FGBC: The fuck is a Toadvine?
Here we are, first chapter of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. First thing I noticed was the dialogue -- or lack there of. Eventually I realized that just because there are no quotation marks it doesn't mean the characters aren't talking to each other. The more you know.
Night of your birth. Thirty-three. The Leonids they were called. God how the stars did fall. I looked for blackness, holes in the heavens. The Dipper stove.
The chapter starts by introducing us to the main character, the protagonist if you will, known only as the kid. We get a little backstory, typical American tale of woe: Born in Tennessee under a famous meteor shower, Mother died in childbirth, Father never said a word about her. Shot twice on a riverboat, so he sits down. Eventually he makes his way to Nacogdoches, Texas, which is where most of the action takes place in Chapter 1.
In Nacogdoches, the kid slips into a revival tent, which is packed with smelly folks trying to avoid the rain. Here we meet the judge, a giant man who accuses the preacher of being a fraudulent goat-fucker, and the crowd presumably kills him. Later it turns out the judge didn't even know the preacher, and everyone laughs. I like to think of the judge as a white, hairless Shaquille O'Neal.
Later the kid decides to fight some character because they don't want to step in the mud (cause it has been raining for more than 2 weeks). Then he gets knocked out and when he wakes up he helps Toadvine smoke some guy out of his hotel room, burning down the hotel in the process. He then slinks out of town on his trusty mule.
The kid is clearly badass, he kicks a lot of ass in this chapter. Going forward, I'll be interested to see what kind of themes develop. I doubt there will be a classic good v. evil clashes. I got the sense in this chapter that the kid is just kind of flying by the seat of his pants in a chaotic world. There is no good or evil, only men, making their way in an unforgiving and harsh land.
That's pretty much all I got for now. I read this chapter twice just to get some grasp of what was going on, and some parts are still confusing. Reading slowly and several times seems like it could be prudent.
Unanswered Questions:
Did anyone else read the book?
Why doesn't the Judge have any hair?
Gnosticism?
Will violence solve anything?
How many comparisons will I be able to make between this and No Country for Old Men?
6 comments:
Got a hundred more pages of Confederacy of Dunces to get through before I can start on this piece. I'll catch up in time for next week's TA session.
Ah Gnosticism. I'm a man who enjoys a twin god-head myself, so equally powered good and evil, as you allude to here, is right up my evil alley.
And Kell is a much better verb than its "i" based progenitor.
What else?
TD
The idea that both good and evil are inherent in the world appeals to my ambivalent nature. Two sides of the same coin, if you will.
Also, I was reading some message board and they said that "stove" is a verb -- past tense for stave, to implode or crush inward. I prefer to think that passage is referring to some sort of galactic oven.
So I'm assuming the judge has no hair because he suffers from Alopecia Areata Universalis. And checking wikipedia has validated my assumption. Charlie Villanueva, that fun-loving, hairless, Dominican-American basketball player, also suffers from this disease. So while you picture the judge as Shaq, I'm going to picture him as a much more badass version of CV.
You know the judge is bad ass b/c he has no pubic hair. In the days of afro-like pubes, I'm sure that surprised a few ladies (dudes?). Maybe he had to choke a bitch.
And I gotta say, seeing that preacher get his warmed my cold, black heart. Evangelists are nothing more than predators devouring the souls of the weak. I suppose an argument could be made that such people have no souls. I think we should let James Brown be the judge of that. He is the godfather of soul after all.
Having read the first chapter of the book and by no means forgotten to buy it, I agree with the above comments in their entirety.
You might read about Nietszche's "Principle of Eternal Return", and his "Will to Power" ideas. Also, McCarthy is alluding to the Bible, Milton's "Paradise Lost", and Melville's "Moby Dick". If you ask me, its all Freudian crap about being afraid of Daddy.
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