Alls well that ends well
Finally finished Blood Meridian, and figured it would be a good time to bring back the old book club, if only for one week. Not so ambiguous ending aside, that book one of the best pieces of fiction I've ever read, and not just because of the violence.
Well, mostly because of the violence. Judge Holden is terrifying and one of the most interesting characters ever. His resume off the top of my head:
-Spiritual leader of the Glanton Gang
-Tall, hairless
-Expert in war theory
-Can make gunpowder in a pinch
-Fiddler
-Literally records and destroys history
-Babykiller
-Possibly immortal/Says he will never die
I don't want to think about what exactly happened to the Kid. That final scene is pretty disturbing -- the judge embraces him in his "immense and terrible flesh" and then goes and dances forever. And why did they have to kill the dancing bear? It never hurt anyone.
I still think my favorite part is when the Judge says that bird's freedom is an insult to him, and that he would have them all in zoos. To which someone responds that would be a hell of a zoo, and the Judge agrees.
Whether the Judge is an angel of death, a demon or what is hard to say. I just read an essay that said he is like Moby Dick, and another that says he is a gnostic archon, or "creator god" that stands between man and the all-powerful God that can be reached through spiritual knowledge. This does comply with the many conversations the Judge has with the gang.
One last thought -- the book can be a slog to get through. The excessive violence, immense vocabulary, and almost Faulknerian writing style all meant I had to take a couple breaks for some lighter fare. But it also means I am going to read it again.
3 comments:
After finishing that, I needed to read something purely straightforward and clear, if just to remind myself that not all writers use words like "Brobdingnagian." The Devil in the White City makes for a good McCarthy chaser.
Poor kid, though. And poor bear. How McCarthy portrayed those final two deaths seemed distinct from every other scene of violence in the book, and each in their own way. Unsettling, in a word.
yeah, I'm still on chapter 10 or so. slowly but surely. school sucks.
Oh! I was wondering what your take was gonna be. I'll go with Demiurge. But then again, I'm a daisy if I do.
I love that fucking book. I love how it winds down into the Judge and Kid in the desert, the judge calling to him, and everyone else is dead, and then it's twenty years later and all of Texas is orphans. And fuck the bear. If he was so smart he would never die.
Here's my suggestions for the next installment (keep 'er coming, goats). These may or may not be from the class I'm teaching next semester, Realism and Its Alternatives (blessed undergrads).
Virgin Suicides, in prose, is off the fucking hook.
What else?
Raymond Carver, Short Cuts (Random House)
Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time (Simon and Schuster)
Michael Ondaatje, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (Random House)
Jeffery Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides (Bloomsbury)
W.P. Kinsella, The Iowa Baseball Confederacy (Houghton Mifflin)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Collected Stories (Harper)
Italo Calvino, Cosmicomics (Harvest)
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