To: ALL Date: 07/25
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 10:27 PM
All,
I guess that I'm allowed to begin the discussion of BLOOD
MERIDIAN now. I am rereading the book (second time
through) since I want to be able to participate in the
discussion. For now, I have a few observations about the
first couple of chapters that I thought might interest you.
All my cites refer to the Vintage edition of the book.
Page 3--"His folk are known for hewers of wood and drawers
of water but in truth his father has been a schoolmaster."
The hewers of wood and drawers of water bit refers directly
to a passage in the Old Testament book of Joshua, chapter
9. The Gibeonites went to Israel and deceived the
Israelites; they dressed as exhausted travelers and offered
to serve the people of Israel in exchange for protection.
When Joseph learned of their deception, he said that they
would not be killed (because Israel would not break its
promise to the enemy Gibeonites), but that they would
always be hewers of wood and drawers of water. Notes about
this biblical passage say that hewers of wood and drawers
of water would have been common house servants. Not sure
how the passage relates to the book, but I think it may be
important.
Also on page 3: "...the child the father of the man" is
from Wordsworth's "My Heart Leaps Up."
And a favorite passage one which has a lot to do with the
meaning of the whole book, I'm convinced. Dialogue between
the kid and the old hermit.
Lost ye way in the dark, said the old man. He stirred
the fire, standing slender tusks of bone up out of the
ashes.
The kid didn't answer.
The old man swung his head back and forth. The way of
the transgressor is hard. God made the world, but he didnt
make it to suit everybody, did he?
I don't believe he much had me in mind.
Aye, said the old man. But where does a man come by
his notions. What world's he seen that he liked better?
I can think of better places and better ways.
Can ye make it be?
No.
No. It's a mystery. A man's at odds to know his mind
cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can
know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not
to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is
bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find
meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man
the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do
anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the
machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no
need to tend it. You believe that?
I dont know.
Believe that.
***
Seems to me that's important.
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 7/25/95
9:30PM CT
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 07/26
From: NMTT86A JAMES HEATH Time: 10:52 AM
Marty, Just started BLOOD MERIDIAN. It seems to be about a
homeless kid wandering through Mexico. Where have I seen
this plot before?
Oh well, Henry James made a living with rich young
heiresses wandering through Europe. If only Isabel Archer
had broken a bottle over someone's head.
--Jim in Oregon (who after a bout with Rilke seems to be
suffering from terminal silliness)
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 07/27
From: FAVB99B JANE NIEMEIER Time: 3:46 PM
Marty,
I just read the first two chapters, and it starts out with
"a bang", I think. So far, it is full of colorful
characters and interesting thoughts as you pointed out.
Do you know the purpose of the sub headings at the beginning
of each chapter. I decided to wait and finish the chapter
before reading the sub headings.
I have read the first two installments of THE BORDER TRILOGY
so I am glad that you recommended this book. It lets us get
to know the author a little better. After I finish reading
the board notes today, I am going to try to read your home
page on the web.
Jane in Colorado where the heat is BACK (98 today). And of
course we don't have air conditioning because WE DON'T NEED
IT!!! Ha!
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 07/27
From: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Time: 4:38 PM
Marty,
I also was struck with the dialogue between the hermit and
the kid and it stayed with me throughout the book;
especially the part about 'it's hard to know your mind
because your mind is aught you have to know it with' (rough
translation). It's one of those circular philosophical
questons that can boggle the mind one is trying to use. You
have to "go out" of your mind to understand it? Just a
thought.
This book could be discussed paragraph by paragraph and
use up more words than the book itself.
Sherry
To: FAVB99B JANE NIEMEIER Date: 07/27
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 5:53 PM
Jane,
This is just a guess, since I haven't done extensive study
in the area, but I seem to recall having seen some of the
old western pulps with similar synopses at the beginnings
of their chapters. In any event, I think that they are
interesting in their own right because they show what
McCarthy wanted to emphazize in each chapter. Oddly,
several of those subheadings refer to events that take very
little space in the book, but when pointed to their
existence by the subheads, the events tend to jump out at
you. Just a thought--McCarthy is sometimes criticized for
not plotting correctly, by some definition. It's been said
(notably by Vereen Bell, if I recall correctly) that his
books are almost anti-plot. That is to say that he doesn't
give the proper emphasis or space to his story. The kid's
childhood, for example, should require more writing about
(according to someone) than two pages. Personally, I don't
hold with these anti-plot folks. It appears to me that
McCarthy's writing is very clean and straightforward. The
book starts and focuses unflinchingly on one character
until the book ends. There may not be any subplots, but a
good writer knows when they'll just clutter up the place
and dispenses with them. I'd say that McCarthy's plots
come from an older and more epic tradition--they tell a
story--one story--without complicated diversions.
Now, a strange question, perhaps an esthetic one: why the
absence of quotation marks and other apostrophe-like
methods of punctuation, including the comma? I have a
theory, but I'd rather not say just yet.
Also, Jane, you'll feel differently about the Border
Trilogy after reading this book. BLOOD MERIDIAN
provides a sort of brooding backdrop of history to both
ALL THE PRETTY HORSES and THE CROSSING.
For gail: my home page is completed for the time being.
The biography of McCarthy is as current as I'm able to make
it.
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 7/27/95
4:48PM CT
To: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Date: 07/27
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 5:53 PM
Sherry,
Your comment about one going out of his mind to understand
it strikes a chord with me some way. I think perhaps
McCarthy would say that the mind is incapable of
understanding itself. The heart, however, can be
understood. But (I infer from BLOOD MERIDIAN) the heart of
man is a thing which is perfectly capable of making him
lose his mind when it is laid bare.
A question for discussion: is this a male book? If so,
how? When McCarthy says man, does he mean men and women
(using the word in its older, gender-neutral sense) or is
he talking about man and man only? His books are rather
male-heavy. Is that significant, or is he simply being
true to his source material and the mythos out of which he
draws his material?
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 7/27/95
4:56PM CT
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 07/31
From: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 3:00 PM
Marty: BLOOD MERIDIAN was my traveling companion last week,
and it's quite a book. My initial impression was of an
extraordinarily cinematic novel: the sense of space, color
and action, the necessity of filling in all internalized or
psychological details for yourself, all reminded me strongly
of the manner in which a movie imprints itself on the mind.
An excellent example is the battle scene on pages 51-54 --
it flows across the pages as if seen by a camera. It would
take an extremely talented film maker to compress the action
and drama contained in those three pages into anything like
a similarly compact cinematic moment (score another one for
the fundamental superiority of prose over visual art for
for the efficient conveying of information. Of course,
efficiency isn't everything but it has a beauty of its own).
The question is, what kind of film? John Ford meets Sam
Peckinpaugh after they've attended a Road Warrior Film
Festival? Frankly, I got a little down on a steady diet of
dead babies, decapitations, eviscerations, emasculations,
amputations, hangings, burnings, supporating sores, drowned
puppies, blasted kitties, gut-shot horses, and mutilated
mules, not to mention an array of scalpings, skinnings, and
plain old gunshot wounds too numerous to catalogue.
My notes from on board the airplane where I started reading
bear the entry: "HIERONYMUS BOSCH at page 57". (Actually,
that's not quite correct; I misspelled 'Hieronymus' in the
original, but cleaned up my act for publication) Page 57 is
where we encounter the notion of dead babies as Christmas
tree ornaments, and I had to ask myself: I have some idea of
what Bosch was doing, but what is McCarthy up to here, aside
from triggering my gag reflex?
I think the foreshadowing in the conversation between the
hermit and the kid is important as to that question, but
there's a great deal more to look at, farther down the old
trail. I think I'll wait on that, however, till Marty moves
us a little further along in the book.
Dick in Alaska, where he's now reading The English
Patient, and is very glad to be back on-line with
this witty, thoughtful and pleasant group of folks
To: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 07/31
From: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Time: 5:06 PM
Marty;
I'm about 3/4 through Blood Meriden. No one can deny it's
marvelously well-written. The guy plays the English
language like Itzak on his Strad. But migawd, as we used to
say in grammar school, blood and gore all over the floor.
I'll reserve further discussion of what he's up to for after
I've finished the book. Except to say that too much
continuous gore, awful and varied though it is, numbs one's
sense of horror. Dick is right in that it brings to mind
some of the work by Heironymous Bosch, especially the right
hand panel of the Garden of Earthly Delights, usually
interpreted as a vision of Hell. By the way, Dick, most art
historians aren't real sure what Bosch was up to. There's
almost as many interpretations of his work as there are art
historians. And the images aren't all horrid. In fact some
of his fantasies look like downright fun.
Ruth
To: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Date: 07/31
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 11:34 PM
Ruth: Don't get me wrong; most days I'm a Bosch kind of guy,
especially for that stuff with the rubber knickers and the
daffodil stems. But, good golly, Mr. McCarthy doesn't seem
to know WHERE to draw the line. Seriously, my understanding
of Bosch is limited to Art Humanities I: the sinner's are
being punished in a variety of appealing ways for
transgressions against the revealed word. In BLOOD
MERIDIAN, on the other hand, there seems to be neither sin
nor sinners; instead there is mere randomness and the
viciousness of the human heart which almost seems to create
evil out of whole cloth. And yet, there is a recognition of
human values somewhere in the weeds, even if these values
are neither celebrated nor triumphant in anyway I can see.
All in all a very interesting piece of work, and one which I
believe will generate a good bit discussion in days to come.
On other issues, briefly: of course, this is a "guy" book.
Only guys could generate the horrific events described in
the book, just as only guys could create Auschwitz. I'm as
PC as the next person, but we have to face facts: mass
murder and atrocity-wise, those of us in the testosterone
challenged half of humanity have ALL the cards. As to
whether only guys can enjoy the book, different issue. The
real question here is: do women read the book to say "tut-
tut", or do they get tight in the throat and sweaty-palmed
at the mental image of wading ankle-deep in viscera?
Motivation is important here. The phone lines are still
open, so let's have your thoughts.
The characterizations are too minimal? In point of fact, I
thought that was precisely the point. Who would believe
these cowboys are supposed to be leading a rich inner life,
while they kill every living creature right down to the
slime-mold, from Matamoros to San Diego? The first three
paragraphs of the book, describing the kid's origins were a
brilliant exercise in minimalism, and furthermore, are
EXACTLY the right amount of detail to support the
"character" of the person whose life we follow for the next
337 pages.
Does anyone see parallels with other fiction, wherein human
nature is unleashed in a postwar environment of lawlessness
and social breakdown? Pynchon's Zone; Ondaatje's Tuscan
villa (yeah, I'm all hot and bothered about that ENGLISH
PATIENT book) to name two?
Finally, McCarthy's laundry list of plants and critters,
rendered in 19th century dialects and two languages has
defeated me; is there a reader's guide? Like most people
living in the ice-zone, I have always assumed the desert was
empty (Disney movies nothwithstanding); turns out there's a
different tree, grass, shrub or fungoid every six feet all
the way across the country's arid regions, and McCarthy
mentions every one of them.
That's enough for now; I should collect my thoughts for
something important like: Tales of Los Angeles.
Dick in Alaska, where it is a misdemeanor to
hang babies from tree limbs
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 08/01
From: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Time: 1:14 AM
Dick,
The various interpretations of Bosch are too numerous to go
into here. Suffice it to say, that you had a handle on one
of them. I finished BLOOD MERIDIAN this evening, but want
to digest and think about it a little more before I dive
into a heavy discussion. Your reaction to McCarthy's use of
Spanish and the names of plants, minerals, topographical
terminology was interesting though. I loved it. Because
the west is my part of the country, I've always felt a
little out-of-the-way when it comes to literature. So much
of it is set in the East or in Europe. Probably because my
first degree was in geology, with a minor in biology, I
reveled in the names, many of which I was at least slightly
familar with.
A word on the Spanish. I do not speak or read French,
except for menus and the phrases that every literate person
is familiar with, and what I can muddle out from my
knowledge of Spanish and Italian. Consequently, I have
always resented it and felt a little put down when
confronted by untranslated French in a book written in
English. In BLOOD MERIDIAN, I was reveling in the Spanish,
understanding it and thinking how nice it was that he had
simply used it straight, without translation. Then it
dawned on me that other readers, like you, might feel
excluded. The shoe was on the other foot.
Ruth
P.S. Huesos are bones. Thereby, huesos rancheros, of which
there were a lot in this story, are a great deal different
from huevos rancheros, a tasty dish.
To: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Date: 08/01
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 2:35 AM
Ruth: Actually, I had five years of Spanish sometime in the
last century, and could handle the "Give me some more beans"
portion of the story; however, the references (I think) to
sucking chest wounds, among others, wasn't in the eighth
grade lexicon. Now-a-days, it's undoubtedly a different
story.
Dick in Alaska, who liked Blood Meridian a lot,
despite all the nasty comments
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 08/01
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 3:10 AM
Dick,
Only a misdemeanor? Those of us down here in the Bible
Belt aren't that progressive with our laws yet.
I'm not sure what I think about your assessment of the book
as far as the values it represents or extolls or whatever
it does to them. I do, however, find it remarkable that
these sinners are able to pray for rain and get it--early
in the book. But it reminds me of that Bible passage where
Christ says that the rain falls on the just and the unjust
(I hope that Christ says it--I don't feel like looking it
up right now). That's on pages 47-48 if you don't remember
it. That business of the Mennonite at the end of chapter
three is curious too.
Interesting too is Captain White's rationalization of the
job these men are about to do--about page 30, if
you're curious. Especially the following:
Hell, there's no God in Mexico. (34)
...our citizens will be protected at last from the
notorious packs of cutthroats presently infesting the
routes which they are obliged to travel. (34)
(That passage stuck with me largely because there is a pack
of cutthroats that roams the hills of eastern Tennessee in
an earlier McCarthy book, OUTER DARK. These anonymous men
roam the countryside killing folks. And that book is set
many years later.)
We are to be the instruments of liberation in a dark and
troubled land. (34)
And this passage, from the Mennonite's speech:
The wrath of God lies sleeping. It was hid a million years
before men were and only men have power to wake it. Hell
aint half full. Hear me. Ye carry war of a madman's
making onto a foreign land. Ye'll wake more than the dogs.
(40)
That passage struck me because it seemed to be another
Bible reference--so I looked. Under Dog in my NIV
Concordance, I found the following:
As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.
(Proverbs 26:11--NIV).>>>
That seems applicable here, sort of. There's another
reference too, that I found from the epigraph to Pinckney
Benedict's novel DOGS OF GOD:
Then the Lord said to me: "Even if Moses and Samuel were to
stand before me, my heart would not go out to this people.
Send them away from my presence! Let them go! And if they
ask you, `Where shall we go?' tell them, `This is what the
Lord says:
"`Those destined for death, to death; those for
the sword, to the sword; those for starvation, to
starvation; those for captivity, to captivity.'
"I will send four kinds of destroyers against them,"
declares the Lord, "the sword to kill and the dogs to drag
away and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy...."
(Jeremiah 15: 1-3)
***
No, no real readers' guide as of yet. Except for possibly
John Emil Sepich's NOTES ON BLOOD MERIDIAN. (see next note)
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 08/01
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 3:10 AM
(Continued from last note)
I've ordered Sepich's book and I'll let you know if it has
the information you are looking for as soon as it arrives.
But I suspect that the book will deal with the history and
such.
One point about that: the book is quite heavily based in
actual events. I know that much. I know that
Glanton (the judge) was a real guy, and McCarthy
quotes directly from his sources in some cases. McCarthy
learned Spanish to do the research. He also walked the
route that these guys followed. So my answer to the "too
much bloodletting" comments is that, much like Milton with
PARADISE LOST (when I was asked in a class why Milton had
Eve eat the fruit first) he had to be true to his sources.
Knowing that this book is largely true is really really
disturbing.
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 8/1/95
1:49AM CT
To: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 08/01
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 3:10 AM
Richard,
Yes, I'd agree with you about the cinematic quality of this
book. My current directorial pick, I think, might be
Quentin Tarrantino. Or Scorsese. It requires that kind of
movement.
McCarthy's work has been compared to that of Bosch and
Peckinpah in reviews. So don't feel too bad.
Hmmm...what else to say? I love the scene of the men
riding through the desert at night in the thunderstorm.
I'm not sure why...except that it's beautiful.
Just wait until we get to the judge's philosophical
rantings and stories.... I'm looking forward to that.
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 8/1/95
1:55AM CT
To: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Date: 08/01
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 3:19 AM
Ruth,
Either you or Dick (or anyone else, for that matter) may
feel free to translate the important Spanish sections of
the book. I can't read that language yet, but my obsession
with McCarthy will probably cause me to learn it before I
die.
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 8/1/95
2:16AM CT
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 08/01
From: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Time: 8:27 AM
I liked your comments on BLOOD MERIDIAN, Dick, and
wished to throw in a few random ones of my own in response.
Sam Peckinpaw came to mind for me, too. When I first
read this book, I couldn't help but be reminded of THE WILD
BUNCH, which I happen to think is a great movie. (There is
a recently restored version out with some new footage added
back in, by the way.) You will perhaps recall that Sam in
his day was both reviled and adored for making violence
into a kind of ballet. It just so happens that in BLOOD
MERIDIAN (let's not shorten it to BM) Judge Holden uses
dance as a metaphor in what I think are his most meaningful
comments:
"What man would not be a dancer if he could, said the
judge. It's a great thing, the dance."
Or how about this:
. . .[even though] the dance. . .contains complete within
itself its own arrangement and history and finale there is
no necessity that the dancers contain these things within
themselves as well."
The judge also says that "a ritual includes the letting of
blood. Rituals which fail in this requirement are but mock
rituals." This was obviously not intended to be an amusing
book or an elevating book. This book was written with
malice of forethought to be a disturbing one. I find
it to be even more so as a result of the beautiful language
in which it is rendered. And how can one not be a little
troubled by a book the premise of which is "war is at last
a forcing of the unity of existence."
Your comment about the detailed listing of the species
in the desert is also apt. You will recall that the judge
himself keeps detailed notes and draws pictures of all he
encounters in the desert. He says, "whatever in creation
exists without my knowledge exists without my consent."
"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."
And what is the result of this suzerainty when it is
gained? This knowledge allows EVERYTHING to then be
exposed to "war, whose stake is at once the game and the
authority and the justification." He includes things in
his notebook "to expunge them from the memory of man." Our
self definition is achieved through making war on
everything. Judge Holden, one of the most interesting
characters in American literature, I think.
And what about this Epilogue? Quite a runic thing,
huh? I am sure that old Cormac was doing peyote when he
wrote this thing, and I intend to confront him with this
knowledge when first we meet.
@wild man@
To: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Date: 08/01
From: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 1:50 PM
Marty & Steve:
I don't believe prayers get answered in BLOOD MERIDIAN;
sometimes there is the illusion of response, just as
sometimes there are illusions of causation, but both are
equally false. The only control humans exercise in this
story is through the infliction of death; all else appears
to be random and without apparent significance.
When Captain White's company sets out to conquer additional
territory in Mexico, they are stricken with an ungodly
(literally) plague of ills, randomly applied. Disease
appears from nowhere (as it would from the perspective of a
19th century man, ignorant even by the standard of the
times), and men die, and are buried without comment or
reaction. Incidentally: Jane in Colorado, good tip on
reading those chapter notes, for getting information not
contained in the prose itself -- that disease had me mildly
puzzled, but it's identified as cholera in the notes to
Chapter IV. McCarthy maintains his point of view here -- no
reason for the men to know what was killing them, just that
it was another plague of locusts, or whatever.
Later, as the story continues, we have more pure randomness:
the kid survives the massacre of White's company; men are
killed and men are spared ("When the lamb is lost in the
mountain, he [a Mexican bandit leader] said. They is cry.
Sometime come the mother. Sometime the wolf.") And Tobin's
story of the Judge formulating gunpowder from the very
stones of the desert, and the men waiting for the paste of
urine and chemicals to dry, while the Indians move up the
cinder cone to kill them -- all of this turns on the
happenstance of a little cloud that is passing:
We had I would suppose an hour. We watched the savages and
we watched the judge's foul matrix drin on the rocks and we
watched a cloud that was making for the sun. One by one we
give up watchin the rocks or the savages either one, for the
cloud did look to be dead set for the sun and it would took
the better part of an hour to have crossed it and that was
the last hour we had. Well, the judge was sittin making
entries in his little book and he saw the cloud same as
every other man ahd he put down the book and watched it and
we did all. No one spoke. There was none to curse and none
to pray, we just watched. And that cloud just cut the corner
from the sun and passed on and there was no shadow fell upon
us and the judge took up his ledger and went on with his
entries as before.
And so, by mere chance, by the margin of a handbreadth of a
cloud in the sky, they lived. As the Epilogue points out
with respect to the holes: they are a validation of sequence
and causation, creating the illusion of relationships that
exist quite independently from the holes themselves.
To me, the judge is a metaphor both for modern man who
controls through destruction and for pure evil in an ancient
sense; only he perserveres and triumphs, while all the
others fail. Of course the kid MIGHT have triumphed, if he's
taken the ex-priest's advice.... But he made a choice of
another sort. Why, in the context of the story, do you
suppose he did?
Finally, a quick comment on the level of violence; I
understand McCarthy is writing from a firm historical base
and that much of what we read is accurate in that sense.
Nevertheless, the novelist chooses that which to emphasize
by selecting among all the possible historical information
to include in the story, as well as choosing the pace and
presentation of such information. To me, McCarthy as an
artist has chosen to look very closely and very deeply at
violence and death, and is not merely reporting history
Dick in Alaska, where McCarthy has gotten his attention
To: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Date: 08/01
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 2:56 PM
Steve,
After reading your note, I'm wondering how much blood Mr.
McCarthy might have let (himself) during the writing of
this novel. It seems to me a superhuman feat that anyone
could revel in that amount of gore and violence for the
time necessary to write a book like BLOOD MERIDIAN.
What do you make of the judge? One critic says that he
contradicts himself, but I haven't gotten to the big speech
sections of the book yet (this time through).
>>>
The epilogue confuses me.
The judge's notebook and his comments about it are quite
interesting and form some of the backbone of the book, I
think.
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 8/1/95
1:41PM CT
To: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 08/01
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 2:57 PM
Dick,
Remind me and I'll respond to this post when I'm further
along in the book. However, THE CROSSING and some of the
other books--and maybe even BLOOD MERIDIAN--seem to suggest
an order to the universe beyond our comprehension.
"They rode through regions of particolored stone upthrust
in ragged kerfs and shelves of traprock reared in faults
and anticlines curved back upon themselves and broken of
like stumps of great stone treeboles and stones the
lightning had clove open, seeps exploding in steam in some
old storm. They rode past trapdykes of brown rock running
down the narrow chines of the ridges and onto the plain
like the ruins of old walls, such auguries everywhere of
the hand of man before man was or any living thing."
(50)
I'm not denying what you have to say about chance--it plays
an important part in BLOOD MERIDIAN. But note the way that
chapter 5 begins...it seems to me that McCarthy's language
here indicates that the kid was chosen by something or
someone to continue living. That's just an instinct,
though. Nothing I can prove.
I'm taken aback by all of the symbols of fallen
Christianity everywhere throughout the book. Even the
ex-priest.
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 8/1/95
1:52PM CT
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 08/01
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 9:55 PM
Marty: What would be the difference, from a human
perspective, between a universe that is morally ordered in a
fashion we cannot comprehend, and one that is morally
chaotic? Appears to be a distinction without a difference
to me. And, as far as BLOOD MERIDIAN is concerned I think
the evidence favors randomness and meaninglessness as
McCarthy's prevailing themes -- if God is present in THESE
details, He/She is at such a distance as to be irrelevant.
Dick in Alaska, where he's keeping his theological
powder dry, barely
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 08/01
From: FAVB99B JANE NIEMEIER Time: 10:55 PM
Marty and All,
Here are some thoughts that have come to me after reading
140 pages of
BLOOD MERIDIAN.
1) The character of the judge is becoming more and more
intriguing. Here
is a Renaissance man who speaks several languages and who
can make
gun powder out of the most disgusting things! He seems to
care not at all
about religion and morals. Look at the way he ruined the
poor preacher at
the beginning of the book. Even his physical description
makes him stand
out from the other characters.
2) I have been thinking a lot about the violence in this
book. It does seem
to fit in with our history as an American people. I would
like to hear from
Cathy (Encyclopedia) Hill about this point.
3) I had to cite a passage that I found to be particularly
beautiful. I have
the Vintage paperback edition. p. 109.
[The rider s] crossed before the sun a nd vanished one
by one and reappeared again and they were blac k in the sun
and they rode out of that vanished sea like b urnt
phantoms with the legs of the animals kicking up the spu
me that was not real and they were lost in the sun and lost
in the lake and they shimmered and slurred together and
separated again and they augmented by planes in lurid
avatars and began to coalesce and there began to appear
above them in the dawn-broached sky a hellish likeness of
their ranks riding huge and inverted and the horses' legs
incredibly elongate trampling down the high thin cirrus and
the howling anti-
warriors pendant from their mounts immense and chimeric
and the
high wild cries carrying that flat and barren pan like
the cries of souls broke through some misweave in the weft
of things into the world below.
Considering that most of McCarthy's sentences are short and
concise,
this one really is distinct. The last part about "the
souls" is so remarkable.
Marty, ya' done gud (as we used to say in Indiana).
Jane who is enjoying the 85 degree day.
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 08/01
From: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Time: 11:12 PM
To paraphrase that wry savant Douglas Adams, there is a
theory that if anyone ever understands the universe it will
be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory that this has already happened.
On the matter of ritual demanding blood, that is, of
course, the ancient pagan idea. It's found strongly in
Strauss's ELEKTRA; any guilt can be expiated if the right
blood is made to flow, Clytemnestra tells her daughter. I
will take this bloodletting with an hour and a half of
superlative music.
Cathy
To: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Date: 08/01
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 11:35 PM
Cathy: Yes, blood ritual to propitiate the Gods, not to
mention mere guilt, is indeed ancient and honorable.
However, anybody see any guilt in this book? My reading
showed both guilt and God to be invisible, at the wrong end
of my literary telescope.
Jane: You picked a doozy (another Hoosier expression, by way
of Oklahoma, my other antecedent state) of a scene; doesn't
it read JUST like an extreme telephoto shot? That's what I
mean by the cinematic way McCarthy visualizes for us; it's
certainly not bad -- it's part of a new way of writing prose
that assumes a familiarity with film on the part of the
reader. I like it a lot.
And, as for the judge: I'm leaning more and more to the
theory he's pure evil; Satan incarnate, the eternal Lier,
casting down that poor preacher just for the sport of it, to
bask in the laughter of the vicious and ignorant crowd. All
that's missing are the pickup trucks in the parking lot.
Dick in Alaska, where the judge DRIVES a pickup
truck
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 08/02
From: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Time: 1:25 AM
Precisely, Richard. It is a distinction without a
difference. The judge at times seems to suggest that there
is some order, but it is an order that is so
incomprehensible that it is absurd to speak of
transgressing that order. It just doesn't make any
difference. At one point he says:
"more things exist without our knowledge than with it and
the order in creation which you see is that which you have
put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not
lose your way. For existence has its own order and that
no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a
fact among others."
He also says:
"the history of all is not the history of each nor indeed
the sum of those histories and none here can finally
comprehend the reason for his presence for he has no way of
knowing even in what the event consists. In fact, were he
to know he might well absent himself and you can see that
that cannot be any part of the plan if plan there be."
Now, Marty. What do I make of the judge? There is
the sixty-four dollar question. In the end I would still
like to know what to make of the judge. Like Dick, this
book caught my attention, so much so that I actually
looked up some academic articles written about it,
principally because I wanted to know what to make of the
judge. That is something that I haven't done since college
and have never done voluntarily. The ones that I found
were not of much help. One set out an interesting
comparison of the judge to Ahab and the kid to Ishmael.
Another posited that gnostic thought plays a great part
in the book, principally in the form of the judge's
pronouncements. But as to the question of just exactly
who the judge is--what thing he speak for, I don't know.
I'm not even close. I chose to think of him as a prophet
of nihilism, but beyond that he remains an intriguing
mystery to me. The only thing further I know is that he
looked like a hairless, pale, enormous infant who never
sleeps and says he will never die.
Clearly, the kid should have knocked him off, and I
can't explain why he did not, other than only hindsight is
twenty/twenty. How was the kid to know that he would end
up violated and smothered in excrement if he did not? This
is not an end that one tends to easily foresee.
Steve
To: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Date: 08/02
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 2:00 AM
Cathy,
Not only Electra and Clytremnestra. See also Christ
(Christians were accused of being cannibals when the
government heard of the early church's drinking the
blood and eating the body) and Medea and almost anyone
involved in Greek tragedy (my mind isn't working
sufficiently tonight, so I can't think of any more bloody
rituals). Come to think of it, the whole Old Testament is
filled with accounts of Jewish rituals of atonement. Those
always involved the letting of blood. But not of people's
blood.>>>
Now I'm wondering about whose guilt all this bloodletting
is for. I don't see much evidence of guilt in the book
either, but the kid meets his end (presumably) because of
some quality that the judge doesn't like. What do you
think that is? The kid has struck me as a sort of innocent
in this book. But I don't know why. Because he's clearly
not.
What do you all think is the answer to McCarthy's question
early in the novel?
"Only now is the child finally divested of all that he has
been. His origins are become remote as is his destiny and
not again in all the world's turning will there be terrains
so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation
may be shaped to man's will or whether his own heart is
another kind of clay." (4-5)
Dick, I'd agree with you that the judge is sort of evil
incarnate, but didn't his sermons and speeches strike you
as sort of Nietzchean? They did me, the first time I read
the book.
One more thing: one critic said that BLOOD MERIDIAN is
what he calls a "Gnostic tragedy." He says that the book
is the closest thing to a real tragedy we've had in
literature since the Greeks, if memory serves. I'm not
sure if I agree or even understand his point, but the essay
may be found, for those of you who would like to read it,
in CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CORMAC MCCARTHY. Any comments?
Would you consider the book a tragedy, and if so, who's
the tragic hero and what's his flaw? I'd be willing to
send copies of it to anyone who wants them.
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 8/2/95
12:22AM CT
To: FAVB99B JANE NIEMEIER Date: 08/02
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 2:00 AM
Jane,
Yes, the judge stands out. Yes, the book does seem to fit
with our history of violence. In that respect, BLOOD
MERIDIAN, despite its setting, is still a very southern
book. Violence and race and war and even (maybe) the
search for the father figure are present in this book. All
of those are very southern themes.
You picked a good passage. McCarthy seems to be concerned
somewhat with the whole idea of the doppleganger. There's
a passage in SUTTREE where he refers to Suttree and
anti-Suttree. I hadn't noticed that he did the same thing
with the marauders in BLOOD MERIDIAN. It's almost a
manichean idea--the dual existence of good and evil in the
form of light and darkness, mind and matter. Forgive me if
I just murdeered the proper meaning of "manichean"--it's
been a while since I took Ancient Philosophy.
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 8/2/95
12:27AM CT
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 08/02
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 2:00 AM
Dick,
I'm not sure how to answer that question as to the
difference between a morally ordered universe we can't
undertstand and one without order). I guess that I'd say
that a moral order gives implicit validity to logic and
reason, whether we understand it (the order) or not.
Meaning that if we were created by a Supreme Being of some
sort then our ability to reason is no accident. If we are
an evolved creature, though, then our existence as well as
our ability to reason is purely chance. And our ability to
reason is worthless because it proves nothing. I hope that
makes sense.
I also want to throw out a quote from the most recent
McCarthy book, THE CROSSING (I think it relates to this
whole discussion somehow):
Yet even so there is but one world and everything that is
imaginable is necessary to it. For this world also which
seems to us a thing of stone and flower and blood is not a
thiong at all but is a tale. And all in it is a tale and
each tale the sum of all lesser tales and yet these also
are the selfsame tale and contain as well all else within
them. So everything is necessary. Every least thing.
This is the hard lesson. Nothing can be dispensed with.
Nothing despised. Because the seams are hid from us,
you see. The joinery. The way in which the world is made.
We have no way to know what could be taken away. WHat
omitted. We have no way to tell what might stand and what
might fall. And those seams that are hid from us are of
course in the tale itself and that tale has no abode or
place of being except in the telling only and there it
lives and makes its home and therefore we can never be done
with the telling. Of the telling there is no end. And
whether in Caborca or in Huisiachepic or in whatever other
place by whatever other name or by no name at all I say
again all tales are one. Rightly heard all tales are one.
(143)
And this....
Well, after several minutes of looking I am unable to find
the other passage from THE CROSSING. When I do find it,
I'll post it here.
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 8/2/95
12:59AM CT
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 08/02
From: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 2:15 PM
Marty: I did indeed note the Nietzschen overtone on the
judge. I further thought I detected a "progression" of
social orders in the story, as the kid developed whatever
morality that led him, in the end, to spare the judge and
kill that mouthy kid in Texas only when he actually
threatened him, instead of because he was annoying (which
would have been the case for the first couple of hundred
pages, at least).
Thus, the kid runs away from his barren home and enters the
world basically unformed, except of course for infantile
rage and meanness. His morality at this point is that of
the two year old who will put the puppy in the fireplace to
hear the noises it makes. Later he hooks up with Captain
White, and they embark (like 10-year olds on a camping
expedition) upon a quixotic quasi-military mission into
Mexico, where they are of course, slaughtered like hogs in a
Smithfield ham factory. The kid survives (miracle or random
chance? Another theory we haven't discussed on that is
narrative necessity; if the kid dies, whither the story?)
and becomes entangled with Glanton and reentangled with the
judge; at first the gang has a certain legitimacy: they are
hired genocides, working under the aegis of law and social
structure to exterminate the Apaches; they soon note a
a wonderful resemblence between Apache and Mexican scalps,
and further note that, ounce for ounce, the pay's the same.
So they slip over the line into sheer savagery and become a
law unto themselves. Here is where I see some of the
Nietzschean elements -- and frankly some pretty pure
fascism. Glanton and the judge go together like Himmler and
Heydrich. And, while I know it is now intellectually
disreputable to link the philosophy of Nietzsche to fascism,
this portion of the book makes a pretty good argument
supporting the existence of an intellectual relationship, if
not a causal one. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote in the introduction
to MOTHER NIGHT (and I paraphrase): "Since we tend to
become what we pretend to be, it is best to be careful about
what we pretend." This cautionary note was sounded in
relation to the protagonist of the book, an American spy who
had spent WWII pretending to be a Nazi collaborator and
radio propagandist, ala Lord Haw-Haw, while in reality
transmitting coded messages in his broadcasts. Vonnegut's
warning applies here: if we wish to define ourselves in
Nietzschean terms, and to elevate ourselves above ordinary
or common values, to make our own morality, then we risk
becoming the judge. As he himself would probably tell us,
his very existence and survival validates his world view --
indeed what else could validate a world view in McCarthy's
rubric? The fascistic element was strongest to me in the
scenes immediately prior to the massacre by the Yumas; the
massacre itself was the destruction of the fascist community
created by Glanton and the judge, but of course, didn't
destroy the judge: he and his Nietzschean values survived to
kill another day. Thus, in terms of this book, Nietzschean
values may not have "created" or "caused" Glanton and his
gang and their related depredations, but these values
certainly constitute a darkened basement of the soul, in
which the sick fungus of fascist values can flourish.
Anyway, to continue the notion of social development in the
story, following the Yuma massacre, the kid basically comes
of age: he moves back into the very tough, but human world
of his non-psychotic fellow creatures. I think that
something inside the kid -- perhaps here is where we find
God in this story -- some inchoate force or value led him to
become a person who would spare the judge, spare the
loudmouth kid until he was actually threatened, and
ultimately face death as a lesser evil than living out life
in the judge's pattern.
Dick in Alaska, who wonders what non-Americans might
think of this book
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 08/02
From: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Time: 2:26 PM
Marty,
I don't agree with your observations that if we are evolved,
rather than created by some sort of supreme being, that our
existence and ability to reason are worthless. In the first
place, as much as I am loathe to argue for the existence of
a supreme being, the mere fact of our having been evolved
from previous life forms does not preclude there being such
a thing. Evolution could be interpreted as the means
through which this supernatural force works and it is
immeasurably more marvelous than the abracadabra explanation
of the creationists. Furthermore, if we consider the means
by which evolution itself works, we can hardly consider our
ability to reason as worthless. If the development of more
and more brainpower were worthless we would have been a mere
offshoot, a dead-end, on the tree of biological development,
rather like the trilobites, and CR, where we can use said
brainpower to argue (politely) about such things, would
never have existed.
As far as the general discussion of BLOOD MERIDIAN (I agree,
let's forgo the acronym), you guys are really going at it.
Do I dare jump into the middle of three lawyers arguing?
I've just noticed that every selection I marked as being
significant is a quote attributable to the judge. So
besides his other *raisons d'etre*, he is most certainly
there as a voice for the author. He could also be seen as a
figure representing a supreme being, a force that knows all
(as he certainly seems to) and who seems able to control
events and yet allows evil to endlessly occur. If he
participates in it, it is because it is a part of the order
that he has ordained. "Before man was, war waited for him.
The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner."
Hardly a benevolent god, but a reasonable interpretation, I
think, in view of the history of man. He is evil more
because of his amorality, his allowing this to be, rather
than because of his immorality. "Moral law is an invention
of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in
favor of the weak," he says. He is called a judge, but he
does not judge, at least not by what we recognize as moral
law. (A law that only exists for *Homo sapiens*, developed
as a result of our ability to reason, but unfortunately
honored mostly in the breech.) By moral law here, I am, of
course, referring to true morality, the law which tries to
curb man's inhumanity to man, not the "family values" kind
flaunted by the religious right.
Ruth, in Redlands, where the bones of the dead air
conditioner on my roof portend a truly McCarthian Meridian
day.
To: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Date: 08/02
From: NPVX84A MARIA BUSTILLOS Time: 10:35 PM
Dear wild man, have only peeked into Blood Meridian but
really enjoyed your comments. Especially new and exciting
spelling of director Peckinpaw's name, another wild man
neologism which will be with me always (cf. berzerk.)
A lot of McCarthy at one sitting is apt to put me off him,
though, much as I admire the grandeur of his language.
There is insufficient raillery here for me. I mean,
grandeur grandeur and more grandeur, you know, it's really
ripe for a bit of skewering. It's a style that could really
easily be parodied, too; Cormac McCarthy, Enemy of the
Comma:
She opened her mind to the flow of words on the screen and
they flowed and they flowed and she felt the wind and motion
of their thoughts tumble through her like a thousand ivory
dice and she thought of the poets of the eighteenth century
cutting quills and that now she might lay her head before
the swiftness of thought itself the membrane of time growing
thinner with each passing day.
=============== Reply 25 of Note 4 =================
To: NPVX84A MARIA BUSTILLOS Date: 08/02
From: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Time: 11:56 PM
I quite agree with you on the sentences. I think I've
found the original model on which Faulkner and now McCarthy
have built this form of communication - the letters of the
semi-literate. Someday I will have to post G-G-Aunt Mat
Kirkpatrick's wonderful observations on the birth of my
Cousin Bess. Pure Faulkner and McCarthy, except nobody gets
killed.
This novel seems a bit bloodier than pure gnosticism,
which is the force behind THE RED LION and Durrell's Avignon
Quintet. If everything spiritual and unseen is good and
everything material and seeable is bad, then this book is
obviously dealing with only half the equation.
Reading the comments about the judge, I remembered just
reading about a similar man in real life, Yevno Azef, the
infamous "Comrade Valentine" hunted by both the Secret
Police and the early commies. He was a man who played
judge, true only to his own private revolution and world
view. For each successful bombing or whatever, he evened
the score by betraying at least one colleague to the Secret
Police, yet he went undetected until nearly WWI. He died,
ironically, as a result of the physical rigors of being
imprisoned by the Germans as an anti-German activist in WWI,
which he was NOT. It's comforting to think that in real
life such people inevitably come to an end at some time or
another - though not necessarily the end we feel they
deserve.
I've never really read up too much on the Western Indian
Wars, but, from what I have read of American history, I will
believe almost any type of violence. In upheavals of that
kind, the worst sadists often gravitate to the top and even
become semi-heroes. I think of Quantrill in Lawrence,
Kansas, for example. Quantrill was a common or garden
variety criminal until he seized the chance of war. If
you've got a job that borders on using people inhumanly,
you'll always find the nasties to flock to it. The mining
and frontier communities were refuges for people whose
habits would not have been tolerated elsewhere. You even
get a little taste of that in ANGLE OF REPOSE, though that's
not Stegner's chief point.
American historical accounts generally don't go into the
infinite gorey detail of this novel, and most fiction that
deals with the period doesn't either. Even explicit
violence is always balanced by something else. There are
some quite horrific passages in FLASHMAN AND THE DRAGON, for
example, but the overall impression is much different. Mr.
McCarthy seems to have a lot going for him as a writer, but
I would honest to goodness be wary of him as a person.
Cathy
To: NPVX84A MARIA BUSTILLOS Date: 08/03
From: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Time: 8:56 AM
Okay, smart aleck. Damnitall! I've looked it up.
THE NEW YORKER, March 6, 1995, p. 127: "Artist of Death"
by Terrence Rafferty. It's PECKINPAH. I've added it to my
spell checker, and Dick, you should do the same. However,
I must say that I like PECKINPAW a good deal better
personally. This spelling stuff just drives me berzerk
sometimes!
@wild man@
To: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Date: 08/03
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 10:47 AM
Steve: Yeah, I'd noticed we stumbled there on old Sam's
name. It does seem just a BIT a**l retentive for CERTAIN
PEOPLE to point it out so vigorously, however. We have
spell checker on this? I can't find the 'on' button.
Dick in Alaska where he was knocked out of the
6th grade spelling bee on the word 'cabinet'
To: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 08/03
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 12:47 PM
Dick,
Your note has made me realize/recall that Glanton and Judge
Holden are not the same person. Nobody ever accused
McCarthy of being simple to follow.
I think I agree with you about finding God in the kid near
the end of the book. But the God of this novela and of
this nature is definitely an Old Testament God, one of
harsh justice and swift vengeance. That's about all I can
think of as a response.
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 8/3/95
2:54AM CT
To: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Date: 08/03
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 12:47 PM
Ruth,
I should have been clearer: I don't mean to say that in
order for our reasoning to be valid, we had to be created
POOF! I don't see evolution as necessarily in conflict
with the concept of a Supreme Being who created All.
But if we weren't created some way, then our thoughts
are simply random chemical impulses, and whatever order we
impose on them in the name of reason came from the
same random system. What I'd say (ultimately) is that
Creation ex nihlo (I hope I spelled that right--latin for
out of nothing) in whatever form, is an amazing thought,
and one that the evolutionists admit is a possibility when
they say they can't explain where THE singularity came
from.
McCarthy is an unusual novelist in that his work seems to
be almost wholly UNautobiographical. I'm not inclined to
think that the judge is McCarthy or that McCarthy even
agrees with what the judge has to say. But since he's such
a recluse, I don't have any proof of that.
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 8/3/95
3:02AM CT
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 08/03
From: FAVB99B JANE NIEMEIER Time: 10:49 PM
Dear Marty and All,
I think that BLOOD MERIDIAN is a wonderful thought-provo-
king book, but I am having a difficult time reading more
than 20 to 30 pages a day because of the violence. At the
beginning there were many scenes of the men riding through
Mexico. The violence was somewhat limited (even if it was
horrifying). But then I got to Chapter 13 with the massa-
cre of the Tiguas, the killing at the cantina, "the village
decimated", and the mowing down of the mounted lancers.
In addition, we have the debauchery of the banquet in
Chihuahua. I know that some of you are Viet Nam vets, and
I do not want to offend any of you. Are any of these mass-
acres reminiscent of the atrocities in Viet Nam? The ban-
quet reminds me in a way of the teenagers that I have in
my classes. A great number of them are quite proud of
"getting wasted" on the weekends. They, therefore, are not
in any way reponsible for their actions, because "I was
drunk, man".
I have reached p. 188, and to me the most chilling part so
far is when the judge picks up the Apache child. Some of
us who are naive believe that perhaps he is going to save
this baby. But no. Even one of the men is sickened by his
actions. I was also a tiny bit pleased that Toadvine dis-
agreed with the killing of the Tiguas. He said "Them sons
of bitches aint botherin nobody." Of course, it did not
stop him from participating in the massacre.
I am fascinated with this book even though the horror is
ever escalating. How could the judge fall so far - a man
with all of his talents? He seems at first the epitome of
civilization (Lucifer?) Jane who just came back from
seeing the Rockies defeat those pesky Dodgers. Yay!!!
=============== Reply 2 of Note 2 =================
To: NPVX84A MARIA BUSTILLOS Date: 08/04
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 1:18 AM
Maria,
I agree with you about the parodic potential of McCarthy's
writing. But I still love the stuff. I suggest that if
you want more "raillery," read SUTTREE. There's more
rousing of the rabble in that book than is contained in
BLOOD MERIDIAN, and most of the book is written in the
darkly comic vein which so ennobled Faulkner's AS I LAY
DYING.
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 8/3/95
11:45PM CT
=============== Reply 3 of Note 2 =================
To: FAVB99B JANE NIEMEIER Date: 08/04
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 1:58 AM
Jane,
As I think I might have said before, recall that the
preacher that the judge runs out of town quite early in the
book claims that the judge is the devil incarnate. I'm
inclined to agree generally with this preacher's
statements.
I'm wondering still--what McCarthy's trying to prove here.
Any thoughts on the epilogue yet?
>>>
Those who know him say that McCarthy is a genial warm, and
outgoing fellow. Highly intelligent but personable. With
a small group of close friends. Also, it's reported that
at literary gatherings (i.e., the MacArthur Foundation
dinners) where other folks are present, McCarthy is apt to
ignore the other writers and instead hang out with the
scientists, etc. He says in his only published interview
that of all the things that are important to him, writing
is way down at the bottom of the list. Somehow, I believe
that he's being slightly...modest...here, since he's done
almost nothing but write and read for his entire adult
life. Also, an interesting tidbit: for a long period of
time, his books (his library) was stored in rented lockers
at a bus station somewhere. And it was apparently a
substantial library.
The fascination factor you mention is one of the things
that has puzzled me about this book. BLOOD MERIDIAN is the
most violent book I have ever read, without
question. Even so, repulsed as I was, I kept
returning to it. I'm not sure why. But when I got
to the end and read the judge's comments, I wondered
seriously if McCarthy weren't onto something.
Because, you see, I had finished the book. Does
that imply that I, like the kid, was born with a
mindless thirst for violence? A side note: I don't know
anyone who has ever begun this book who stopped
reading it before they finished. My aunt in
particular hated this book and said that it had no
point at all--but she finished it.
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 8/4/95
12:51AM CT
=============== Reply 4 of Note 2 =================
To: NPVX84A MARIA BUSTILLOS Date: 08/04
From: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Time: 11:33 AM
Maria & All: Speaking of styles that ask to be parodied, I
was at a used paperback store recently and found a bargain
copy of Henry Miller's long-unpublished first (I think)
novel, CRAZY COCK, which contains sections such as the
following...
***
Her perplexity was perplexing. Mask of a mask. Sphinx and
Chimera joined in a protean act. The riddle remained a
riddle, the riddle became a gladiator massacring the table,
a stone-faced automaton with the lungs of a gorilla and
bellows in his entrails. "Hildred!" he yelled. "Hildred!"
Voice like a lion's yawn, deep, red mouth choked with
rhododendrons.
"I'll fix him," said Hildred, rising quickly with
white-surging anger.
***
Say what?
>>Dale (perplexed by the perplexity of Hildred's
perplexity, though happily not choked with rhododendrons) in
Ala., who'll take Cormac any time
=============== Reply 5 of Note 2 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 08/04
From: NPVX84A MARIA BUSTILLOS Time: 5:21 PM
Dear Shaman, hoo, ha!
The one thing I could get behind was Hildred's intention to
fix him. I'd think the same thing, if I were Hildred.
=============== Reply 6 of Note 2 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 08/04
From: SHMF23A THOM HANSER Time: 9:59 PM
Dale, Miller started Crazy Cock in 1927, and the original
title was Lovely Lesbians. kyb
=============== Reply 7 of Note 2 =================
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 08/04
From: UPDQ58A PEGGY RAMSEY Time: 10:07 PM
Marty
Your last paragraph (about finishing BLOOD MERIDIAN) was
right on the mark. I'm about 100 pages in, have repeatedly
wondered why I'm still reading, and have no intention of
putting it down.
Actually, I do know why - McCarthy's description is
something to behold. Makes me forgive the absense of
quotation marks...
Peggy, who still hasn't cracked ALL THE PRETTY HORSES
=============== Reply 8 of Note 2 =================
To: UPDQ58A PEGGY RAMSEY Date: 08/05
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 4:34 AM
Peggy, You have inadvertently raised a question. Why do
you think McCarthy's books are sparse on the punctuation,
especially the quotation marks?
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 8/5/95
3:21AM CT
=============== Reply 9 of Note 2 =================
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 08/05
From: UPDQ58A PEGGY RAMSEY Time: 10:57 AM
Marty
Nothing inadvertent about it. I've been pondering the
punctuation question since page one...
Peggy
=============== Reply 10 of Note 2 =================
To: UPDQ58A PEGGY RAMSEY Date: 08/05
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 12:57 PM
I think McCarthy is telling a story where the people, life,
society and even the land itself has been stripped down
(literally throughout much of the book) to the rawest and
barest essentials. In this regard, the lack of punctuation
simply reflects the spare, desiccated nature of the story
itself. It also seems to me that removing the punctuation
flattens and deemphasizes the speech -- in my mind I hear
most of the words in the story without inflection (except of
course the judge....) or as if from far away, barely
reaching me through a wind. Finally, (more movie
comparisons), Sergio Leone wouldn't need no stinkin'
quotation marks.... Dick in "Alaska"
=============== Reply 11 of Note 2 =================
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 08/05
From: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Time: 1:43 PM
Dick,
I hear the language aloud in my head, too. I think you're
absolutely right about the flatness and stripped down
quality of the writing. The lack of commas, etc., emphasizes
the stream of conscious dreamlike feeling one gets reading
this. It almost seems like a person half-asleep, half-awake
is narrating a trance he is experiencing.
Sherry who read the book months ago, but who can still
shudder at some of the scenes.
=============== Reply 12 of Note 2 =================
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 08/06
From: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Time: 12:41 PM
Dick,
Sergio Leone, indeed, no quotation marks at all, just
subtitles-and Clint Eastwood. I finished BLOOD MERIDIAN
this morning, and looked up (literally) from the book to
see on CBS Sunday Morning pictures of Nagasaki victims.
Life punctuates art. I think you are right about the
seamless effect of leaving out most punctuation. The book
is an effort, I think, to re-create in the reader
EVERYTHING the author thought and felt on the subject of
human capacity for violence and evil. The much-commented-on
accretion of violent incidents and the exhaustive
description thereof accomplish this, and the effect would
not be the same with quotation marks all over the place.
Going back to the parallel between this book and the
pictures of atomic war victims, the only moral or ethical
lesson I can draw from either is that the capacity for evil
in man is limitless and incremental. The kid in the book
may have prefigured the man he would become in his taste
for mindless violence, but he had to take the first step,
then all the others. So again, as in ALL THE PRETTY HORSES
and THE CROSSING, a journey across illimitable distances
and through repeated experiences hammers home a collection
of feelings and thoughts which collectively convey the
author's feelings and thoughts with a completeness which is
the mark of a major artist.
Several times I have read or heard that McCarthy's language
takes the role of another character in his books; that is
certainly the case here. It is the combination of words and
their endless (seemingly) variation and permutation that
augment the actions and words of the characters.
Here is one passage at random:
When they rode out in the morning it was still dark.
Lightning stood in ragged chains far to the south,
silent, the staccato mountains bespoken blue and
barren out of the void. [p. 175 Vintage]
The landscape itself is a character, described with a high
resolution of detail, and always described in words which
both in form and substance underscore the immensity of the
land and the frail insignificance of the men. With a sense,
always, of dark, of brooding, of harshness.
Marty has remarked that nobody starts this book without
finishing, and I can see why. This book doesn't interrupt
your life, it takes it over; like the wedding guest, I
could not choose but hear. My comments here are as puny as
any of his characters against the scale of McCarthy's prose.
Needing a good old Disney movie,
Felix Miller
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 08/06
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 3:41 PM
Dick,
About the punctuation (or lack thereof) in BLOOD MERIDIAN:
I had an American Lit teacher who I conned into reading ALL
THE PRETTY HORSES. She loved the book, and when I asked
her why the normal punctuation was lacking, she said that
it had to do, she thought, with the look of the books.
Physically. Her comment was that "poets have been
concerned about the way their work looks on paper for
centuries" and that McCarthy's work was in some ways more
poem than novel.
I think I'd have to agree with her, and state further that
McCarthy seems to me to be harkening back to an older epic
tradition in the literature of the West. That can be seen
not only in the relentless focus on one character, a la
Homer, but also in the elevated style of the language.
Another question I've been pondering: why pick the American
West? One could argue that Faulkner did for the Southern
novel all that was possible, and that McCarthy moved
(physically and thematically) so that he could do for the
West what Faulkner did for the South. That is, give it a
mythology all his own. One of the great themes of American
Lit has always been the westward journey--you see it
everywhere from THE GREAT GATSBY to Cooper's work in THE
LEATHERSTOCKING TALES and back again to Faulkner's journey
motif in AS I LAY DYING. In these works, the East is
civilized, but the West is wild, untamed.
I'm wondering about McCarthy's place in this regard, and
also about his relation to other western writers and
filmmakers. I do believe that the comments comparing his
work with that of Sergio Leone and Peckinpah are extremely
valid, especially since his second wife (I think it was
her, but it could have been his first) said that he had
always wanted to write the Great American Western. My
question is: has he done it (either with BLOOD MERIDIAN or
somethinmg since)? My reading of westerns is almost nil,
so I'm not sure how he fits in with Cooper and that bunch.
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 8/6/95
2:25PM CT
=============== Reply 2 of Note 1 =================
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 08/06
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 3:41 PM
Dick,
One more thing about the dialogue: it's some of the best
I've ever read, particularly in the Border books (I mean to
say that I think McCarthy is getting better at it). There
were a few sections in ALL THE PRETTY HORSES, for example,
that baffled me as to who was saying what--until I read
them aloud. Then the language and the characters behind it
leapt off the pages. I don't recall having that experience
much before McCarthy. I'm positing that the lack of
quotes, while giving the book a certain spareness, forces
you to pay more attention to the dialogue than you
otherwise might. We may be coming at the same conclusion
from two different perspectives. You say that the lack of
punctuation flattens the book, but I'd say that the lack of
said markings elevates the dialogue to the same status as
the rest of the narrative. And that's another thing:
sometimes, it's difficult to tell when the narrator stops
talking and a character starts. I think that could very
well be intentional.
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 8/6/95
2:30PM CT
=============== Reply 3 of Note 1 =================
To: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Date: 08/06
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 3:41 PM
Felix,
One critic, remarking on the lyrical beauty of ALL THE
PRETTY HORSES and its much less violent plot (that book has
been dubbed by some as Cormac-Lite), said something to the
effect that BLOOD MERIDIAN must have been the book that
McCarthy used to purge himself of his demons. Maybe much
truth in that comment.
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 8/6/95
2:33PM CT
=============== Reply 4 of Note 1 =================
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 08/06
From: UPDQ58A PEGGY RAMSEY Time: 5:26 PM
Marty
I think your teacher may have nailed the quotation
question - try adding the marks mentally and tell me it
doesn't make a big difference in the prose.
I have just this afternoon finished BLOOD MERIDIAN, and
still can't believe I stayed with it. What struck me most
was how the Kid seemed to vanish throughout the novel's
midsection, mentioned in only passing, if at all. It was as
if he had disappeared into the maw of some death-dealing
desert beast, then disgorged on the opposite shore. (Not
unlike this reader!)
Thanks for the ride, Marty, I'm sure I wouldn't have found
this one on my own...
Peggy
=============== Reply 5 of Note 1 =================
To: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Date: 08/06
From: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Time: 6:30 PM
Felix, I just had to tell you how much I enjoyed your
Note on BLOOD MERIDIAN. A really fine little commentary!
Thank you.
Your pal, Steve
=============== Reply 6 of Note 1 =================
To: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Date: 08/06
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 11:25 PM
Felix: A first rate note on Blood Meridian; I think your use
of the word "seamless" to describe the way the lack of
punctuation melded dialogue into the prose was exactly
right. It was what I MEANT to say, but didn't in my note.
It's as if the dialogue becomes part of the scenery, folded
and flowing like the mineral formations McCarthy is so very
fond of describing. Anyway, I really enjoyed your note.
Dick in Alaska, where he just did to a golf course
what the Glanton and the judge did to those poor
Mexicans
=============== Reply 7 of Note 1 =================
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 08/07
From: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Time: 8:59 PM
Dick, Steve etal.
One more comment on McCarthy and completing his books.
Somewhere above, in this long and winding thread, Marty
commented on the compulsion to finish Blood Meridian,
specifically. I believe I may have the world's record on
time elapsed in finishing a McCarthy, or perhaps any other,
book.
In 1969, I bought Outer Dark, on the recommendation of some
folks at a cocktail party who raved about their friend from
Knoxville who had written a prize-winning book and then
followed with another sure-to-be-celebrated second novel. I
read about 100 pages, and found the book too weird for me.
I put it on the bookshelf, where it stayed (I never dispose
of books, even weird ones) for twenty years. (Not the same
shelf, actually, since we moved three times) Then, in 1989,
I watched an interview with Shelby Foote in which he
described McCarthy without hesitation as the greatest
living novelist in America. I pulled Outer Dark off the
shelf and completed it in a week or so. (I did have to
start it over, my memory being unequal to such a caesura)
This past Sunday, I completed my personal McCarthy journey
(excepting only the play) with Blood Meridian. Foote was
right. It just took me somewhat longer than usual to come
to the same conclusion.
Glacially slow on the Mountain,
Felix
=============== Reply 8 of Note 1 =================
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 08/07
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 8:59 PM
All,
Last Thursday afternoon I spent some time with a former
humanities professor of mine, who is elderly and dying of
cancer and myestenio gravis (forgive me if I misspelled
this disease). She has become incapable of reading due to
two strokes, but her mind is still as lucid as ever. I
took THE CROSSING with me and read her the rector's story
to Billy Parham (137-58). She wrote me a thank-you note,
which I got in the mail today. She recommended a book
to me--called A VISION OF TRAGEDY by Sewell, she
believes. Her comments were in part:
McCarthy maybe has never read Sewell, but he certainly
understands and embodies one of the principles that I think
I remember comes from Sewell--that PAIN rises to the
elevated (Aeschylus-like) level of human SUFFERING only
when it has been reflected upon, has been made the subject
of introspection, in short has been SPIRITUALIZED. Sure
fits the fitful agony of that story, doesn't it?
***
I thought that some of you might like to comment on her
comments, either as they apply to that section of THE
CROSSING or as they might relate to BLOOD MERIDIAN.
Also, how many of you noticed the Tarot card scene in BLOOD
MERIDIAN? I just read an esay in the Sepich book that
explains it and the judge's motivation for killing the kid
at novel's end. I'll elaborate, but I'd like to hear your
comments first.
Also, the recurring question: what's the point of the
epilogue, and who is the man striking fire from the earth?
And what is literally happening?
>>>
Hopefully I'll add more later this evening, since I'm still
stumbling through the book.
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 8/7/95
7:58PM CT
=============== Reply 9 of Note 1 =================
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 08/07
From: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Time: 9:20 PM
Marty,
I'll be interested in any light you can bring to the
judge's obsession (I think that is not too strong a word)
with the kid throughout this book. The judge cannot leave
the kid alone, and early on, shortly after their second
meeting,(I don't have a hope of finding the passage)
comments on his "disappointment" in the kid in the earlier
meeting. And then, after many years, in a chance (or is
it?) encounter, the judge brings their long duet to a foul
and horrible close. Is the kid some sort of unlikely
innocent who the judge has to destroy because he has been
unable to win him over to some dark side? I don't know.
The epilogue threw me into an even more confused state
than I was already. Other than the image (once more) of a
spanning of a barren plain (with bones-isn't there a
passage in some prophet about a valley of bones? Ah, my
misspent Sundays) I don't see any connection with the text
gone before.
Confused on the tame Mountain,
Felix
=============== Reply 10 of Note 1 =================
To: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Date: 08/07
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 11:32 PM
Felix,
Let me say first that I think that all of us ahve come very
close to the point of this book, though none of us may have
known it or been able to point it out.
Reading the criticism I've been reading, it seems to me
that almost all the points being made here are echoed in
what the critics have to say, but they generally do a
better job of telling us where we ought to have looked to
prove our thoughts, as it were.
>>>
Your assumption that the kid is some innocent who must be
destroyed because outside the judge's purview seems right
to me. I think the judge demonstrates as much when he
draws in his book then destroys that which he's drawn. And
Sepich, in his essay on the Tarot makes a point of saying
that he believes that the judge does not lie late in the
book when he says that the kid has "shown mercy to the
heathen." (I think those are the judge's exact words, but I
don't feel like looking them up.) He goes on to say that
it's strange that the kid is never shown exercising such
mercy (but as Steve, I think, pointed out, the kid does
refrain, late in the novel, from killing someone until
actually threatened--Sepich missed that).
Sepich also says that the judge and the kid are
inextricably bound by fire--one of the central themes of
the novel. Without too much detail, Sepich goes into the
kid's association with the Leonids--page 1--and says that
the year of the kid's birth was known, due to the Leonids,
as the year it rained fire in many of the histories of the
period. He also mentions the judge's walking through the
fire in the Tarot scene and the fact that the judge sees
the kid just after he (the kid) and Toadvine have torched
the hotel.
Re: the epilogue, see my next note.
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 8/7/95
9:29PM CT
=============== Reply 11 of Note 1 =================
To: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Date: 08/07
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 11:32 PM
Felix,
The epilogue threw me for a loop, too. Then I read (and
reread and reread--because it was difficult) an essay by
Leo Daugherty that appears in PERSPECTIVES ON CORMAC
MCCARTHY. Called "Gravers False and True: BLOOD MERIDIAN
as Gnostic Tragedy," the essay deals specifically with the
epilogue (among other things).
Background info on the Gnostics, needed to understand the
essay--in the essay but condensed herewith:
>>>
The Gnostics believed that God did not create the universe.
Rather, the universe was created by some evil demi-gods who
stole some of the Divine essence from God and imprisoned
it in the physical universe. Thus, all matter is evil, the
spirit the only good. The only interaction that God has
with humans is that from time to time, he sends messengers
here who try to help us free our spirits from the evil
matter so that we may return to God. When we fight the
capriciousness of the demi-gods, then we encounter what the
Gnostics would call fate.
Now, Daugherty posits that this philosophical thought
underlies the whole book. Thus, the man in the epilogue
represents one of the messengers sent from God...who is
striking fire from the earth, literally freeing the divine
spark imprisoned in the matter. The people following him
don't look for his message; they just stumble around in
darkness. As to the literal events, he says that this guy
is a posthole digger, digging holes to help fence in the
range.
Daugherty also spends considerable time on the scene where
the judge encounters the graver (coinmaker) and refuses to
let his image be cast into metal (that's a dream of the
kid's, I believe). He says this represents the judge's
unwillingness to enter any system of commerce. Because
commerce, you see, leads to bloodless war, war without
sacrifice, war without war. Interesting, I think.
Then he goes to the epilogue (and after saying that all of
what he says may be BS) proceeds to say that Cormac in this
respect is like the judge--he won't enter the stream of
commerce--that is he refuses to help publicize his own
work. He then posits that the man of the epilogue may be
McCarthy some way. To quote:
"...The man in the epilogue, as he moves over the
landscape digging holes and striking his God's fire in
them, is the exact antithesis of the false `graver' of
the kid's dream who seeks the judge's favor through a
different sort of line drawing. And just as the judge
(although unbeknownst to the graver) does not want to
`pass' in the civilized world, but wants only war, victory,
and then more war in the unending night of fallen matter,
so the man of the epilogue cares nothing for playing and
winning in the judge's world (for to win is to lose there
just as much as to lose is to lose), but wants only the
`pursuit of his continuance' in the service of what he
takes to be the good and right way to go [because called by
the non-creator God to do so--the posthole digger and the
novelist, here, says Daugherty elsewhere]. Neither the man
nor the judge [nor the author, the critic has implied] will
enter the exchange system."
One other quote from this essay, just for fun:
"In 1604 London, a long forgotten storyteller . . . implied
that the secret of HAMLET's fineness is that in
Shakespeare, `the comedian rides when the tragedian strands
on tiptoe.' (Continued next note)....
=============== Reply 12 of Note 1 =================
To: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Date: 08/07
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 11:32 PM
"There are precious few writers of whom one could say this,
but one can say it of the writer of BLOOD MERIDIAN. In
major consequence of his mastery of the high tragedian's
art, Cormac McCarthy has become the best and most
indispensable writer of English-language narrative in the
second half of the century."
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 8/7/95
10:26PM CT
=============== Reply 13 of Note 1 =================
To: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Date: 08/08
From: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Time: 6:09 AM
For what help it may be, Felix, it is in Ezekiel,
Chapter 37, Verses 1 et seq.
The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me
out by the Spirit of the LORD, and set me down in the midst
of the valley; it was full of bones. And he led me round
among them; and behold, there were very many upon the
valley; and lo, they were very dry. And he said to me,
"Son of man, can these bones live?" And I answered, "O
Lord GOD, thou knowest." Again he said to me, "Prophesy to
these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of
the LORD. Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: Behold,
I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And
I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come
upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you,
and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the
LORD."
Now do you remember, Felix? Does this ring a bell?
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
" " "
" " "
Now heah de word of de Lawd!
See you in church, partner.
Your pal, Steve
=============== Reply 14 of Note 1 =================
To: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Date: 08/08
From: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 2:22 PM
Steve, Felix, Marty & All: There are many bones in this
book. The judge's lecture on the fossil femur (p. 251-252,
Vintage); Chapter XXIII, just before the kid meets the young
men is rife with bones and bonepickers. And those were just
the one's I could find in an instant; I think there's a load
more if you look.
In terms of the epilogue, take a look at the quotations at
the front of the book: Paul Valery, the French symbolist
poet (Jim and Maria: help! I just ran out of almost my
entire store of information on this subject) -- I think the
notions and techniques of the Symbolist movement have some
application to what McCarthy was doing and how he did it.
Second quote by Jacob Boehm -- had to look this guy up, and
here's a short blurb on him: German religious mystic
(1575-1624) was a student of the Bible, follower of
Paracelsus and believed himself divinely inspired. Describes
God as the abyss, the nothing and the all, the primoridal
depths from which the creative will struggles forth to find
manifestation and self-consciousness. Evil is the result of
the sritving of single elements of Deity to become the whole
(!); conflict ensues as man and nature strive to achieve God
who, in himself, contains all antithetical principles. Any
if this ring any bells? According to the encyclopedia, he
had much influence on later German philosophers including
Schilling, Hegel and Schopenhauer. Finally, we have the
quote from the Yuma Sun: more bones, and closing the loop on
primitive versus modern violence.
This book is so darned INTERESTING to me; I keep putting it
down, and you guys post more notes, and I get drawn back
into it. My latest mini-revelation came in re-reading the
last part of Chapter XXII: first, the kid's delirious dream
or vision of the judge: does this sound like the stuff from
Boehm I just typed out, or what? Also, we see a mysterious
stranger in the shadows who looks alot like
that pesky post-hole digger in the epilogue; finally, I was
overwhelmed by the closing scenes of the chapter: the
penitantes staggering through this God-forsaken wilderness,
flagellating themselves, only to be set upon and killed with
savagery even they might have found surprising. What point
intentional human suffering, when God will provide all the
suffering you can stand, gratis? The kid appears moved by
this scene (is this the first human gesture we see the kid
make in the book?) and approaches what he believes to be an
old lady who has survived the attack; he speaks to her,
offering to help her escape this desolate country and gets
no response. No puede eschucharme? he asks (can't you hear
me?, I think) Of course she is long dead; a wizened, dried
out husk, mummified by years of exposure to the desert air.
In that few pages, we see the fullness of human futility:
the futility of the self-inflicted pain in search of a far
distant God, who will visit you with pain soon enough in any
event; and the futility of the kid's offer of assistance to
the dead woman; this last futile because it came too late to
help in life, and because, in the end, all such "help" is
futile anyway. I think this was the scene in which the judge
lost the kid, and where it became necessary for the kid to
die.
Dick in Alaska, who is beginning to wish this book
would leave me ALONE for awhile
=============== Reply 15 of Note 1 =================
To: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 08/08
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 6:29 PM
Dick,
Your Spanish is better than mine, I'm sure, since I don't
speak the language, but NOTES ON BLOOD MERIDIAN translates
that passage thusly: Grandma, he said. Cant you hear me?
Now I'll really confuse you...I found this in a footnote in
NOTES last evening (the book is as comprehensive an
analysis of BLOOD MERIDIAN as any I've yet seen, and it is
clearly the work of someone who could not get away from the
book):
>>>
BLOOD MERIDIAN's Paul Valery epigraph is from his essay
"The Yalu," "written during the first Sino-Japanese war,"
and are [sic] among the words spoken to a European Valery
persona by a Chinese companion regarding the differences
between Eastern and Western concepts of order and disorder.
A sense of the range of ideas included in this statement of
the Eastern (Chinese) perception of the West, ideas which
McCarthy explores in his novel, may be suggested in the
following passages excerpted from the long paragraph
concluded by the epigraph: "In your land, power can do
nothing. Your politics consists in changes of heart; it
leads to general revolution, and then to reaction against
revolution, which is another revolution." "For you,
intelligence is not one thing among many. You neither
prepare nor provide for it, nor protect nor repress nor
direct it; you worship it as if it were an omnipotent
beast. Every day it devours everything. It would like to
put an end to a new state of society every evening. A man
intoxicated on it believes his own thoughts are legal
decisions." "You are in love with intelligence, until it
frightens you. For 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."
***
I'll have more to say later about the rest of your note.
But it seems to me that this epigraph may in fact refer
directly to the judge.
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 8/8/95
5:23PM CT
=============== Reply 16 of Note 1 =================
To: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Date: 08/08
From: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Time: 7:38 PM
Humor me if this idea sounds a bit off-the-wall, OK?
Especially in light of the wonderfully substantive
discussion y'all are having here about BLOOD MERIDIAN. I'm
really enjoying it, though I haven't had time to re-read the
book and my memory's way too bad to participate. BUT...
It's obvious that the CONTENT of McCarthy's writing
(especially the books before the Border trilogy) is the
stuff of nightmares, perhaps BLOOD MERIDIAN most of all.
But I've long thought that the STYLE of the writing, and
the many offbeat technical choices he makes, is so close to
the form of a nightmare that the similarity can't be
accidental.
Even things as simple as the lack of quote marks, and the
way dialogue butts up against description just enough to
unsettle you. A regular feature of bad dreams (mine, at
least) is a nagging confusion about just who's talking or
where a voice is coming from, or even whether you're
thinking something to yourself or saying it out loud.
Likewise the constant air of foreboding and threat, even
when there's nothing disturbing in plain view. Also the
sense of inevitability, that there's no way out until the
conclusion. And the distortion of time, so that some
unexceptional events are stretched wa-a-a-y out and
momentous ones happen in the blink of an eye.
Also the recurring theme of totally bizarre events
happening with nobody but the protagonist taking notice, as
if they're an everyday thing.
I wish I had the academic background to make a better
argument of this, but does it ring a bell with anybody here?
>>Dale in Ala., who has some humdinger nightmares, the
best of which sometimes come with a title and closing
credits. (No kidding. An occupational hazard, I guess. I
don't want to imagine what Cormac's must be like.)
=============== Reply 17 of Note 1 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 08/09
From: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Time: 0:30 AM
Dale, I find myself REWRITING my dreams, or at least
reworking them. I will be actually deciding, no, it would
work better this way, or let me try it from this angle.
This is all visual, by the way, not words on paper.
Your idea of nightmare sequence might well be valid.
Kipling certainly wrote them, and very vivid they were.
Cathy
=============== Reply 18 of Note 1 =================
To: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Date: 08/09
From: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Time: 8:45 AM
Cathy: Are you saying you amend your dreams WHILE they're
happening, rather than the morning after?
This brings to mind a fascinating subject I wish I knew
more about, called "lucid dreaming." Supposedly, with enough
practice, we can learn to reach a sort of twilight state in
which we both observe and guide a dream at the same time.
Anybody here had experience with that?
>>Dale in Ala.
=============== Reply 19 of Note 1 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 08/09
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 10:33 AM
My wife claims she can direct her dreams in exactly the
fashion described by Cathy: I not only cannot do that (I can
wake up screaming, if that counts) I never heard of it
before the current wife, and now Cathy. Is this yet another
thing us guys can't do at all?
Dick in Alaska, where he's definitely feeling
chromosomally disenfranchised this morning
=============== Reply 20 of Note 1 =================
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 08/09
From: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Time: 4:55 PM
Dick: I think you're onto something, with the gender aspects
of "lucid dreaming." All the illustrations in the catalog I
have (from The Lucidity Institute in--surprise--
California) show thin, ethereal-looking blonde females
floating through the astral realms in their translucent
undies. Not a chromosome of my variety in the bunch.
The founder of the institute is a male, however, and
offers this enlightenment in the foreword:
***
Lucid dreaming means dreaming with full awareness that you
are dreaming. It most often occurs when you realize in the
middle of a dream that you are dreaming. Many people have
had this experience at least once, often awakening
immediately after the realization. It is possible to remain
in a dream for up to an hour while being aware that you are
dreaming. This is lucid dreaming.
The onset of lucidity usually brings with it some degree
of enhanced control over the course of the dream. How much
control is possible varies from dream to dream, and from
dreamer to dreamer. Through practice, you can develop
increased skill at directing your dreams. At the least, in a
lucid dream you can choose how you wish to respond to the
dream events.
Even a small amount of control can transform a dream from
an experience of helplessness and frustration into the
delight of forgetting the cares and concerns of waking life
to enjoy complete freedom. And those who can achieve mastery
of lucid dreaming gain the power to create any world, and to
live out fantasies, limited only by their imaginations.
***
The "Complete Dreamlight Technology Package," by the way,
including a high-tech eye mask with REM-detecting computer
chip, will run you $1,200.
>>Dale in Ala., who responds to intense dreams in the
tried-and-true fashion of waking up screaming
=============== Reply 21 of Note 1 =================
To: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Date: 08/09
From: UPDQ58A PEGGY RAMSEY Time: 5:14 PM
Cathy, Dale and Richard
Count me as another "lucid dreamer" - I remember being
surprised when I found out it didn't work that way for
everyone. I also have very vivid dreams, and am
frequently surprised (and relieved) to wake up in my own
bed.
Just to keep this book related - Dale, I like the
notion that BLOOD MERIDIAN reads like a bad dream. I don't
see McCarthy actually sitting down and doing it
deliberately; but that's sure how it wound up.
Peggy, who last night dreamed of breeding Bassett Hounds???
=============== Reply 22 of Note 1 =================
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 08/09
From: JYLG99A E MARTINI-WIENER Time: 5:37 PM
I too can change a dream when it becomes too scary. My
husband on the other hand can not even remember his dreams
and does not know whether he dreams in color or b/w.
Any input?
Elisabeth
=============== Reply 23 of Note 1 =================
To: JYLG99A E MARTINI-WIENER Date: 08/09
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 9:46 PM
There must be a decent book on dreams since Freud, but I
don't know what it is off hand. Actually, I like the "lucid
dreaming" format of that guy in California: found an
institute, surround yourself with ethereal young things and
presto! your dreams are coming true. 'Course the wife would
whack me with a solid object until I was dreaming of a
chiropractor, but still....
Dick in Alaska, where his dreams are colorized
=============== Reply 24 of Note 1 =================
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 08/09
From: FAVB99B JANE NIEMEIER Time: 10:51 PM
Well, I finally finished BLOOD MERIDIAN yesterday. I
mentioned in another note that I could read only 20-30
pages of this book a day. So I was reading a mystery, THE
RED SCREAM, by Mary Willis Walker, at the same time for en-
tertainment. You might find it interesting to learn that
the mystery novel was about a serial killer, and I found it
much less horrifying than BLOOD M. The latter seemed more
real. I always knew I was reading a novel while I was
reading SCREAM, but not with BLOOD. Dale, you are so right
about the nightmarish quality of this book.
Here are some questions and random thoughts that I had a-
bout BLOOD M. 1) The use of colors is interesting.
The colors are sombre and the clothes are dark and tat-
tered. This is why the dance scene struck me: "In their
stained peignoirs, in their green stockings and melon-
colored drawers they drifted through the smoky oil light
like makebelieve wantons, at once childlike and lewd."
Dale - A true nightmare, n'est-ce pas?
2) Of the 23 chapters in the book, the first 11 seem to
build to a crescendo of violence in chapter 12. Then the
violence tapers off in the last 11. It is still there but
not on every other page as in chapter 12.
3) I don't think anyone has talked about the fool that
follows the judge around. This is so reminiscent of the
Middle Ages with the king and his fool. Only the judge
seems to be a false king and the fool is both a true and a
false fool. He is a true fool in that he is mentally han-
dicapped, and he is a false fool in that fools in the
Middle Ages were really individuals who survived by their
wits.
4) What does everyone think about Glanton's dog? If I
remember correctly there is a dog that follows the boy in
THE CROSSING. Glanton seems fond of the dog and even jeal-
ous of his affections. He does not like it when the dog is
interested in others. Does this mean that Glanton has one
or two good qualities?
What a fine and difficult book!!!
Jane who went to THE TATTERED COVER today to buy some books
that chere gail recommended. (LAST DAY OF FREEDOM)
=============== Reply 4 of Note 1 =================
To: FAVB99B JANE NIEMEIER Date: 08/10
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 2:56 PM
Jane,
Congratulations on making it through the nightmare.
Colors are very well used in this book (as is everything
else). I'm not sure exactly what to make of them though.
They are indeed sombre and bleak, and contrast with the
vibrant quality of nature. Remember the St. Elmo's Fire on
the beards of the men...luminous.
Your comments about the fool are interesting. I'm thinking
about them. I do think it's very relevant that the judge
offers them no protection; they follow him anyway (I assume
that you refer to the clown and his family...there may be
another fool later in the book that I don't recall).
Glanton's dog does make an interesting contrast with the
dog in THE CROSSING...but I've got to finish BLOOD MERIDIAN
again before I comment more about that.
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 8/10/95
3:14AM CT
=============== Reply 5 of Note 1 =================
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 08/11
From: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 1:26 PM
Jane: It seemed to me that the fool (I thought of him as the
"idiot" in the mental retardation sense) occupied basically
the same relationship to the judge as did the dog to
Glanton. The judge, however, was a "superior" sort of
fascist in that he kept a human as a pet, and not a mere
canine. Also you'll note the judge is not sentimental over
his pet, as Glanton is over his. For the judge, a drooling
idiot on the end of a horse-hair leash is an object of
curiousity, as well as something perversely decorative (not
to mention cinematic...) with which to march naked through
the desert. I think it would also please the judge's sense
of irony that he had spared the idiot, even cared for
it, when he had also been instrumental in the death and
torture of so many "whole" human beings. Yes, I think that
would have made the judge smile, maybe even laugh out loud.
Is Glanton's affection for the dog a redeeming feature?
Since it seems merely sentimental and not compassionate in
any deeper sense, I wouldn't give him much credit. Remember
Arendt and the banality of evil stuff: even Uncle Adolph
liked his dog.
And finally, I very much liked the use of colors in the
book. I haven't reviewed the book (for the umpteenth time)
to check on this, but it seemed to me there was a unitary
theme here: virtually all the colors can be derived from the
human body in life or death: red, black, yellow, brown, etc.
Of course, those are the colors of the desert as well, so
maybe I'm reaching here. And maybe McCarthy should drop over
to Nordstrom's and have his colors done.
Dick in Alaska, where he glanced at the Codescru
book yesterday, and is still blushing
=============== Reply 6 of Note 1 =================
To: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 08/12
From: FAVB99B JANE NIEMEIER Time: 7:43 PM
Dick,
I agree with you about the judge and his fool being like
Glanton and his dog. I almost got the sense of the fool and
the dog being "familiars", or am I reading too much into
this? Evil does seem to pervade the judge and Glanton.
Jane who just saw the movie KIDS and found it to be
very disturbing.
=============== Note 7 =================
To: ALL Date: 08/27
From: VRCH78A ALLEN CROCKER Time: 11:57 PM
A few more thoughts on BLOOD MERIDIAN:
I've only just realized that it was just over one month
ago that Marty began the thread on this book -- which is
now closed, so I have to post my reactions in a new note.
I was two weeks behind the rest of you in reading BLOOD M.,
and another two weeks late in posting on it. Ah well --the
plus side is that I got the benefit of reading a complete
discussion immediately after finishing it: an inestimable
boon, given that this is easily the most thought-provoking
book I've read in recent memory. I would certainly not have
read it under any other circumstances, since it's quite
outside my normal line. And I think that you will all agree
that this is a literary journey that's best taken in good
company.
One sentiment I saw repeated a few times that I can
echo myself is that BLOOD M. (the straight abbreviation is
a bit problematical, isn't it?) pulls you in and won't let
go in spite of the horrors it depicts, and the agonies
(richly deserved though they may be) that McCarthy inflicts
upon his characters. (I have to believe that this book must
have been something of an agony for its author to produce -
more than the "normal" agony involved in novel-writing,
at least.) His punctuational eccentricities took me some
time to get used to (though the many sentence fragments
that occur jarred me a little each time I found one), but
as the chapters wore on they did become more natural -- all
of a piece with the stark tone of the novel in general.
I have to admit that it wasn't until I read the notes in
the original thread that I actually realized that commas
were so rare (I did find three on one page) and that, as
far as I can tell, colons, semicolons and exclamation
points are entirely absent. I found this unorthodoxy
fairly irritating at first, but I can't escape the con-
clusion that it works.
Something else that also works is McCarthy's writing. I
understand now what people meant when they spoke earlier
of his taking risks: this is the sort of prose that has
to be done just right. The scenic descriptions, in par-
ticular, seemed to just skirt the edge of being overwrought
without ever going over. (Astounding, the number of ways
he finds to describe mountains.) Likewise, with the similes
that are liberally sprinkled throughout the book (the
author, it seems, is a man who never metaphor he didn't
like. (Sorry.)) The result is writing that is so terrific
that by itself it makes the arduous journey worthwhile. I
marked a couple instances I was particularly taken with,
though I could cite many:
All lightly shimmering in the heat, these lifeforms,
like wonders much reduced. Rough likenesses thrown up
at hearsay after the things themselves had faded in
men's minds. (p.75)
The jagged mountains were pure blue in the dawn and
everywhere birds twittered and the sun when it rose
caught the moon in the west so that they lay opposed
to each other across the earth, the sun whitehot and
the moon a pale replica, as if they were the ends of a
common bore beyond whose terminals burned worlds past
all reckoning. (p. 86)
That last image is my favorite in the whole book --
small wonder that Ralph Ellison would say that "McCarthy
is a writer to be read, admired, and quite honestly --
envied."
Out of space and, for now, time. More tomorrow...
Allen
=============== Reply 1 of Note 7 =================
To: FBED59A EDWARD HOUGHTON Date: 09/04
From: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Time: 6:23 PM
Another thought that just gelled in my mind about BLOOD
MERIDIAN. All the while I was reading it, I felt that
McCarthy's writing was reminding me of something. I think
I've got it now. HENRY MILLER. Before you think I' m nuts,
let me elaborate. (I could be wrong bout this. It's been
20 years since I read much MILLER. I was quite taken with
him during my midlife crisis, but that's another story.)
But from both MILLER and MCCARTHY I get that same sense of
dancing with the language, of pushing the hyperbole, getting
out on the highwire and courting disaster. What do you
think, Marty?
Ruth
=============== Reply 2 of Note 7 =================
To: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Date: 09/04
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 7:38 PM
Henry Miller???
I'm not sure, since I haven't read him. But I'd lean more
towards Faulkner for that business of dancing with the
language. Strong influence also from the writing of
Hemingway and Twain and Melville, McCarthy's acknowledged
favorite writer.
The element of language in McCarthy is indeed strong, so
much so that the language takes on a force and character
all its own. It's as if the language is the point of the
story. McCarthy alludes to this pretty explicitly in both
THE CROSSING and THE STONEMASON, his play.
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 9/4/95
6:37PM CT
=============== Reply 3 of Note 7 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 09/05
From: VRCH78A ALLEN CROCKER Time: 11:20 PM
Richard and Marty: Thanks for the illumination about the
German quote. It confirms my suspicion that there's a tre-
mendous quantity of subtle meaning McCarthy tucked away in
the book for readers to discover, only a tiny bit of which
we can hope to uncover here.
Dale: It's a great compliment to me that you call my
half-formed musings on the judge a "great note." Nice to
know that I may be on somewhat the right track, anyway.
One more point that occurred to me: near the end of the
novel, when the judge is stalking the kid in the bone-
filled ravine (another image that will stay with me a long
time) he narrowly misses his head with a rifle shot. It
seems to me that he must have missed on purpose -- what the
judge wants to do, he will, and if he'd wanted to kill the
kid, he would have. I think his goal wasn't to kill, but
to control -- to extend his "suzerainty" over the one
person in the group who he perceived had some bit of
sympathy for the Indians.
Just thinking out loud....
Allen
=============== Reply 4 of Note 7 =================
To: VRCH78A ALLEN CROCKER Date: 09/06
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 1:47 AM
Allen,
Now THAT is a great note.
Something I hadn't even thought about, but it rings true.
I'm curious as to why this discussion of BLOOD MERIDIAN
seems to be ubiquitous and of such substantial duration. I
don't recall another book having this much said about
it--not on this board, anyway. I apologize for having
inflicted McCarthy into the board's collective unconscious,
or whatever.
But I do think the discussion has been very very good. I
promise, however, not to recommend another McCarthy book
for the next slo-mo reading group. Unless, of course, I'm
forced to by intense pleading from the group.
--Marty in Memphis
(http://pages.prodigy.com/TN/dctw04a/cormac1.html) 9/6/95
12:34AM CT
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Cormac McCarthy
My initial impression was of an
extraordinarily cinematic novel: the sense of space, color
and action, the necessity of filling in all internalized or
psychological details for yourself, all reminded me strongly
of the manner in which a movie imprints itself on the mind.
Dick Haggart
This book could be discussed paragraph by paragraph and
use up more words than the book itself.
Sherry Keller
This book was written with malice of forethought to be a disturbing one. I find it to be even more so as a result of the beautiful language in which it is rendered.
Steve Warbasse
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