When I first read Blood Meridian, the bar scene (22-26), even more than the introduction of the Judge, is where I got a feeling that the book would live up to its billing.
I can easily slip into envy of earlier readers, say, the people who first read Moby Dick or As I Lay Dying, who experienced discovering a new thing before it was handed down and branded a classic. This is mostly empty romancing--similar to the general notion people have of the West, I suspect--and forgets the benefit I have over my predecessors: replacing discovery, I have verification.
The bar scene invites many readings--structural, pychological, political--and rewards each fully. As a device, the scene functions akin to an atlas key or a translator's cipher, providing the rules that the novel will work under when placing characters in the plot. Chief among these is to undermine the reader's expectation of action and consequence.
In short, the kid's trek through the desert takes him to a small tavern in search of a drink. Without money and unable to speak the language of the locals, he pantomimes his offer to work for a drink by sweeping the bar's floor. The barkeep, unmoved by this gesture, refuses the kid a drink, which leads to a confrontation, a fight, and a murder.
If you were a traveller and the world of Blood Meridian a culture, the bar scene lays out guidelines for accepted behavior while on your visit. First, you are on your own. Everything in the scene's set-up leads the reader to see the classic "stanger comes to town" story in the kid's plight: his inability to speak Spanish, his lack of a firearm, the patrons dismissive attitude toward him, the inhospitable bartender. The kid, rightly, sees a threat in his surroundings.
But the surprise of the bar scene is not the barkeep's murder but his abandonment by the bar's patrons. The fight between the kid and the barkeep is a mismatch--we were introduced to the kid as having "a taste for mindless violence" (3) and know he survived a number of pit fights in New Orleans. The narrative revels in the kid's fighting skill, highlighting his "roadagent's pass" (25) of a bottle so that he can bring down a fluid backhand on the barkeep's noggin.
Three consequences come of the barkeep's murder. The first is literally nothing: "Some of those men wore pistols in their belts but none moved" (26). The perceived threat was just that, a perception. In truth, none of the patrons were willing to avenge the barkeep's murder by an outsider because this was never an "us against them" scenario. There is no "us."
Another consequence of the scene amounts to almost nothing. The kid grabs more bottles from the bar, having used his first two as weapons, but he awoke the next morning with "his tongue swollen with thirst" (26). The barkeep's murder had been utterly pointless.
The third consequence arrives in the next chapter in the kid's recruitment into Captain White's army, when he his told by his would-be recruiter that the Captain "seen somethin in me worth savin and I see it in you" (30). That "somethin" is apparently killing Mexicans, which is good enough for Captain White.
Also, on page 23, notice how often characters are shown looking around at one another or looking away from each other. Sightlines and recognition are important in this scene to mark each character's unwillingness to leave their personal world and acknowledge another person's presence in it, especially once the kid begins his sweeping.
Lastly, although it is not the sum of the scene or perhaps even a pivotal reading, politcal and historic comparisons are almost unavoidable in the bar scene. The kid, the American, enters the Mexicans' property out of desperation but engages them with hubris. The motivating anger for the barkeep's murder is entirely manufactured by the kid's perception that he's been jipped of a drink for his labor. But who is he to even offer a deal for things that don't belong to him, much less become enraged when this imagined deal is broken?
More likely, this is all pretense. Just as the kid was thirsty for a drink, he was also hungry for his "taste for mindless violence" and would have sated it regardless of what the bartender did. Characters in Blood Meridian don't so much have reasons as they have purposes.
The larger historical interpretation of American indulgences during westward expansion is also present, and reinforced by Captain White's policies in the next chapter. The American destiny to reach from east to west is fulfilled by the calveryman, not the pioneer. When we "speak american," we speak the language of violence. The kid, like many other characters in the book, is fluent.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
action Jackson...
...cut off white Jackson's head with a Bowie knife!
This is a good example of a Cormac McCarthy character skillfully using an object for its intended purpose.
Also, Judge Holden speaks Dutch! man, that guy gets cooler every page.
This is a good example of a Cormac McCarthy character skillfully using an object for its intended purpose.
Also, Judge Holden speaks Dutch! man, that guy gets cooler every page.
Notes on the third epigraph
The final epigraph for Blood Meridian comes from a newspaper article on the discovery of a four-million-year-old pre-human ancestor by paleoanthropologists J. Desmond Clark (who isn’t provided full credit) and Tim D. White. The entire article can be read here and its big news is in extending the lineage of upright walking hominids, specifically Ardipithecus ramidus, into the distant past, but McCarthy is more interested in a (relatively) recent find:
The relationship between the truth and the past is an odd one for Blood Meridian. For example, many of the events and characters in the novel are based on a nonfiction work, Samuel Chamberlain’s memoir My Confession: Recollections of a Rogue. However, Chamberlain garnered the reputation of a braggart and his book is largely seen as a sensationalized account of his early life.
Furthermore, since Blood Meridian’s publication in the 80s, scholars and enthusiasts have combed through nineteenth century records and accounts looking for details about the novel’s most striking character, the Judge. Other than in Chamberlain’s memoir, all hunts have ended fruitless.
To my reading, this is just as well. Of the many descriptives one could heap onto Blood Meridian—brutal, galling, hilarious, mystic, horrific, beautiful, perfect—the least important would be “historically accurate.”
The plot of the book is rather thin, the characters are often one-dimensional, the syntax can be tortured, and the diction is occasionally too pompous to be taken seriously, but I can’t imagine how it could be improved. In the decades since its publication, the book’s become more of a holy relic than a work of literature.
One last note on the epigraph: Even though the quotation is from an AP article and likely originated closer to the source (Berkeley, California) than the home paper for Yuma County, Arizona, the Yuma Sun in credited. In that we can find a hidden—I don’t know what to call it—clue? A self-referential joke? Nerd bait?
The Yuma Indians lived along the U.S.-Mexico border, where much of Blood Meridian takes place. In the genre of a Western novel, native peoples are expected to be threatening (out and out savage, frankly), whereas the settlers are heroic, which points to one of the main subversions of the genre the book offers: In Blood Meridian, the white men are the scalp hunters. The line between civilization and savagery is nonexistent.
It’s a safe bet that the Yumas will appear in the novel, and when they do McCarthy likely expects his civilized reader to think back to this quote and the long, savage history to which they, and we, belong.
a 300,000-year-old fossil skull . . . shows evidence of having been scalped.The nostalgia for a “golden age” when things used to be better, simpler maybe, than the confusing and chaotic present is a common appeal of period piece writing, including the Western genre. This, of course, is a myth. The third epigraph attempts to dispel that myth, or at least introduce the theme that will, by illustrating a more violent, and arguably more accurate, history.
The relationship between the truth and the past is an odd one for Blood Meridian. For example, many of the events and characters in the novel are based on a nonfiction work, Samuel Chamberlain’s memoir My Confession: Recollections of a Rogue. However, Chamberlain garnered the reputation of a braggart and his book is largely seen as a sensationalized account of his early life.
Furthermore, since Blood Meridian’s publication in the 80s, scholars and enthusiasts have combed through nineteenth century records and accounts looking for details about the novel’s most striking character, the Judge. Other than in Chamberlain’s memoir, all hunts have ended fruitless.
To my reading, this is just as well. Of the many descriptives one could heap onto Blood Meridian—brutal, galling, hilarious, mystic, horrific, beautiful, perfect—the least important would be “historically accurate.”
The plot of the book is rather thin, the characters are often one-dimensional, the syntax can be tortured, and the diction is occasionally too pompous to be taken seriously, but I can’t imagine how it could be improved. In the decades since its publication, the book’s become more of a holy relic than a work of literature.
One last note on the epigraph: Even though the quotation is from an AP article and likely originated closer to the source (Berkeley, California) than the home paper for Yuma County, Arizona, the Yuma Sun in credited. In that we can find a hidden—I don’t know what to call it—clue? A self-referential joke? Nerd bait?
The Yuma Indians lived along the U.S.-Mexico border, where much of Blood Meridian takes place. In the genre of a Western novel, native peoples are expected to be threatening (out and out savage, frankly), whereas the settlers are heroic, which points to one of the main subversions of the genre the book offers: In Blood Meridian, the white men are the scalp hunters. The line between civilization and savagery is nonexistent.
It’s a safe bet that the Yumas will appear in the novel, and when they do McCarthy likely expects his civilized reader to think back to this quote and the long, savage history to which they, and we, belong.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Notes on the Boehme epigraph
The second epigraph to Blood Meridian comes from German philosopher Jacob Boehme:
Thus, Boehme is often called a Christian mystic or Gnostic because he posits faith in Christ alone is insufficient to restore man to grace, making Christ, and thus God, not all-powerful and ineffable but merely the most powerful and, therefore, in charge. Gnosticism, generally, presents evil as a real, incarnate, active force in the world—not just the absence of good, as generally taught by the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.
It’s worth noting that if you were starting a church from scratch, you’d probably define evil as the absence of good yourself. It allows you to say God equals good and anything not of God must be evil. It also means that your followers are capable of committing sins of omission. Sin then becomes not just active participation in evil, but failure to do good, like—oh, I don’t know—provide offerings to the church or something.
The appeal of the Gnostic label is easy to see in Blood Meridian because, as the above quote illustrates, “death and dying are the very life of the darkness” and the very life of the narrative. Page after page contain tumultuous acts of obscene violence. If there is a God present in this world, it is one of discord, might, and death.
An early scene in the book places firebrand preacher Reverend Green opposite the Judge. Their conflict can be seen as an allegorical stand-off between two types of religious views. One, Green’s, is akin to the accepted view of grace, stating that Christ is “goin to be there with ye ever step of the way whether ye ask it or ye dont” (6). The other is the Judge—authority for its own sake, able to shape the truth of the world by his own whims.
At the end of their conflict, there is death but no sorrowing.
It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost as if in sorrowing. There is no sorrowing. For sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death, and death and dying are the very life of the darkness.Boehme was born a good fifty years into the Protestant Reformation and spent most of his efforts writing things that pissed off Catholics as well as his fellow Lutherans. For example, he questioned the idea of salvation through the grace of God (a core tenet of the Reformation) and believed not just that man lives in a state of fallen grace but must actively sin in order to then seek salvation through his own individual suffering, rather than riding Christ’s coattails into heaven.
Thus, Boehme is often called a Christian mystic or Gnostic because he posits faith in Christ alone is insufficient to restore man to grace, making Christ, and thus God, not all-powerful and ineffable but merely the most powerful and, therefore, in charge. Gnosticism, generally, presents evil as a real, incarnate, active force in the world—not just the absence of good, as generally taught by the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.
It’s worth noting that if you were starting a church from scratch, you’d probably define evil as the absence of good yourself. It allows you to say God equals good and anything not of God must be evil. It also means that your followers are capable of committing sins of omission. Sin then becomes not just active participation in evil, but failure to do good, like—oh, I don’t know—provide offerings to the church or something.
The appeal of the Gnostic label is easy to see in Blood Meridian because, as the above quote illustrates, “death and dying are the very life of the darkness” and the very life of the narrative. Page after page contain tumultuous acts of obscene violence. If there is a God present in this world, it is one of discord, might, and death.
An early scene in the book places firebrand preacher Reverend Green opposite the Judge. Their conflict can be seen as an allegorical stand-off between two types of religious views. One, Green’s, is akin to the accepted view of grace, stating that Christ is “goin to be there with ye ever step of the way whether ye ask it or ye dont” (6). The other is the Judge—authority for its own sake, able to shape the truth of the world by his own whims.
At the end of their conflict, there is death but no sorrowing.
also
I think the kid killed that recruit from Missouri so he could have his horse.
Joke's on the kid, though, he nearly died in the desert.
Joke's on the kid, though, he nearly died in the desert.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Notes on the Valery epigraph
Blood Meridian begins with three epigraphs. Each introduces what will develop into a major theme for the novel. The first is by Paul Valéry:
The back story is that for years Japan had been sending their young people abroad to learn the ways and technology of the Western world. To the Chinese, the "modern" influenced Japan represented the Western encroachment on Eastern ideas, and the above quote singles out the Western world's worship of "intelligence," as it is termed in the essay, from which we can infer worship of technology, science, or a general primacy of the individual over nature or culture.
This outlook is important to Blood Meridian and its place as both a Western (bang bang!) novel and a Western (toga wearin') novel. For one, the novel is set during the introduction of the repeating rifle. Largely credited for putting the "wild" into wild West, the repeating rifle illustrates the slaughter that can result when high technology is paired with savage conditions. As an indictment of Western (toga et al.) thought, the epigraph calls into question the Enlightenment belief that men can reason or invent their way out of problems. To the Chinese, the priorities of the West appear baffling and compulsive, unfettered from nature or history.
One other point: the "Yalu" of the essay's title is the river along the China-Korea border and the site of a pretty futile battle. The Japanese, greatly outnumbered but possessing superior technology and modern warfare training, needed to stave off Chinese landing parties from crossing the Yalu. They failed. The Chinese, just by sheer force of numbers, were able to cross the Yalu but paid such a price for it (thanks to the Japanese's Western tech) that it was largely viewed by outsiders as a Japanese victory. As seen in an editoral cartoon from the time:
Curiously, even though the Chinese successfully made it into Korea, to their way of thinking, the casulties and damage they incurred from crossing the Yalu caused them to view it as a defeat as well. Even the Chinese leader who made it into Korea was called back and stripped of command. In the end, the Battle of Yalu accomplished nothing, resulting in neither side bettering their position and only served to prolong the war.
Violence for its own sake, stripped of any larger goal for the state or the hero, appears frequently in Blood Meridian.
Your ideas are terrifying and your hearts are faint. Your acts of pity and cruelty are absurd, committed with no calm, as if they were irresistible. Finally, you fear blood more and more. Blood and time.Valéry's best known (if at all) to modern readers as a poet, probably the last gasp of that Baudelaire-styled dark Romantic/Gothic writing that's popular with moody tweens. However, the above quote comes from his 1895 essay "The Yalu" on the subject of the First Sino-Japanese War, with Japan fighting China for control of the Korean Pennisula, and is supposedly written from the point of view of the Chinese.
The back story is that for years Japan had been sending their young people abroad to learn the ways and technology of the Western world. To the Chinese, the "modern" influenced Japan represented the Western encroachment on Eastern ideas, and the above quote singles out the Western world's worship of "intelligence," as it is termed in the essay, from which we can infer worship of technology, science, or a general primacy of the individual over nature or culture.
This outlook is important to Blood Meridian and its place as both a Western (bang bang!) novel and a Western (toga wearin') novel. For one, the novel is set during the introduction of the repeating rifle. Largely credited for putting the "wild" into wild West, the repeating rifle illustrates the slaughter that can result when high technology is paired with savage conditions. As an indictment of Western (toga et al.) thought, the epigraph calls into question the Enlightenment belief that men can reason or invent their way out of problems. To the Chinese, the priorities of the West appear baffling and compulsive, unfettered from nature or history.
One other point: the "Yalu" of the essay's title is the river along the China-Korea border and the site of a pretty futile battle. The Japanese, greatly outnumbered but possessing superior technology and modern warfare training, needed to stave off Chinese landing parties from crossing the Yalu. They failed. The Chinese, just by sheer force of numbers, were able to cross the Yalu but paid such a price for it (thanks to the Japanese's Western tech) that it was largely viewed by outsiders as a Japanese victory. As seen in an editoral cartoon from the time:
Violence for its own sake, stripped of any larger goal for the state or the hero, appears frequently in Blood Meridian.
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