Comments on: Booklog: Blood Meridian

By: Jesse

Jesse — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 05:18:37 +0000

At Montezuma:

I share your interest in the novel, which you have stated well enough for me not to go into great detail. While I could argue the internal plot/character/theme points all day, what distinguishes McCarthy’s novel is his equivocal use of narration and authorship. Absent from the novel is any kind of reflexive “omniscience” present in so many other modern novels, or the subjective romanticism so prevalent in literature. Even when McCarthy draws attention to his own narration, it is doubled or tripled in meaning and usually he only acts with an ironic kind of agency. Check out John Sepich’s analysis of the book. In my opinion, it’s the most comprehensive–which is saying a lot about a book for which comprehensive analysis is repelled by the book itself.

By: Montezuma

Montezuma — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 04:24:37 +0000

Wow glad to find someone who tries to read between the lines of this phenomenal book and sees many different interpretations. I definitely agree with it’s “assault on meaning”, leaving it up to the reader to find it out themselves, just as in real life.
Mine?…The judge is a devourer of souls, even a demon incarnate, picking up pieces of history as they ride through the desert, recording it in his ledger as a means for him to retain it as knowledge and then most of the time destroying the evidence, erasing it from the history of the world. This is what separates him from the others, for he wishes to totally dominate everyone and everything, to become “suzerain” of the world.
The ending is the perfect grand finale to such a gory, violent time in America, where for so long the westward expansion was described as a romanticized era. I tend to agree with McCarthy’s view, that it was chaos and a terribly violent chapter, and the violence that lives in man’s nature, from the beginning of time to the present, might always be there below the surface, hand in hand.
The demise of the kid and the way (or lack of) it is shown leaves the reader open to any possibility. Since we have traveled with the kid on his oddyssey, many graphic and heinous crimes are witnessed, and reactions to these crimes by the characters is almost non-existent. With this, the reader comes to expect this pattern. What the reader does not expect is the last few pages of the novel, where the kid disappears from the pages entirely, and the judge is last seen dancing gleefully. This can only be attributed to the judge finally devouring the last humane piece of the kid’s soul that he speaks of, for the kid was the only one who ‘betrayed’ the gang by retaining a shred of humanity. McCarthy leaves it up to the reader to fill in the blanks, in other words, whatever the worst possible thing the reader can think of happening to someone, happens to the kid. Raped? Killed? Both raped and killed? The end for the kid is too awful to speak of, and it isn’t, we are only left with a couple strangers walking in on the aftermath and being completely shocked by it, the first real instance of a reaction to any of the violence in the novel. And thus, as the judge did by devouring so much historical evidence as they ride across the southwest throughout the book and they disappear from the earth, so does the kid. The reader is left to react whatever way they will at this horror, and hopefully, they wish to speak out against such atrocities, so many of which fill our newspapers today. This is an unbelievable masterpiece. I will read it many more times. What are other people’s thoughts?

By: Jesse

Jesse — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 04:34:09 +0000

Excellent commentary–thanks for sharing! I’ve read quite a few of McCarthy’s novels, and have even done some work on them. No one could doubt the incomparable depth of his work among other contemporaries, that much is certain. Once you read a few of his works, though, the power begins to feel insulating. That’s turning lemonade back into lemons of course, but do you have any other suggestions for contemporary Americans works that may fall into a similar vein as McCarthy, and with which he can be properly compared? I read a Woods piece citing Raymond Carver as a possibility, but I’ve yet to look into any of Carver’s stuff. But without committing the fallacy of thinking that all literature is derivative, there must be something out there that simply isn’t discussed or known in popular discourse. Otherwise the guy is just that unique and we’re stuck digging Heidegger or Derrida out of the poetic muck, which is just no fun! Thanks again.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 10:12:14 +0000

Oh go on, I think that anyone who reads The Road needs to talk about it.

By: ted

ted — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 22:04:54 +0000

LK, I finally read The Road last week (what a Christmas present!) and liked it even better than Blood Meridian. Whether I’ll get around to reviewing it…

By: LK

LK — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 00:21:00 +0000

Great review! I haven’t dared touch The Road yet, have you?

By: dailyfacts

dailyfacts — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 20:49:15 +0000

Oh..i love those days when you just don’t have anything better to do than to search for random blogs trying to find something interesting to read. And i’m always lucky, today i found your blog and it brightened up my day to the MAX,
looking forward to coming back for an evening read

By: Louise Lewis

Louise Lewis — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 16:02:25 +0000

Hi Ted!
A Google Search on ‘meaning of life’ served up your words on ‘Blood Meridian’. I just spent a week in S. Dakota and it was a great reminder of the contrast between reality and what history/man and ‘hollywood’ has written.

From you review, I look forward to reading the book to hear more of the Judge’s thoughts (and will try to keep an open mind.) More so, I want to peel back a few layers to delve into the whole ‘meaning’ debate…one I live with every day.

Thank you!
Louise
Author, “No Experts Needed. The Meaning of Life According to You!”