Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West
This kind of unbelievable combination of words and ability to engage and describe is endless in this book. Maybe sometimes it almost seems to rich ... almost, but not quite, sappy. Here is another line just in the next paragraph:
"It was raining again and they rode slouched under slickers hacked from greasy half cured hides and so cowled in these primitive skins before the gray and driving rain they looked like wardens of some dim sect sent forth to proselytize among the very beasts of the land."The great literary critic Harold Bloom says this is the greatest american novel by a living novelist, but he also admits that it took him three tries to complete the novel because of the violence.
I am at the 200 mark and certainly know what he means. If I am allowed a small conversation with myself ... just two of my many selves ...
Jason1 - So why are you reading such ghastly violence? Just because its considered great literature? Are you putting up with all the violence just because you think you can learn from his descriptive powers?
Jason2 - I think I can respond to all your questions by giving you two reasons for your first one. First, the novel is not historical fiction, but it is based on the Glanton scalp hunters. John Glanton fled the army after the army police tried to arrest him for murder of a Mexican civilian around the time of the Mexican wars and him and his gang became mercenaries hired by the Mexican authorities to kill and scalp dangerous bands of Apaches. However, to gain more money they also killed peaceful Indians and even Mexican civilians. So answer one is that the violence in this book is real world violence and not isolated, but happening today. It is horrible to look at, horrible to live in, horrible to read but part of the larger human story that we all inhabit.
Jason1 - Ok, so reason number 2.
Jason2 - I think this is the better and larger reason for my continuing to read this book and continuing to read fiction. There is something the artist, and in this case, the novelist understands and explains or points toward that you don't find any other way. The artist is inspired and he recreates the whole world, an act that takes intense contemplation and vision. To the horrible Glanton, he adds the kid. The main character who mostly seems separate ... seems caught up and almost a bystander. He adds the Judge, a huge learned man with a pistol that shoots rifle shells. The Judge helps to explain and articulates the ways of men.
Jason2 continues - I am not sure I am saying it very well, but there is something in the artists vision that is itself inspiring. Like, this small line that comes out of the Judge. They are sleeping among ruins and the Judge spends the night drawing different artifacts in his book. A man named Webster comments on how good the Judge is at drawing and so the Judge offers to draw him in his book.
Webster regarded him with one eye asquint and he said: Well you've been a draftsman somehweres and them pictures is like enough the things themselves. But no man can put all the whole world in a book. No more than everything drawer in a book is so.
Well said, Marcus, spoke the judge.
But don't draw me, said Webster. For I don't want in your book ... save my crusted mug from out your ledger there for I'd not have it shown about to strangers.And here is the line that strikes me as profound and true for all of us and something I have known in my life's experience:
The judge smiled. Whether in my book or not, every man is tabernacled in every other and he in exchange and so on in an endless complexity of being and witness to the uttermost edge of the world.This is the wisdom and beauty and truth that stands out, but not like a pearl you can remove ... it is inside this story, the whole story that these moments come forth. Just as we can't remove and separate the profound moments of our own life from the rest of our life ....the profound from the more mundane and stayed glories we must endure.
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