Agora Road Book Club: Blood Meridian Edition

[Junious]

If the judge was an immortal alchemist using virgin blood in ritual sacrifice to the gods of an alien race that conquered the earth a billion years ago, I would say yes, that is cosmic horror. But he is simply a destructive pedophile following his legal instinct to destroy the evidence wherever he goes and thus avoid trouble. If anything, it's a comment on how american justice is two tiered, and those with access to the tools and knowledge for manipulating the legal system can avoid legal troubles. Sociopathic joy is incredibly common. I'd put it at 1 in 20 based on my rather broad interaction with humanity. Deep suffering is also incredibly common. Show me a peaceful death and I will show you ten that died in miserable turmoil and fear. These things are not cosmic horror. Cosmic horror is a high bar -- it requires the presence of cosmic scale forces over deep space and deep time in my opinion. Star Trek's Q is more a cosmic horror than the judge in my opinion.

 

[zalaz alaza]

If the judge was an immortal alchemist using virgin blood in ritual sacrifice to the gods of an alien race that conquered the earth a billion years ago, I would say yes, that is cosmic horror. But he is simply a destructive pedophile following his legal instinct to destroy the evidence wherever he goes and thus avoid trouble. If anything, it's a comment on how american justice is two tiered, and those with access to the tools and knowledge for manipulating the legal system can avoid legal troubles. Sociopathic joy is incredibly common. I'd put it at 1 in 20 based on my rather broad interaction with humanity. Deep suffering is also incredibly common. Show me a peaceful death and I will show you ten that died in miserable turmoil and fear. These things are not cosmic horror. Cosmic horror is a high bar -- it requires the presence of cosmic scale forces over deep space and deep time in my opinion. Star Trek's Q is more a cosmic horror than the judge in my opinion.

Hm , I really disagree which is what my original thought was about. There is no mention of universal deep treacheries in blood meridian and yet the horrors of Lovecraft feel like child's play compared to the dread I get from reading BM. That's sort of my initial statement I guess. Perhaps it doesn't to you but even on this read my urge.to simply put the book(blood meridian) down and walk away from it is present. It took me years to get through it the first time

 

[Junious]

Hm , I really disagree which is what my original thought was about. There is no mention of universal deep treacheries in blood meridian and yet the horrors of Lovecraft feel like child's play compared to the dread I get from reading BM. That's sort of my initial statement I guess. Perhaps it doesn't to you but even on this read my urge.to simply put the book(blood meridian) down and walk away from it is present. It took me years to get through it the first time

I had the opposite experience. I couldn't put blood meridian down once I got into it, but (like the road) it left me feeling dirty, like the tale was better off not known to me. I just believe blood meridian is focused more on conradian horrors than lovecraftian horrors, because what makes them horrible is that they are events that are very much based in reality and are done by fellow humans, rather than aliens and gods.

 

[remember_summer_days]

Great convo between you two. I feel like Blood Meridian's horror is cosmic in how the novel philosophizes about evil and the acts of evil that are committed as being part of divination or part of the grand scheme of things of a seemingly evil creator. I have read very little Lovecraft, but I got the idea that what manifests the most evil is not ignorance but rather the desire too know to much, which leads characters to discover things they were better not knowing. The Judge is for sure someone who relates his acts of evil to knowing, and thus dominating, things, though unlike the sense I get from Lovecraft, there's no mystery in what the Judge does, at least according to his own words. 'The mystery is that there's no mystery'

 

[remember_summer_days]

I'll also ask this, what do you guys think it's up with Glanton and dogs? Glanton next to his dog, and then abusing his dog, is a common image through the novel, though I've only noticed it until this reading.

 

[Deleted member 4436]

In terms of the Lovecraft comparison with the Judge, I'm inclined to agree that they have quite a few similarities. For me, the Judge feels like an 'invincible enemy'. It's a similar archetype to the works of Lovecraft, to the Party from 1984, or otherwise Beatrice from Umineko. While reading something, I usually try to philosophically combat these types of opponents.

I've finished the book now (still have yet to go through the essays and videos though), so everything else in this post will contain spoilers for what I've mentioned thus far.

Spoiler: spoilers for BM, 1984, Umineko

These antagonists represented ideas which could not seem to be countered by any means I could think up:

• For every reason I produced which could explain some sort of weakness in the system of the Party, a direct address to counter it was included at some point during the book; if not, it at least always felt like the proponents of their philosophy could come up with some excuse in their defense.
• The concept of a "Lovecraftian horror" --something which I may add seems exaggerated after actually reading some of his works-- was also 'unbeatable' since you're not supposed to know all of the details which encompass them.
• Beatrice, too, seemed untouchable, since she always presented the possibility that any weakness or flaw she seemed to have was just due to her acting.

And the Judge of this story happens to have all of these traits to some degree. He may at some points appear as just a very competent human, while at other times he seems to be a completely invincible supernatural force, defended both physically and logically by his beliefs. As he continued to appear more and more supernatural as the plot progressed, the possibility that all of the occasional human faults he displayed were just manipulation on his part increased, as well.

All of these opponents felt 'invincible' to me, in that I couldn't find some sort of rhetoric which would be able to win against the ideas which they represented. Usually, however, an author which presents these things eventually reveals an opening which could be used to create a line of reasoning which could overturn the ideas which these opponents represented. In 1984, the appendix after the main story reveals that Big Brother eventually collapsed. Beatrice does eventually show just how frail she is. Lovecraftian horrors aren't as incomprehensible once you realize that their authors are all themselves human, thus any dimensions which may apply to them are, too, of the human mind.

The Judge, however, never gets an explicit death. If anything, the book ends with his victory celebration. Of course, the epilogue can serve as some way of combatting him, since you can read its descriptions as being metaphors of a typewriter, which returns to the idea of the book itself serving as a witness to his crimes, and that the reader has some weapon against the idea of the extinction of the truth. Furthermore, there is one other point in the main story itself where the Judge is implied to be "killable" in some way, and that's when he and the Kid encounter each other in the desert after Glanton dies. There is quite a bit I would like to discuss about the implications of this, though I will wait until some more people finish the book. In any case, that particular part is what I've been thinking most about after finishing it, and I would like to hear others thoughts on what McCarthy meant by that.

 

[Junious]

I want to tap n @Jade to back me up on this. I don't think Lovecraft's monsters are invincible. In "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward", the necromancer and his cronies are defeated by a canny psychiatrist. In "At the mountains of madness" the elder aliens that attacked and dissected the human base are killed by a shoggoth or the aliens own creation, which the remaining humans are able to escape. Randolph Carter gets one on Yog-Shothoth, the god of chaos at the end of the universe hinted at in the necronomicon, simply by being an expert on dream math and riding back to earth on a moonbeam. In "The Shunned House" and "Dreams in the witch house" the monsters are dispatched by concerned townspeople. Randolph Carter kills the fucking dark priest that men fear to speak the name of at the monastery of Leng in "Dream quest of Unknown Kadath" for cripes sake! The Lovecraftian horror is truly encompassed in the undescribed shoggoth at the bottom of the pit in "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward". It is more a literary tool than actual source of dread. Lovecraft goes "I'd like to describe this beast, but it's simply too terrible to even describe" and moves on, after spending a paragraph belaboring the architecture of a nearby house. I think people have a very different idea of what is in Lovecraft's books than is actually there. McCarthy describes his horrors in too much detail, to the point of overkill. A bunch of babies impaled on a tree... whatever, moving on. I read a lot of Lovecraft and then read this book and I just gotta say you guys are grasping at strands but not convincing me at all that there is any connection other than Lovecraft and McCarty both wrote about bad, evil things.

 

[Jade]

I want to tap n @Jade to back me up on this. I don't think Lovecraft's monsters are invincible. In "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward", the necromancer and his cronies are defeated by a canny psychiatrist. In "At the mountains of madness" the elder aliens that attacked and dissected the human base are killed by a shoggoth or the aliens own creation, which the remaining humans are able to escape. Randolph Carter gets one on Yog-Shothoth, the god of chaos at the end of the universe hinted at in the necronomicon, simply by being an expert on dream math and riding back to earth on a moonbeam. In "The Shunned House" and "Dreams in the witch house" the monsters are dispatched by concerned townspeople. Randolph Carter kills the fucking dark priest that men fear to speak the name of at the monastery of Leng in "Dream quest of Unknown Kadath" for cripes sake! The Lovecraftian horror is truly encompassed in the undescribed shoggoth at the bottom of the pit in "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward". It is more a literary tool than actual source of dread. Lovecraft goes "I'd like to describe this beast, but it's simply too terrible to even describe" and moves on, after spending a paragraph belaboring the architecture of a nearby house. I think people have a very different idea of what is in Lovecraft's books than is actually there. McCarthy describes his horrors in too much detail, to the point of overkill. A bunch of babies impaled on a tree... whatever, moving on. I read a lot of Lovecraft and then read this book and I just gotta say you guys are grasping at strands but not convincing me at all that there is any connection other than Lovecraft and McCarty both wrote about bad, evil things.

Yeah, Lovecraft's monsters are absolutely not invincible. They are simply beings so immensely powerful and alien compared to Man, that they are beyond the ability of Man to understand or even comprehend in Man's current form. In fact most of the beings that are characterized as "invincible" - like the Great Old Ones - are actually extremely weak within the true scope of the mythos. It is a deep criticism of the underlying notion that Man is an exceptionally superior being and that through the use of mathematics, philosophy, and clever machines, he has come to dominate the Earth and will one day dominate the stars, when in reality Man is not special or superior in any way from a cosmological standpoint. The really big gods like Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth are closer to being invincible, since they are beings which exist beyond even the concept of death and immortality, existence and non-existence, and beyond even perspective. In "Through the Gates of the Silver Key", Yog-Sothoth explains to Randolph Carter that the beings in the Ultimate Void, which exists beyond all possible dimensionality and dualism, are able to view existence and non-existence from any perspective they want, for perspective is to them the merest illusion. But again, they're so alien it's difficult to really say whether they can be destroyed in any traditional sense or not.

If you want a rudimentary understanding of how massive Lovecraft's universe is, I recommend this video on his cosmology. Mankind are mere ants to the Great Old Ones, but the Great Old Ones are less than even bacteria to the true gods.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urIHAegZyYM

 

[zalaz alaza]

I'm preparing a response to this I just need time to research to look for the quotes I know exist in Lovecrafts works, and write it up. In the meantime I think there is a bit of miscommunication in regards to the way we are each using and interpreting the word "cosmic"

 

[№56]

here are some thoughts in relation to the chat this morning from me and @№56 . thought it could make for interesting convo
View attachment 43925

I said I'd elaborate on this, so here goes. Bear in mind that I've only read up to chapter 14.
To me it's impossible to read the judge as anything other than a supernatural force or allegory of some kind. He never does anything that defies the laws of physics but everything about the way he's described in the book is so deliberately uncanny that saying he's just a really evil man seems to be missing the point. McCarthy wrote him that way for a reason.
The reason the judge is so uncanny has something to do with how comfortable and calm he always seems, even when the gang is slaughtering innocents or fleeing for their lives. (This is why I don't like most of the Blood Meridian fanart I've seen - they always draw the judge with a crazy Joker smile that doesn't fit this aspect of his character.) He's completely at home in the violent dream-world BM is set in - he always seems to know what to do next and things always seem to go his way, like some kind of evil Taoist. Glanton is also at home in the world of BM but he's not comfortable with it. His fits of insanity and terror and the fact that he's consistently shown participating in the gang's acts of violence (the judge always seems to fade into the background in those parts) make him a much more "human" character than the judge, despite being a total monster. Glanton is a man who's been reduced to killing to survive and is not totally in control of his actions - "a wheelless chariot, lost on a dark river." The judge is never lost (literally, he's shown to be an expert navigator) and while he isn't in complete control of his surroundings, he accepts and fits into them to an extent that seems impossible for an ordinary human. Suddenly appearing in the middle of the desert, effortlessly making gunpowder from raw materials, killing a horse with a single blow from a rock most men couldn't lift, etc. The way McCarthy places the two characters side-by-side seems to me like a clear signal that we're not supposed to read the judge as an ordinary man.
Initially I wanted to say that the judge was supposed to be the land itself given human form - a perversion of the old "spirit of the frontier" representing a (possibly imaginary, projected onto the real) region where violence is the only law - but after reading the "suzerain" scene and the burning bush scene I don't think that's the case. He claims the entire earth but admits that it is covered in "pockets of autonomous life" that haven't been written into his notebook yet, and we see him in the process of filling this notebook out. It isn't complete. This suggests that the judge is not the ultimate power in the universe of BM, and the burning bush scene - where the kid is separated from the gang, engages in acts of mercy instead of violence, ascends to heaven (the mountains), and then encounters a burning bush surrounded by wild animals at peace with one another - seems to back it up. There's supposed to be something else out there, something more powerful than the judge that the kid comes in contact with and that later allows him to say that he isn't afraid of the judge. The fact that the episode is built around a Christian image made me want to instantly turn the judge into a satanic/demiurgic "lord of the world" whose existence is tolerated by a higher divine power, but that puts me up against the limits of my knowledge and I feel like I should actually finish the book before going any further in that direction. I think the story about the harnessmaker the judge tells is also supposed to be a retelling of the Christ story in some way, but I'm not positive about the details.
I guess my point here is that Blood Meridian clearly has a strong religious/metaphysical element, but I don't think this is enough to make it "cosmic horror." All the horrific stuff happens on a mundane level and is presided over by a supernatural figure (in human form) that is tied to the earth itself, not the heavens. Whenever McCarthy describes the human world it's ugly and barbaric, but whenever he describes the natural or non-human world it's incredibly beautiful. The further the narration gets from the material facts of ordinary life (by 19th century frontier standards), the less horrific it becomes. To me this seems like the exact opposite of "cosmic horror" - the cosmos is the least horrific thing in the book.

 

[Deleted member 4436]

I said I'd elaborate on this, so here goes. Bear in mind that I've only read up to chapter 14.
To me it's impossible to read the judge as anything other than a supernatural force or allegory of some kind. He never does anything that defies the laws of physics but everything about the way he's described in the book is so deliberately uncanny that saying he's just a really evil man seems to be missing the point. McCarthy wrote him that way for a reason.
The reason the judge is so uncanny has something to do with how comfortable and calm he always seems, even when the gang is slaughtering innocents or fleeing for their lives. (This is why I don't like most of the Blood Meridian fanart I've seen - they always draw the judge with a crazy Joker smile that doesn't fit this aspect of his character.) He's completely at home in the violent dream-world BM is set in - he always seems to know what to do next and things always seem to go his way, like some kind of evil Taoist. Glanton is also at home in the world of BM but he's not comfortable with it. His fits of insanity and terror and the fact that he's consistently shown participating in the gang's acts of violence (the judge always seems to fade into the background in those parts) make him a much more "human" character than the judge, despite being a total monster. Glanton is a man who's been reduced to killing to survive and is not totally in control of his actions - "a wheelless chariot, lost on a dark river." The judge is never lost (literally, he's shown to be an expert navigator) and while he isn't in complete control of his surroundings, he accepts and fits into them to an extent that seems impossible for an ordinary human. Suddenly appearing in the middle of the desert, effortlessly making gunpowder from raw materials, killing a horse with a single blow from a rock most men couldn't lift, etc. The way McCarthy places the two characters side-by-side seems to me like a clear signal that we're not supposed to read the judge as an ordinary man.
Initially I wanted to say that the judge was supposed to be the land itself given human form - a perversion of the old "spirit of the frontier" representing a (possibly imaginary, projected onto the real) region where violence is the only law - but after reading the "suzerain" scene and the burning bush scene I don't think that's the case. He claims the entire earth but admits that it is covered in "pockets of autonomous life" that haven't been written into his notebook yet, and we see him in the process of filling this notebook out. It isn't complete. This suggests that the judge is not the ultimate power in the universe of BM, and the burning bush scene - where the kid is separated from the gang, engages in acts of mercy instead of violence, ascends to heaven (the mountains), and then encounters a burning bush surrounded by wild animals at peace with one another - seems to back it up. There's supposed to be something else out there, something more powerful than the judge that the kid comes in contact with and that later allows him to say that he isn't afraid of the judge. The fact that the episode is built around a Christian image made me want to instantly turn the judge into a satanic/demiurgic "lord of the world" whose existence is tolerated by a higher divine power, but that puts me up against the limits of my knowledge and I feel like I should actually finish the book before going any further in that direction. I think the story about the harnessmaker the judge tells is also supposed to be a retelling of the Christ story in some way, but I'm not positive about the details.
I guess my point here is that Blood Meridian clearly has a strong religious/metaphysical element, but I don't think this is enough to make it "cosmic horror." All the horrific stuff happens on a mundane level and is presided over by a supernatural figure (in human form) that is tied to the earth itself, not the heavens. Whenever McCarthy describes the human world it's ugly and barbaric, but whenever he describes the natural or non-human world it's incredibly beautiful. The further the narration gets from the material facts of ordinary life (by 19th century frontier standards), the less horrific it becomes. To me this seems like the exact opposite of "cosmic horror" - the cosmos is the least horrific thing in the book.

This is exactly what I've been thinking, as well.
The Judge, as the book continues, begins to shape more and more into some sort of evil, immortal wizard-cowboy, though for a book that prides itself on drawing from many historical elements, I find it more likely that he's strictly supposed to be a metaphor for some concept.
What ever that concept is, it usually appears to be invulnerable and all-knowing, though the Judge does occasionally suggest otherwise.

Spoiler: Chapters 20 and 21

If the Judge was truly omniscient, then he wouldn't have any need to record things as he does in the first place. Furthermore, he is sometimes shown be caught off-guard or otherwise disappointed by how the Kid acts. According to the Judge himself, he raised and treated him like his son, though if his methods were perfect, then the Kid would never have defied him. And, still most prevalent to me, the thing which occurs twice (I said it was only once previously, though now I remember that it was actually two times which were relatively close together) was during chapters 20 and 21 when the expriest directly tells the Kid that he has the opportunity to kill the Judge. He fails, of course. But if McCarthy really just wanted to show the Judge as being unkillable, he could have written the Kid to fire at the Judge, but either miss, or not deliver a fatal wound. Instead, the Kid never actually shoots him during these two occasions, which leaves the possibility open that if he did, then the Judge would have died; this latter scenario is the one which I find to more likely be the case, and the one which I think McCarthy was implying would have occured.

But what does that mean? If the Judge is an allegory for some other force, why is he vulnerable during these two moments and never again? What was so special about that moment, with just the Kid and Tobin facing down the Judge, stranded in the desert, which aroused the opportunity for whatever the Judge is supposed to be to "die"? Furthermore, why does it occur only then, and not once again at any point before or after?

Since Blood Meridian has proven itself to be a much deeper book than what we've read previously, I want to believe that McCarthy intentionally included that possibility in the book, and that it has some greater meaning behind it. I can't piece that significance together myself, and would like to hear others' thoughts on what it means.

In any case, since I still haven't watched the analysis videos, I'm not sure if this is common knowledge to others ITT, but I found this interesting note while browsing /lit/:

(sorry for low quality btw)

 

[Deleted member 4436]

View attachment 44228

Transcribed, in case the image is too small:

336 pounds (weight of The Judge) is also the number of pages in the first edition. All the numbered pages that add up to 336-337 are also mirror images. The Judge's hat is put together with two symmetrical hats such that "the joinery scarcely did show". On the middle page of the novel (168-169) the Gang is attended to by the Governor's 'Chamberlain'.
This is the life history of Chamberlain:
>In 1844, at age 15, Chamberlain left home without permission to go to Illinois. Two years later he joined to 2nd Illinois Volunteer Regiment and headed to Texas to participate in the Mexican-American War. In San Antonio, Chamberlain joined to regular army and became part of the 1st U.S. Dragoons. He fought at the Battle of Buena Vista in February 1847 as well as several other operations in Mexico. 1849, he was declared a deserter and by 1854 he had returned home to Boston to raise a family.
The Kid is modelled after Samuel. With the literary trick being that BM presents the events from an Omniscient 3rd person perspective as opposed to the subjective accounts in "My Confessions".
Except, does it?
The Kid (Chamberlain) is deliberately thrown on the periphery of narrative spotlight for a large majority of the novel in an act of subversion of Chamberlain's memoir. The narrator shares diction, an interest in geology, flora, and philosophical ramblings with The Judge, who also dominates the portions where The Kid is in the background. The real Judge is given very little space in Chamberlain's memoir, an inverted dynamic with its fictional equivalent. Judge is also large, with small hands, while The Kid is... well a kid with large hands.
The Judge is also PALE, described repeatedly as such and a constant connection to the Moon (luna) is drawn with him. He also steps through FIRE as if "it was native to his element". His character arc follows an ascension from historical person in the beginning to an almost supernatural entity in the middle and finally to mythic legend by the end where he shows up in many stories populating the imagination of the people. The arc is subtly but at places explicitly metafictional; His stepping into metaphorical fictional life is maybe why he proclaims that he will never die. A wink at the reader, who in the very first line of the book is asked "to see the child" (but by whom?)



The Samuel Chamberlain in question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Chamberlain

 

[lain is here]

It looks like the conversation's kind of steered to the topic of what/who the Judge is, in which case this video offers an interesting perspective on that:


View: https://youtu.be/FLJW5FSi2OE


The notion of the Judge being a djinn has some merit to it, although ultimately I would have to agree with the top comment of the video, "Any attempt to define the judge is a reduction of what the judge is."

 

[remember_summer_days]

Very interesting points about the character of the Judge, he's for sure one of the great characters of american literature. Regardless if he's supossed to be a literal devil/demiurge or not, his presence in the novel seems to point towards something supernatural about him, The Judge is not quite human but as others have pointed out, he's far away from having the power level of a deity. And there's a severe nietzchan aspect to his character. His view on what truth and reason are is really will-to-power inspired, 'reason' and 'knowledge' are only tools to impose your will upon the world. There's also Holden's quote about how morality is just a tool the weak and disenfranchised use. And compare this description about THE JUDGE against Zarathustra:

The Judge:

'His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the Judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.'

'Zarathustra the dancer, Zarathustra the light one who waves with his wings, the flightworthy, waving to all birds, worthy and ready, a blissful lightweight . . . it is better to be foolish with happiness than foolish with unhappiness, better to dance ponderously than to walk lamely.'

 

[remember_summer_days]

Transcribed, in case the image is too small:

336 pounds (weight of The Judge) is also the number of pages in the first edition. All the numbered pages that add up to 336-337 are also mirror images. The Judge's hat is put together with two symmetrical hats such that "the joinery scarcely did show". On the middle page of the novel (168-169) the Gang is attended to by the Governor's 'Chamberlain'.
This is the life history of Chamberlain:
>In 1844, at age 15, Chamberlain left home without permission to go to Illinois. Two years later he joined to 2nd Illinois Volunteer Regiment and headed to Texas to participate in the Mexican-American War. In San Antonio, Chamberlain joined to regular army and became part of the 1st U.S. Dragoons. He fought at the Battle of Buena Vista in February 1847 as well as several other operations in Mexico. 1849, he was declared a deserter and by 1854 he had returned home to Boston to raise a family.
The Kid is modelled after Samuel. With the literary trick being that BM presents the events from an Omniscient 3rd person perspective as opposed to the subjective accounts in "My Confessions".
Except, does it?
The Kid (Chamberlain) is deliberately thrown on the periphery of narrative spotlight for a large majority of the novel in an act of subversion of Chamberlain's memoir. The narrator shares diction, an interest in geology, flora, and philosophical ramblings with The Judge, who also dominates the portions where The Kid is in the background. The real Judge is given very little space in Chamberlain's memoir, an inverted dynamic with its fictional equivalent. Judge is also large, with small hands, while The Kid is... well a kid with large hands.
The Judge is also PALE, described repeatedly as such and a constant connection to the Moon (luna) is drawn with him. He also steps through FIRE as if "it was native to his element". His character arc follows an ascension from historical person in the beginning to an almost supernatural entity in the middle and finally to mythic legend by the end where he shows up in many stories populating the imagination of the people. The arc is subtly but at places explicitly metafictional; His stepping into metaphorical fictional life is maybe why he proclaims that he will never die. A wink at the reader, who in the very first line of the book is asked "to see the child" (but by whom?)



The Samuel Chamberlain in question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Chamberlain

I guess this will steer the discussion towards the ending but... I think the Judge is very likely doneso at the end of the novel. To quote THE JUDGE himself.

´The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day. He loves games? Let him play for stakes. This you see here, these ruins wondered at by tribes of savages, do you not think that this will be again? Aye. And again. With other people, with other sons.´

It's surprising how many people miss this quote, or just don't seem to bring it up. Like I missed it the first time too, I only noticed how important it was once a video pointed it out xD, but heck, it's even in the title. Blood Meridian or the evening redness of the west. Books could probably be written about the correct interpretation of Blood Meridian's cryptic ending, especially the epilogue. We should talk about the epilogue at some point. But at least for the Judge, It seems to me like the novel is pointing at his end on that final dance.

Honestly, that /lit/ post seems like a bit of a stretch, almost like a Game Theory video. Mccarthy also uses erudite diction all over his earlier novels, it's kinda silly to think that's evidence for the Judge being some sort of meta commentary. But to be honest, I still don't get what that 4chan paragraph is getting at. Is it implying the Judge is narrating Blood Meridian? I'm probably lost lol

Though I think Mccarthy is definitely postmodern adjacent, thankfully his novels aren't gay. I think his border trilogy is a better example of Mccarthy being meta, the border trilogy also expands a lot on the theme of witnessing. But besides the deconstruction of language and knowledge that Blood Meridian plays around with, I don't see many other postmodern themes that novel specifically.

 

[vale-aroma]

I notice over and over, that no one ever dies in Blood Meridian. There's no sorrow, there's no humanity. No one feels pain even. The violence is so stark, because the violence is spoken of like they're digging holes in the Earth. It's less so violence as we understand it, as it is like writing. They're just modifying the body, changing it, removing from it, adding to it, making marks upon it. We think about the Judge as Demiurge conversation - is this the thematic thrust? I think of the symbolism of the epilogue (not a spoiler since it's completely unrelated to the plot - I recommend you go read it). I always read that as marking out property lines, putting up fences. This is the demiurge's creation, violence upon creation to write it. It's the bloody work of language, like scrimshaw into the Earth & its people.

 

[№56]

Finished the book on Thanksgiving. The ending was fantastic and also really sad in a way that was hard to describe.

I'll also ask this, what do you guys think it's up with Glanton and dogs? Glanton next to his dog, and then abusing his dog, is a common image through the novel, though I've only noticed it until this reading.

This is a great point, and I kept thinking about it as I was reading. Glanton is definitely supposed to be a dog-like character in the same way that the kid is child-like ("see the child"). Dogs and children keep showing up in the novel. They're often seen side by side, like the boy selling puppies or the children that watch the kid when he's in the Indian camp. We see the judge commit acts of violence against both dogs and children in a way that parallels how he exerts control over both Glanton and the kid. It might be a stretch, but I think the final scene with the dancing bear and the little girl continues this metaphor.

But at least for the Judge, It seems to me like the novel is pointing at his end on that final dance.

The final scene of the book (1878) takes place almost exactly between the end of the civil war (1865) and the official closing of the frontier (1890), the exact same period of time that's generally used to represent "the death of the wild west." It makes perfect sense for the judge's last dance to take place at the same time the most violent period of American history is drawing to a close. He himself acknowledges it with his speech about war becoming dishonored. At the same time, I don't think the ending is supposed to represent the defeat or disappearance of violence (whatever else the judge might be, he's clearly related to violence) from North America. The epilogue, whatever it means, seems to suggest that the patterns of human behaviour shown in the novel will continue to go on.

Going back to the very first post about possible film adaptations, my vote would be for the Coen brothers. I've only seen their adaptation of No Country for Old Men and I can't compare it to the book, but the dialogue and pacing in that film have the exact same rhythm that Blood Meridian does. Javier Bardem would have been a great choice to play the judge if he hadn't been cast as Anton Chigurh first. I wouldn't trust Scorsese or Ridley Scott with the book, definitely not James Franco. Get Godspeed You! Black Emperor to do the music, if there is music.

Looking forward to Brave New World. It's going to be the third book we've read that's a description of hell on earth, but I don't mind.

 

[Junious]

Is brave new world next? I thought it was ana karenina?

 

[manpaint]

I have not read Blood Meridian, but I did this dream:

==2022-11-22==
Note: I haven't read Blood Meridian.

I dreamed that I was looking to buy the book Blood Meridian. I only managed to find some weird
edition of the book that told the story through the use of modern internet memes. I tried
to understand the story but gave up. After searching more, I found something slightly better:
a manga adaptation of the book reimagined with Naruto characters. I could actually follow
the story in this version and all panels were very detailed. The story of "Blood Meridian"
is as follow:

In the world of Naruto, people are sometimes born with cat ears because reasons. People
with car ears are looked down as they are some sort of demonic symbol. Naruto as no
friend and his hate for his village grow everyday. One day, people organize a birthday
party for it, but it only cause him to have a panic attack. People start to call Naruto
"ungrateful" which makes his hate grow stronger. One day he had enough and decide to
leave the village to wonder the desert. After a few days of travel he meets Garaa,
another person with cat ears. Naruto heard about it, legends say that he has a special
kind of blood that grant him powers. He is called a "Blood Meridian". Upon meeting him,
Naruto ask him how to become one.

While doing something completely unrelated, I bumped into the author of the book.
Upon learning that those alternate versions existed, he loose faith in humanity.

Some of my dreams are quite something.

On a more serious note, I wanted to read Blood Meridian but life got in the way sadly. Might try to re-read Brave New World with you guys if reality allows it.

 

[remember_summer_days]

Karenina is maybe after BNW, but yeah probably Karenina, I'm just a bit worried about how hard it will be for us to get through it lmao. Pirate has been busy lately, but I should talk to him about what we talked about (forgive my syntaxis lmao) creating a forum section for literature, there we could have a masterpost with the list of upcoming books.

But for now.

Brave New World

Anna Karenina.

Then idk, probably something way shorter. I was thinking Falling Man by Don Dellilo or maybe Flannery O'connor short stories, but as always, suggestions are welcome.

We're also supposed to try our hand at VN's at some point, Narcissu would be the first one, but I'm not sure how soon that will be.