FGBC: Attacked by Comanches
Here we'll take a look at Blood Meridian chapters 3 and 4. I'll admit, I read ahead, because it's getting harder to keep a slow pace as the story picks up steam. But we'll see how it goes.
The main gist of these chapters is the kid enlisting in with a company of army irregulars aka filibusters for some reason.. The company then goes on an ill-advised march into the desert to fight the Mexicans and is attacked by Indians.
It's good to see the advances in troop recruitment from then to now. From pulling soldiers out of trees to pulling them out of schools. And clearly it sucks to be traveling across the desert by horse, what with the wolves and the dying and all. I especially enjoyed the Capn White interview. The kid is scrappy.
But clearly the awesome is the two page one paragraph zombie Comanche attack. This is just brutal fucking crazy people slaughter. Horses screaming and the army getting run down and scalped by monguls "running about with a peculiar bandylegged trot like creatures driven to alien forms of locomotion" and so on with the sodomy.
This book is starting to remind me of a horribly bloody 'Huckleberry Finn' -- the constant change of scenery, various characters appearing and disappearing in the story. Moving west v. traveling down the Mississippi.
Unanswered Questions:
Road novel?
The kid vs Huckleberry Finn?
Can we go to 2 chapters a week?
Captain White: casual racist, moron or both?
The Mule is OK, right?
1 comments:
Some good lines in those chapters. The last line of Chapter three was something about how going to a bar is always better than drinking at the bar. I dunno, an old man said it.
I'm thinking old men are kind of a theme in this book, too. And after finally seeing No Country for Old Men (three times no less, thanks Internets), I'm even more sure of the fact that McCarthy likes the old/young contrast quite a bit.
I'm also on chapter 7, so two a week is fine for me.
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