialogue, but in the prose itself, which is a war against the reader him/herself, beautiful in all its gory brutality, an overwhelming bludgeoning to submission which the reader validates and proves through reading, and ofc, from which the judge emerges eternally triumphant.

A stunning work in almost every respect, monstrous in form and function. I try and read it at least every couple of years.

 

[droid]

The gnostic aspect is hard to ignore, indeed seems writ large throughout, but I wonder about the epilogue. It seems obvious to me that the figure striking fire from the earth is McCarthy himself, or at least an archetype of the author. Taking the gnostic view it makes perfect sense to cast himself as one who brings some hitherto unknown knowledge into the world, specifically the knowledge of the world as a fallen/damned false reality. It seems like and outrageously arrogant conceit, but if Id just written BM I reckon I might feel a bit cocky.

FWIW I think Bloom is very good on Meridian. One of the few serious critics that gives it the respect it deserves IMO.

I would highly recommend the audiobook btw, one of the best Ive ever heard. This is taken from it.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Great comparison, but I would say that history itself depicts the judge's world view enacted, or at least that is the central thesis of the work. The judge is an avatar not only of the west and colonialism (and if you look at his speeches you will see the echoes and aspects of western exceptionalist thought interwoven and compressed into almost every line, almost literally at times - a superb feat of historical research), but of all of mankind - hence the comparable savagery of the natives and the (now said to be) apocryphal epigraph implying an unceasing 300,000 year history of blood and violence.

The book both promotes this thesis and attempts to prove it, but one thing I noticed the last time I read it is that the idea of war as god is not just contained within the plot and dialogue, but in the prose itself, which is a war against the reader him/herself, beautiful in all its gory brutality, an overwhelming bludgeoning to submission which the reader validates and proves through reading, and ofc, from which the judge emerges eternally triumphant.

one point - the Captain leading the expedition is a much more specific of avatar of the west etc via American exceptionalism, esp in context of Mexican-American War, Manifest Destiny and the pro-slavery filibuster expeditions of the 1850s, i.e. William Walker - than the Judge, who I would argue is more about that endless cycle of violence and less tied to a distinct culture.

otherwise, I agree with all that. Come and See stands out bc it's about a particularly harsh, and self-conscious (i.e. the Nazis misappropriation/misapplication of Nietzsche etc) enactment of the Judge's worldview, but I agree that BM's central thesis is about history itself.

more broadly I think you could say that the central theme in all or most of McCarthy's work is about how thin the veneer of civilization is and the work required to hold it together. i.e. in No Country for Old Men in the story the sheriff tells his wife about his dream of his father carrying a fire through a dark mountain pass. and ofc right after that he wrote The Road which is literally about a father trying to pass on civilization to his son in a post-apocalyptic hellscape where everyone is a Glanton gang.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I think it makes sense to view that figure in the epilogue in that same context, a lone figure doing the hard work of carrying the fire

It reminds of Se7en - another high art/pulp crossover - the ultimate question of whether or not the world is worth fighting for. Morgan Freeman decides it is but as a matter of faith - not religious faith, but still a belief not based on evidence. The struggle against the Judge (or if you want get Deleuzeian, the Judge inside all of us) is eternal.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

In McCarthy that struggle is usually inextricably tied up in the relationship between sons and fathers, or father figures, as the Judge is a father figure to the Kid, but also the Judge either literally or as an embodiment of his philosophy in rebellion against God, the ultimate father-son relationship.

It's not hard to see why this turns some people off - civilization, human nature, fathers and sons, can be pretty fucking hokey.

 

[droid]

one point - the Captain leading the expedition is a much more specific of avatar of the west etc via American exceptionalism, esp in context of Mexican-American War, Manifest Destiny and the pro-slavery filibuster expeditions of the 1850s, i.e. William Walker - than the Judge, who I would argue is more about that endless cycle of violence and less tied to a distinct culture.

I think the judge is about those things, but is also very ideologically tied to the west, though I agree, not specifically America. His is the primitive impulse of violence and murder and uplifted through European colonialist and enlightenment thought, and finding its ultimate vehicle in the American behemoth as it neared the moment of maturation. It is a philosophy of learned, scientific supremacy, of ultimate order and dominion.

whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.... These anonymous creatures ... may seem little or nothing in the world. Yet the smallest crumb can devour us. Any smallest thing beneath yon rock out of men’s knowing. Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth ... This is my claim ... And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation.

Glanton does get a lot of good lines that are very reflective of American attitudes, the same with the judge and the wider world of colonial writing - I suspect that many of his opinions are directly paraphrased from periodicals and books of the times, Ive dug around a bit in various colonial research projects and been struck a few times by the almost literal phrasing of contemporaneous texts I remembered from BM. I imagine this has been covered in detail in the Cormacian (hilariously, that's what they call it) scholarship.

So to extend from the obvious - not only are war, violence and domination god, but the America of that moment, built upon centuries of colonial violence and thought and now adding their own innovations to the canon - is the ultimate historical manifestation of that god with the judge as its avatar.

 

[droid]

i.e. in No Country for Old Men in the story the sheriff tells his wife about his dream of his father carrying a fire through a dark mountain pass. and ofc right after that he wrote The Road which is literally about a father trying to pass on civilization to his son in a post-apocalyptic hellscape where everyone is a Glanton gang.

Yeah, good spot.McCarthy has a lot to say about fire. I was just talking to someone about this exact thing recently. Bell's dream is the very last line in the film IIRC.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

So to extend from the obvious - not only are war, violence and domination god, but the America of that moment, built upon centuries of colonial violence and thought and now adding their own innovations to the canon - is the ultimate historical manifestation of that god with the judge as its avatar.

yeah I can't agree with that

ultimate order and dominion via conquest are the nature of every empire, historically

the Mongols, the Aztecs, the Romans, whoever

the specific expression of that idea through the lens of enlightenment thought etc, sure

but the western empires of the last several centuries, culminating with the U.S., are not greater let alone the ultimate manifestation of god as war. they just have better, more efficient tools for killing.