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For instance, there cannot be life on other planets because the universe is not constrained to repeat itself, or so the judge argues. It was McCarthy acknowledging compassion as a counterweight.The book isn't only about our violent nature or need to dominate. And yet the judge doesn't seem to age and says he can't be killed and can heft a cannon like a gun and even a sloppy reader could see the character drips with symbolism. We can see in a horse a leg structured like our own. Our academic pursuits are just our desire to conquer and control each other in other guises.
All of which points to the judge being less a force of nature or the personification of war and more a man defined by his era. But in fact the universe does repeat itself over and over again. And the same elements that constitute life on earth constitute the structure of all the universe. And for all his rep as a minimalist he has a tendency to overuse modifiers like "mad" and "terrible". For people who have finished the book only.The judge, while smart and slick, makes some specious arguments.
It's also an evocative and unromantic description of life on the prairie. It's an interesting idea McCarthy advances with a seemingly endless parade of horribles, like Apaches raping dying westerners or Delaware indians slamming babies against rocks. War is inherent in our nature. In addition, the judge seems to believe in phrenology, widely discredited.
To me, this is why this is a novel. It's one thing to come up with a clever metaphor, but it's another to consistently use language that serves the spare affect of your book the same way a cinematographer serves a movie with a tailored visual style. Just finished this a few minutes ago and want to commit my thoughts to a public forum. Our essential drive is to subjugate other men. I liked the moment at the end when the expriest and the kids are rescued by Indians. At times I felt his language was overly florid and mix his metaphors, like when he talks about the cotton eye of the moon squating in the throat of a mountain. The judge is both a fictional character and a device to make arguments about our inimical nature. Reading this book was an experience, like reading Grave's Claudius books or Updike's Rabbit books.
Take homology, which is the similarity of structures in animals of shared ancestry. I haven't decided if I will go on to Bolano's 2666 or the second book in Samuel Delany's Neveryona series. That ambiguity between moral arguments and story is something you could not do in other mediums. But what are those arguments.It seems to be that the natural state of men is to be at war. For the most part, though, his style is impressive; his skill with language makes you feel like you're reading a real living master. The world is a rich place.
Having read most of Cormac McCarthy's work, I was suprised to see I had overlooked his so called masterpiece "Blood Meridian". Perhaps when if I had read it when it first came out, I may have been more impressed. It was only when I read a review of it on its 25th anniversary that I was aware of it.It is an obvious must read for fans of Cormac. I have to say I was slightly disappointed. I found the langauge a little too flowery for my liking. The descriptions of the landscape, while often brillant, sometimes are overdone.I think I got the point of the book, but it was a battle to finish it.
McCarthy presents a world of chaos, violence, and inhumanity, a bleak landscape peopled by mercenaries, malice, and violence. In Holden's hands both become tools of self-glorification bereft of any human feeling, the law simply a means to win, and science a means to conquer nature. Holden is in fact a typical, if exceptional, psychopath. And as the events build up to the famous ferry massacre, we learn that these very qualities are those which Holden seeks to destroy.Just as in The Road and No Country, McCarthy shows us, in his own inimitable style, the realities of life in this world. Throughout the book stands the enigmatic and frightening character of Judge Holden, who many reviewers see as the personification of evil and perhaps the Devil himself. While the Biblical tone of the book definitely suggests this interpretation, McCarthy is as always saying something about the very real manifestations of evil in a world often viewed through rose-colored glasses. Widely considered to be McCarthy's masterpiece, Blood Meridian explores the same themes which reached a wide audience in his more recent works The Road and No Country for Old Men (Vintage International), both adapted for the screen in recent years. Born under the Leonids, he is the only character with the seeds of a conscience, and even these are hidden and unexpressed in the majority of the book.
It is fragile, yet it persists. But within the Holden-dominated landscape of the West, is the kid. It is often destroyed and defeated, but it is what keeps us together and makes us human in an inhuman world. He is larger than life and embodies the psychopathic worldview. But just as his desolate vision and descriptions of the horrific violence which characterized the much mythicized "Old West" are interspersed with expertly rich and poetic language, what at first appears to be a cynical and wholly amoral worldview holds something deeper nestled within.The book follows the fictionalized exploits of the historical Glanton gang, a group of mercenaries hired to kill Apache Indians in Mexico after the Mexican-American wa. The dance of war is recurring, and now, just as then, the philosophy of psychopathy is the dominant ideology.
He is ruthless, remorseless, intelligent and malicious. (See Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us and Political Ponerology for more on the worldview of the psychopath).Interestingly, McCarthy associates Holden with science and law. And yet within this reality, conscience still lives. It is the fire that we hold inside, sheltered against the cold dark of "the world inside the devil."
The gore is relentless and normative conventions of plot and character are clearly subservient to McCarthy's desire to create a parable out of mood and style. The story is essentially historical fiction, based largely on the doings of the Glanton gang and their bloody work as mercenary scalpers of native Americans in the mid-19th century.
He not only reveals the novel's ending in exacting detail (even going so far as to quote the epilogue and provide his own critical take on what the ending means in relation to the whole novel), but he also maps an entire symbology onto the characters which completely prejudices the reader and makes a fair and open-minded reading of the text nearly impossible.As for the novel itself, I found that it grew on me quite unexpectedly. My initial impression was that it was a spiritually hollow and desiccated mess with an aesthetic sensibility better suited to a cheap graphic novel.
The Modern Library edition of "Blood Meridian" contains an introduction by Harold Bloom that is a monument of literary excrement; it is easily the worst, most pernicious and irresponsible introduction I've ever read. McCarthy evidences an attention to detail here that is regrettably absent in some of his later work, and the result is often mesmerizing.
The incessant violence read like a prurient affectation, rather than a meaningful contribution to either form or function. As I got deeper into the novel, however, the raw power of the writing itself began to demand a kind of begrudging respect.
There is a deliberately epic and unabashedly biblical quality to the prose; fortunately the writing is both expansive and comprehensive enough to actually make such conceits seem reasonable.This isn't a book for everyone. Oh, and the introduction is simply unforgivable.
It would take a ten hour film to complete the novel's film version. Incredible craft and how the author managed to sustain the blood and violence and yet move the story toward a conclusion was amazing. However, there is talk Fields is going to attempt a film version and I doubt he will be able to stay close to the plot since there is so much going on. Read for the craft and language. The plot is the craft.
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