Blood Meridian or Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy

[Paulclem]

"Which leads me to another narrative issue: The Kid disappears for a huge chunk of the novel. I think a lot of my discontent w the ending could have been alleviated w a clearer picture of the Kid's and Holden's relationship throughout the group's activities. But that's largely denied the reader.[/I]


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I wondered about the studied lack of characterisation. I initially wrote this:

He doesn't go into characterisation much does he? The environment of the desert is beautifully described, but the men become identified by their actions rather than the descriptions of them. None of them has any redeeming features - they are involved in rape, mutilation, fraud, murder and there is a serial killer in the group. It's interesting that McCarthy lets us associate with this group - you develop a familiarity with them despite the terrible things thay do as you are unable to identify with the minor characters/ victims to the same extent. It's almost as if by reading you become part of the group. Would you agree?

I would add that we are forced to regard them dispassionately. It's as if McCarthy can't allow us to develop the usual emotional attatchment to them. The Kid obviously comes from a poor background, but we have little opportunity to sympathise, and at the end of the novel, he is still a cold blooded killer. It keeps their crimes in perspective. We are not dealing with characters we can be allowed to sympathise with, and the writing forces us to regard them, as they regard everyone else.

[ashulman]

Honestly, I was a little put off by the extreme violence in the book. It didn't ring true. I read that the source McCarthy used was the memoir of one of the gang member's and he had exaggerated his experiences greatly. Then according to an earlier post on this thread, McCarthy further embellished the violence, making it a sort of exponential escalation of what really happened.

I certainly don't think the western expansion in North America was all singing cowboys and their faithful sidekick, the noble savage, but I don't think it was all marauding bands of homicidal psychopaths either.

Which is why I found ashulman's post above so valuable. It was an ah-hah moment for me, and I finally realized why so many people consider Blood Meridian a great book, and not just a slasher novel. (Yep, I can be a little dense at times.)

Thanks for the hat tip. It actually took me a couple of attempts before I got through the book. I wouldn't it read it as literally as some do. I wouldn't get bogged down in the "reality" of it. It's a novel, a story, and clearly and allegory. So we read it for the resonances it has and what it's making you think about.

BTW, I just finished Outer Dark which I HIGHLY recommend to anyone who enjoyed Blood Meridian. Also an excellent book and similar in tone and style.

[neilgee]

I read that the source McCarthy used was the memoir of one of the gang member's and he had exaggerated his experiences greatly. Then according to an earlier post on this thread, McCarthy further embellished the violence, making it a sort of exponential escalation of what really happened.

I had a similar complaint when reading the trilogy, he has a youngster in there who, with a pistol, could put a hole in a dime thrown into the air...which is just not realistic in terms of the accuracy of the guns they had available at that time. McCarthy must know that. He exaggerates in the trilogy I believe to contrast the pathetic death of the young sharpshooter later in the novel, and yet if I'm wrong and this is just a kink in McCarthy's genius I will forgive him for the way he is able to keep me glued to the page.

[neilgee]

I wondered about the studied lack of characterisation. I initially wrote this:

He doesn't go into characterisation much does he?

I would add that we are forced to regard them dispassionately. It's as if McCarthy can't allow us to develop the usual emotional attatchment to them. The Kid obviously comes from a poor background, but we have little opportunity to sympathise, and at the end of the novel, he is still a cold blooded killer. It keeps their crimes in perspective. We are not dealing with characters we can be allowed to sympathise with, and the writing forces us to regard them, as they regard everyone else.

One suggestion I think is feasible is that McCarthy expresses emotion through the landscape.

He writes more about the landscape the characters, but I've looked at the trilogy closely and it can be read that way that how the landscape is described reflects the characters emotions.

[russellb]

Firstly, I can give you and Charly Cormac a lot of people who are more discordant than war: Machiavelli, Richelieu, etc. And many actions that are far more discordant than war, one example of which is the Holocaust.
And I can give you a lot of people that were less discordant than war: Churchill, Lincolm, James and Dolley Madison, F D Roosvelt, Jimmy Carter, Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Bill Clinton, Obama, Bidden, Luther King, etc., etc., etc.
A great book? I agree. A greatly insane book that appeals to a very small percentage of greatly insane people.

i dont agree that the book would appeal to greatly insane people. They tend to prefer the sentimentality of ,say, Forrest Gump, something which is not well supplied by blood meridian. As for churchill, he wanted to blow up our chippie. We don't like him very much up here...

[WyattGwyon]

At first I found that clipped style of writing (McCarthy doesn't waste words) difficult, but as i went on I thought Mccarthy's economy had an extraordinary precision.

What you say is broadly true of his style. A notable exception, however, is Suttree, which some, including me, consider his best work. It has many dense descriptive passages in which economy is thrown to the wind, representing his furthest departure from the style of books like Blood Meridian.

[neilgee]

What you say is broadly true of his style. A notable exception, however, is Suttree, which some, including me, consider his best work. It has many dense descriptive passages in which economy is thrown to the wind, representing his furthest departure from the style of books like Blood Meridian.

Thanx Wyatt I'll look out for that one. I'm fascinated because I can't imagine McCarthy writing in any other style than the ecomomical style I described, he's so good at it! I must read this!

[Cioran]

And I think he's making a larger point about destruction and creation, probably the same thing Schumpeter's theory of creative destruction. This is the concept that still drives our economic lives, if the means are certainly more civilized, ie, we no longer consider it ok to clear land of a native population of millions by force. We still accept some amount of killing to secure our economic futures (see Iraq), but it's nowhere on the scale of the origination of the country. That's called progress, and realize that it's a very recent civilizing. The Vietnam War, which was justified as a vague threat to economic security (Communism will spread, markets will be nationalized, etc), killed 1-3 million Vietnamese. It's hard to imagine that happening today on that scale but who knows? I think McCarthy is reflecting this, and wrestling with the dilemma. It's fitting that the Judge finally gets the best of the Kid in California, the end of the line so to speak in terms of American expansion.

Right, I think this is a good way of putting it.

It is sobering to reflect (and one can easily track this down via Google) that the U.S. has been virtually continuously at war since its inception, at some level or other. And people forget entire major wars of massive death -- like our intervention in the Philippines around the turn of the 20th century.

But I think McCarthy was making a larger point beyond the United States, which was merely the setting. He says at one point that war was made for man, and man made for war, and man is its greatest practitioner. War and violence of every kind is our heritage, perhaps our biological heritage. And by war, we don't have to specifically mean shooting war. Economics is war. Politics is war. Even sex is war. We are the war species. And the Judge says something else: "The mystery is that there is no mystery." I take this, in the context, as a rejection of any kind of purgative appeal to the supernatural. You are born, you war, you die and you return to the nothingness whence you came. The condition of man. It was recognized by Schopenhauer who suggested we all greet one another as most unfortunate souls, and the realization gave rise to several responses like existentialism.

It does no good to appeal to the seeming peacefulness of so many people, and their love for one another. In America, our standard of living is predicated upon immense violence, suffering and exploitation imposed on others all over the world. All have blood on their hands. As all do in Blood Meridian.

[Cioran]

Thanx Wyatt I'll look out for that one. I'm fascinated because I can't imagine McCarthy writing in any other style than the ecomomical style I described, he's so good at it! I must read this!

I certainly would recommend it. I also believe Suttree is his greatest work, and at least partly autobiographical.

There are some darkly lyrical passages in Blood Meridian, but by the time of No Country for Old Men his style becomes so spare that it is almost painful. However these later works were set in the American Southwest. Suttree (and earlier works), were set in the South, the empire of Faulkner. And the Faulknerian influence shows, but McCarthy makes it his own.

There is nothing spare here. Just read the first few pages and you will be dizzy. A dense, pulsating, complex efflorescence of language like a thick entanglement of rhetorical kudzu. In this work he is at his most experimental and free with language, and it really is just an incredible book.

[Cioran]

From Suttree:

He woke with the undersides of his eyelids inflamed by the high sun’s hammering, looked up to a bland and chinablue sky traversed by lightwires. A big lemoncolored cat watched him from the top of a woodstove. He turned his head to see it better and it elongated itself like hot taffy down the side of the stove and vanished headfirst in the earth without a sound. Suttree lay with his hands palm up at his sides in an attitude of frailty beheld and the stink that fouled the air was he himself. He closed his eyes and moaned. A hot breeze was coming across the barren waste of burnt weeds and rubble like a whiff of battlesmoke. Some starlings had alighted on a wire overhead in perfect progression like a piece of knotted string fallen slantwise. Crooning, hooked wings. Foul yellow mutes came squeezing from under their faned tails. He sat up slowly, putting a hand over his eyes. The birds flew. His clothes cracked with a thin dry sound and shreds of baked vomit fell from him.

Suttree drinks a lot.

[ashulman]

By the way, we recently discussed Cormac McCarthy and Blood Meridian on our podcast - www.highandlowpodcast.blogspot.com
Thought maybe a few here might be interested. Its in the latter half of episode 43

[Paulclem]

Right, I think this is a good way of putting it.

It is sobering to reflect (and one can easily track this down via Google) that the U.S. has been virtually continuously at war since its inception, at some level or other. And people forget entire major wars of massive death -- like our intervention in the Philippines around the turn of the 20th century.

But I think McCarthy was making a larger point beyond the United States, which was merely the setting. He says at one point that war was made for man, and man made for war, and man is its greatest practitioner. War and violence of every kind is our heritage, perhaps our biological heritage. And by war, we don't have to specifically mean shooting war. Economics is war. Politics is war. Even sex is war. We are the war species. And the Judge says something else: "The mystery is that there is no mystery." I take this, in the context, as a rejection of any kind of purgative appeal to the supernatural. You are born, you war, you die and you return to the nothingness whence you came. The condition of man. It was recognized by Schopenhauer who suggested we all greet one another as most unfortunate souls, and the realization gave rise to several responses like existentialism.

It does no good to appeal to the seeming peacefulness of so many people, and their love for one another. In America, our standard of living is predicated upon immense violence, suffering and exploitation imposed on others all over the world. All have blood on their hands. As all do in Blood Meridian.

I think you're extrapolating the idea too far. I might go with the idea of capitalism being a kind of war - the band is motivated by money and this leads on to all the discord that happens around them - the rapes, killing of children and other innocents, and the innovations they make on their mission by using innocent scalps, (which was done by Joel Glanton and his gang. But these are not governmental people, nor even politically motivated. It's not about political power and war in my view, and would need some reference in the text to support it.

As for the peacefulness - this is implied rather than stated. The focus is rather grimly upon the gang, but the law wins with the hanging of the band members for example. Of course the Judge goes on to kill The Kid, but his prescence definately has a mystical aspect to it - it was also present in The Road - and I think again in McCarthy's view the law and God is implied. The Judge survives, but he doesn't win. He is a chancer who capitalises upon situations such as war.

[ashulman]

I think you're extrapolating the idea too far. I might go with the idea of capitalism being a kind of war - the band is motivated by money and this leads on to all the discord that happens around them - the rapes, killing of children and other innocents, and the innovations they make on their mission by using innocent scalps, (which was done by Joel Glanton and his gang. But these are not governmental people, nor even politically motivated. It's not about political power and war in my view, and would need some reference in the text to support it.

As for the peacefulness - this is implied rather than stated. The focus is rather grimly upon the gang, but the law wins with the hanging of the band members for example. Of course the Judge goes on to kill The Kid, but his prescence definately has a mystical aspect to it - it was also present in The Road - and I think again in McCarthy's view the law and God is implied. The Judge survives, but he doesn't win. He is a chancer who capitalises upon situations such as war.

I see many of McCarthy's landscapes, including this one, as essentially Godless. Justice isn't really a factor and is rarely doled out. But I think Cioran has a point about perpetual war. We have to remember the insignia on the Judge's gun- Et in Arcadia Ego; Even in Arcadia, I am There. This could mean that the gun is always there, or the Judge is always there, or both (which I favor). Arcadia refers to a kind of unspoiled wilderness, which the West represented.

[neilgee]

I certainly would recommend it. I also believe Suttree is his greatest work, and at least partly autobiographical.

There are some darkly lyrical passages in Blood Meridian, but by the time of No Country for Old Men his style becomes so spare that it is almost painful. However these later works were set in the American Southwest. Suttree (and earlier works), were set in the South, the empire of Faulkner. And the Faulknerian influence shows, but McCarthy makes it his own.

There is nothing spare here. Just read the first few pages and you will be dizzy. A dense, pulsating, complex efflorescence of language like a thick entanglement of rhetorical kudzu. In this work he is at his most experimental and free with language, and it really is just an incredible book.

I just read the first few pages of this (which I am now putting before Blood Meridian, so fascinated am I by the idea of a wordy McCarthy) and it is exactly as you describe...This, for example:

Beyond in the dark the river flows in a sluggard ooze toward southern seas, running down out of the rainflattened corn and petty crops and riverloam gardens of upcountry landkeepers, grating along like bonedust, afreight with the past, dreams dispersed in the water someway, nothing ever lost.

That's on page 2.

[Cioran]

I just read the first few pages of this (which I am now putting before Blood Meridian, so fascinated am I by the idea of a wordy McCarthy) and it is exactly as you describe...This, for example:

Beyond in the dark the river flows in a sluggard ooze toward southern seas, running down out of the rainflattened corn and petty crops and riverloam gardens of upcountry landkeepers, grating along like bonedust, afreight with the past, dreams dispersed in the water someway, nothing ever lost.

That's on page 2.

Isn't that lovely?

The whole book is like that, Faulkner as channeled by McCarthy. Luscious language, endlessly inventive and kudzu-like, efflorescent, hallucinatory, completely different from his later economical stuff.

Great stories, too, from the dregs. Just wait till you meet the watermelon mounter, who becomes Suttree's best friend in prison and beyond, and their madcap schemes. Which usually involve nothing more elaborate, in the end, then cadging a meal.