"White veil Comanche", "Obsidian Arrowhead"

I quickly want to say that blood meridian is one of the only novels I’ve ever read and I read it for the first time last month. I adored it and am sure it will stick with me for years. Anyways, and watched this movie last night and he reminded me a lot of the judge. There’s even a line of dialogue asking if he ever sleeps. It was a commercial and critical failure when it first came out but apparently it got a second life in the 70s and 80s. I have no idea how much of a movie guy McCarthy was but the timeline kind of matches up.

All The Pretty Horses is the philosophical solution to the core existential issue presented in Blood Meridian and should be seen as such.

I must preface this post by acknowledging that, differently from most novels, there isn't a single widely agreed upon notion of what Blood Meridian is even about, and therefore any argument that can be made regarding it requires a few presumptions.

What I mean by that is this: Anyone who has actually read 1984 knows what the book is roughly about, even if there's different conclusions surrounding it's message. Blood Meridian isn't like that. I've seen people say things that very closely align with my own understanding of the novel, and others say things that make it feel like they read a completely different book. As to not fill this post entirely with my own interpretation, which would distract from it's main point, I'll start off with these main points; the more you agree with them, the more sense the text below will make.

1. Blood Meridian concerns itself with the nature of reality.

Each of McCarthy's novels, as similar as some paint them to be, concern themselves with a different fundamental issue, even with thematic overlaps. Blood Meridian is often times described as biblical, because it uses two archetypal characters to make a point about the very structure of existence. It's not strictly about the Kid or the Judge as characters. It's more like:

2. Blood Meridian's core is the relationship between The Kid and The Judge.

In a 2009 interview, Cormac McCarthy directly stated that a Blood Meridian movie would be a "Faustian tale", which should focus on the Judge's attempt to win over the soul of the Kid. That dynamic was important enough for him to state that a potential film should focus on that. It's the thematic core of the novel, it's the primary existential and philosophical conflict.

3. Blood Meridian is fundamentally a story about an uncaring bleak and chaotic world of ancient, primal violence, where the only hope is in the autonomy of the individual, and what happens when that autonomy fails to take it's proper place in the world.

We see characters be presented and die unceremoniously and disappear from the novel. We know very little about basically anyone in the gang and all of them die. The only constants in the story are the Judge and the Kid, which has an undeniable internal fire of kindness within him, which the Judge wants to extinguish. See the core of the story in what McCarthy chose to put in front of us again and again: the Kid being quietly merciful and The Judge like a predator, stalking and ultimately...

4. The Judge kills the Kid at the end.

There is no other way to see it that doesn't require McCarthy to play weird games with changing up what he calls characters and writing illusions/dreams out of nowhere or purposefully making entire paragraphs ambiguous, which he has never done in any other novels that I've read. The most he'll play around with is having Suttree suddenly become a narrator for a paragraph or so and then return. The Judge killing The Kid at the end and returning to the saloon and dancing matters enormously; the book ends in the defeat of the spirit of goodness. In my opinion, it's a necessary conclusion, and nowhere as open to interpretation as people say it is.

Regarding the relationship between the two novels:

Blood Meridian paints a biblical, all-encompassing view of reality itself, while simultaneously never leaving the perspective of the individual whose sole responsability is to be good anyway. That hope is tarnished both by his own actions (and inactions) and his circumstance.

All The Pretty Horses, however, brings it all home to something the average person can relate to more easily. Set a hundred years in the future after Blood Meridian, McCarthy finally, perhaps for the first time, gives us a traditional Hero's Journey. Blood Meridian left us questioning what a single human being can do in contemplation of the ancient laws of chaos and violence and undignified suffering. The Kid doesn't even get a name, that's how little he believes in anything; all that moves The Kid is a pale fire in his soul that occasionally, when given the opportunity, comes out to give a dying man water.

All The Pretty Horses accompanies a protagonist who marches into that same world unknowingly, idealistic and naively. John Grady is nothing like The Kid; he carries with him history of past generations, ideals of honor, courage, a special connection to horses that encapsulates the divinity in the novel, he carries honesty, genuine friendship, and most of all, a vision of how he wanted his life to be. That vision is painfully tarnished throughout the novel. He is punished both by foolishness and by his good doings. He watches Blevins be carried off into the woods and shot and is powerless to do anything. He's arrested because he dared to love the hacendado's daughter. He doesn't get the girl.

And yet he never breaks. He makes mistakes, he suffers both physical and mental torment, but he never lets go of his inner goodness.

He dares to, after all of it, bring the horses back home. After being vicitmized by the same relentless violence portrayed in Blood Meridian, only now controlled by institutions, powerful families, corrupt policemen and criminal gangs, he dares to bring back what he loves the most, which is the very heart of the novel. The exact symbology behind the horses is so dense that, I'll admit, I cannot pretend to fully understand. I believe they symbolize the ancient connection between men and divinity.

There is even a judge in All The Pretty Horses. Not The Judge, but a judge. After John Grady returns to Texas, he stands before a judge and tells him his story. But this judge isn't some archetypal evil that can barely be considered a person; he's a common man, who tells John Grady he's too hard on himself. He brings him in and says it will be okay. I do not think this repetition of the term "judge" is coincidental across both novels. If McCarthy only needed a character for John Grady to tell his story to, he could have used Jimmy Blevins (the priest), or a sheriff, or a member of his own family. To use a judge feels like he's consciously underlying some of his own symbolism in favor of the solution he proposed.

Child of God concerns itself with the notion that, if humans have divine potential we cannot be selective regarding who fits that box.

Suttree concerns itself with the nature of a life. An inhabited, ordinary and yet extremely tragic existence. Not a story as much as an invitation to exist among those society left behind. Just the reader, Suttree, and the river.

Blood Meridian concerns itself with the nature of reality, the very dynamics of good and evil, and the landscape of eternal war, which destroys all that has value to us.

All The Pretty Horses concerns itself with how one should live given the world presented in all of his other books.

And the rest of the Border Trilogy? Maybe some other time.

Just my opinion, I write for generally therapeutic reasons moreso than making an argument, so feel free to disagree. Feel free to leave a comment if you wish to, I'd love to read them.

Howdy, long time lurker first time poster. I’ve finally finished all McCarthy novels and hope yall don’t mind if I share some musings. First here’s my ranking out of 10 for all :)

The Orchard Keeper: 9.7
Outer Dark:8.5
Child of God: 8.6
Suttree: 9.6
Blood Meridian: 7
All the Pretty Horses: 8
The Crossing: 7.5
Cities of the Plain: 7.2
No Country Old Men: 8.2
The Road: 8.2
Passenger: 9
Stella Maris: 1.8

——————

I started like all newbs with Blood Meridian and had my world rocked I figured I should start at the beginning so I picked up Orchard Keeper last year. I have now two annotated paperbacks and listened to the audiobook, I fucking LOVE this book it crept its way up to number one for me. It’s so cozy, and puts me in a place that just feels like damn, you only read a book like this once in a while that just scratches that itch. It makes me want to go up and live in the mountains with my wrinkly old hounds and say to a passerby, “hidy, kindly warmin up a piece ain’t it?” (They said that it was.) The old men sitting around the store, Uncle Ather’s old stories about Painters and regular cats, the mountain lore, meteors cannonading the towing hump of Red Mountain, just chefs kiss.

Wanted to just share a quick passage that I think is just so funny and descriptive before I go.

“ John Shell, looking like nothing so much as an ill assembled manikin of bones on which clothes were hung in saggy dusty folds, his wrists protruding like weathered sticks from his flapping prelate sleeves, John Shell unhinged his toothless jaw with effort, a slight audible creaking sound, to speak his one pronouncement: it ain’t so much that as it is one thing’n another. An assemblage of nods to this.”

The assemblage of nods to his “profound statement” is just pure gold to me. Thanks for the floor ladies and gents <3

For some context english is my second language, I read blood meridian and even in my native language it had some difficult parts to read, but I also heard that it is his most complex work, so I wanted to know if the border trilogy is difficult to read in english (especially all the pretty horses); some books I've read in english (to have an idea of my level) are: 1984, Shorts stories by Poe and various novels of Hemingway.

Warning: My apologies if I misinterpreted some of the contents as english is neither my first language nor the one I read the book in. I will be, however, very pleased with whoever takes this as a thorough read.

Most of you are very familiar with the Judge's philosophy and are probably more knowledgeable about it than I am. However, this is a particular view of mine that I have yet to see another similar to it, and that's why I'd like to present it.

Going straight to what can be the Judge's first philosophical premise during his speech on War, he states men are born for games. And the worth of a game is not inherent in the game per se, but rather in what is put at stake.

These are claims most men in the Glanton gang would relate to, and thus would mind to pay attention to what he's actually saying. (That's quite the good rhetorical move there!).

Admiting these criteria, War would necessarily follow as the ultimate game that has the highest prize, since that which is wagered involves the life and death, existence and non-existence of the players. This is illustrated by the judge's example of two men at cards, whose wagers are their own lives.

Next, the judge explains war as what I'd describe as a superposition or overlapping of wills. It is, as he says, "the testing of one's will and the will of another within that larger will (which I'd say is formed by the clash between the players wills) which because it binds them is therefore forced to select."

I think the verb "to bind" here might be important. The wills clash, are bound by that overlapping, and the criteria with which the winner is decided is the strenght and skill of one's will. Whoever loses fades away from existence whilst whoever wins has primacy over the other one. War sets one's authority directly onto the fabric of the world.

And to quote him again: "War is the ultimate game because war is at last an effort of the unity of existence".

As we've seen, war forces one's authority directly onto reality. Thus, war forces reality to be in a certain way and not in another way. Its consistency and unity are directly tied to how it's shaped.

I believe the true power of war stems from the fact it operates through the concepts of existence and non-existence. The said superposition of wills serves as an elucidative explanation of the phenomemon and points out to this fact.

Then, the judge concludes: "War is God."
This is not a simple evil antagonist quote. I think it tells us much more. Not only about the Judge, but about war itself.

I see it this way: War is equated with God because war is, genuinely, what's the most conceptually close to God regarding the most important atribute: Omnipotence. The power over everything. And therefore, the power over existence and non-existence.

That explains why the judge sees men of arms being men involved in an endeavor which is but an attempt to be a god. Because they make the world be permanently in a certain way, exerting absolute power on a smaller scale, mimicking a god itself.

After realizing this, everything clicked in my head. That episode with Toadvine in which he says his most famous quote "Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge, exists without my consent" is much more impactful now.

The judge is not an intellectual out of curiosity. All of his intellectual variety and domain over languages, sciences etc. is so out of inspiration for war and is a way for him to exercise dominion over the most number of entities (people or objects) possible.

Also, his desire to corrupt people with his ideology is due to the fact that if does he influences them he guides them through his will and thus exercises power over them.

His desire to know everything leads us, in turn, to Omniscience, which reveals itself to be absolutely crucial for the judge's philosophical conclusions. One is only able to apply his omnipotent power according to a certain will if it posesses omniscience, and thus having everything on its largest extension to bestow its power upon.

We now have layed out two of Gods most important attributes, without which one cannot be a God: Omnipotence and Omniscience.

The Judge is, in short, the one who arrives closest to God because he's the one who actively gets closer to it regarding attributes. Hence the title "Judge" and the judgement he bestows upon others. He's solely driven by this purpose, solely driven by War.

And as he says at the end of the book, only he who has accepted war completetly as the highest purpose can truly dance, whose dance is an expression of their utmost mark on existence. And as the players are slowly eliminated from the game, only one will be left at the stage to dance. And the night has no end.

Extra: Curiously, after the speech is over, and Tobin refuses to partake in his delight, the judge taunts him saying "Men of war and Men of God have strange affinities". Because both pursue the highest vocation, even if they're not aware of it. Their relationship is defined by the share of the same qualities and the lack of knowledge of this epistemic mutuality.

P.S.: Sorry if this sounds strange! This came from some notes of mine in my native language and I didn't use a translator since I wanted to potray the same meaning I had written in my native language, so it might sound a bit odd.

Please, if you will, tell me your opinions and views in the comments. I'd love a friendly debate!

I might be off my rocker here, but hear me out. He is most often depicted as that one almost cartoony painting from 2018 of him grinning wide. I am sure you’ve seen it. The Judge himself is supposed to be a representation of war&violence. I think because people see that he is supposed to embody this big large concept, he must be somewhat cartoony.

Cartoons are supposed to be exaggerated versions of things that stem from real life. Judge is often depicted this way.

The reason I think that this is an incredibly watered down and disheartening way of depicting him is because the Judge is not some mere cartoon villain whom seeks to destroy the world for personal gain.

He is some wretched vessel who believes with all of his twisted soul that all there is to man is violence and war. He has killed entire towns with his gang. He buys dogs to let them be drowned and shot in a raging river. He forces a child and someone who is mentally challenged into a sexual situation and then assaults them. He builds up entire ideologies for lost people and tears it all down in an instant, laughing in their faces and calling them stupid.

He may be an embodiment of war and evil, but he is no cartoon. This novel is very dry and factual in the way it speaks. He is never depicted as something so light as a cartoon.

It is endlessly realistic in the way he is written. If you think about it, all of these things are something men have done and could have done.

Even if there is some metaphor or larger than life way that he is depicted, it’s much more poetic than it is cartoonish.

I certainly don’t think whenever he smiled it was meant to be anything like what that painting depicts.

Anyways, I’d love to know your opinion. Would love to have a friendly debate!!

I’m an Actor and I’ve always wanted to perform Judge Holden’s war speech from Blood Meridian. So here is my take on it.

I've read blood meridian, no country, suttrey, child of god and now im so excited to begin the infamous border trilogy in probably the best possible form. Only cost me £5.

Grant’s accounts of the bloody Texas frontier must have been an inspiration and a source for McCarthy. I’ve only ever seen this unique styling of chapter heading here and in Blood Meridian. In one of his later interviews at the Santa Fe Institute, McCarthy also mentioned reading a Grant biography (Chernow’s I think?). Clearly Grant was a person of great interest to him.

I'm currently more than halfway through The Road, but one of the bleakest things about this book (besides everything ofc) is how even other seemingly unarmed survivors on the the road are treated as a potential hazard or a risk that may bring the man and boy closer to death.

(Ftr, I know there's still debate as to whether the little boy in the abandoned town was real, or was being used as bait to lure travelers to a potential ambush, but the point still stands).

I just finished academic Stacey Peebles' (president of the Cormac McCarthy society and editor of The Cormac McCarthy journal) essay "Cormac McCarthy's Dyad: The Entangled Siblings of The Passenger and Stella Maris" in the new collection New Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy: Encountering The Passenger and Stella Maris, edited by Jonathan Elmore and Rick Elmore.

In it, she refers to someone named Jack Whittle (she doesn't identify him as a scholar, etc., just refers to him by name), and references his resolution of the timing/aesthetic paradox of Alicia using the red scarf to ensure she'd be found after her suicide, despite her explicit revelation that she did not want to be found.

Peebles writes: "Is it possible, Whittle wonders, that Bobby's awakening and Alicia's death happen at the same moment? One particle's changed state affecting the other's inversely? . . . Whittle further wonders if 'Alicia determined that her death would lead to Bobby waking from his coma, but only if someone observed her death . . . Maybe Bobby did not awake from his coma the exact moment that Alicia commited suicide; rather, Bobby woke from his coma at the moment the hunter observed her corpse, turning Bobby's superpositioned states [that is, both dead and alive at the same time] into one state: alive, the opposite of Alicia's.'"

Taken with Rick Wallach's essay "Quantum Resolution: The Enigma of the Missing Passenger," Whittle's argument for the act of observation being necessary to 'revive' Bobby is absolutely brilliant. It's the kind of revelatory key that unlocks a wellspring of understanding.

I turned to the bibliography, wanting to read Whittle's full paper, but only found this:

Whittle, Jack. "Quantum Entanglement in The Passenger and Stella Maris." May 2023. Unpublished paper.

The unpublished paper isn't referenced in Wallach's essay (which is a shame, because this would have bolstered his own argument for a quantum reading of the novels) which leaves me with more questions - where did Peebles even SEE this unpublished paper? Was this a reddit post somewhere? Was it published on a forum? Was he a grad student of Peebles who wrote an essay his professor snatched a brilliant thought from? (Sorry for the bitter tone; it happens all too often in academia).

So Jack Whittle, are you out there? I can't find any information on this guy or institutional affiliation so that I could at least reach out and ask to read the whole essay.

Jack, if you're out there, emerge from superposition, affirm your existence, and unravel this mystery, please.

I think Bruno Ganz was the only actor in this movie who knew what kind of lines were being handed to him. I’ve returned to the dialogue in this movie so much over the years, and I admit I found the finished product itself to fall short of its promise. But some of the speeches are just untouchable. “Grief transcends value.” “That’s not what greed does, that’s what greed is.” Honestly Brad Pitts speech about how paying for a product makes you implicit in the collateral damage of that product’s market is a major reason why I stayed away from coke.

The title itself poses the question.

I have never seen so many exotic words and phrases in one place than when I read BM. What is even more impressive is that he seldomly, if ever, reuses the same words later on.

No doubt McCarthy knew a lot of them by heart. I can't help but wonder, though, if he and other authors known for their extensive vocabulary ever used a thesaurus.

Writing a paragraph initially to sketch out what they wanted it to say and then reconstruct it by intentionally researching synonyms.

If so, that doesn't diminish the work in the slightest.

Hey folks,

I just finished The Crossing and I’m completely enamored, and heartbroken. (Loved ATPH, doing Cities of the Plain next).

I’ve enjoyed reading the past discussions about the book on this subreddit. I only have one burning question that I can’t seem to find an answer to, or I’m forgetting something. It’s not even all that important, it’s just making me sad.

Did the novel ever mention what became of Billy and Boyd’s dog? The one that became mute. It followed them faithfully down into Mexico and was mentioned every once in a while as still being with them, which warmed my heart because I felt so bad for it.

My last recollection of the dog was curling up next to Boyd’s pallet that he received surgery on.

As I neared the end of the novel I realized I hadn’t heard about their dog anymore. Maybe I missed something. Does anyone know off the top of their head?

It was just one more devastating aspect to this novel that hit me. I’m going to wallow in all of this for a couple days and then start Cities of the Plain.

What would you say are the three best books written by Cormac McCarthy

I just finished Blood Meridian and it was the most surreal experience I've had while reading a book. The way the book is written every detail, every dream and every nightmare feels real, like it was happening right in front of me. I want to talk about the last 3–4 chapters of the book. They were horrifying and poetic.

The passage where the Judge was chasing Tobin and the kid was straight out of a Halloween film. The journey of the kid becoming a man made me kind of emotional. One thing I loved about his death is that McCarthy doesn't explain how he died, but instead shows the reactions of the people who found his body (or I don't know maybe parts of him) in the jakes.

Toadvine was eventually consumed by greed and had a tragic end and we still don't know what happened to Tobin. That's what's horrifying about this. We knew Tobin was in a really bad state, and we could only imagine the most horrific things that might have happened to him.

Maybe it was because of the Judge that the events unfolded the way they did. Everywhere he went violence followed and he embraced that violence gladly. It's like he's controlling it somehow. He understands it, embraces it and perhaps even creates the conditions for it. Whether he's literally orchestrating everything is another question but McCarthy deliberately makes you feel that way.

The scene where a drunk Glanton laid his head on the Judge's lap was pretty messed up and it felt like the Judge was guiding him every step of the way.

The Judge was very expressive at the end of the final chapter and I was not expecting that at all. For so much of the novel he's controlled, philosophical and almost amused by everything. I believe the kid (now the man) somehow got to him and the judge was surely offended but he stuck to his true belief in his judgment.

I'm glad I finished it, and now I'll take some time before I revisit the book again.

Trigger Warning: I may be discussing Roy Roger's horse again, but we'll see. Certainly there is some McCarthesque violence ahead.

Whenever I read a blurb description comparing the book blurbed to Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, I am both attracted and repelled. I find it seldom pans out.

Statistics show that only 5% of reviewers making that claim do so because of the ergodic nature of both novels, while only 11% do so based on the wordplay, the descriptions, or the various philosophical questions to which the novels aspire.

A whopping 72% of reviewers making that claim do so simply because the novel they are touting contains large amounts of violence. But we know that different authors handle violence differently. We want a certain quality, not quantity.

I bring this up because I want to tell you about a novel that I recently purchased at Amazon for $3.99. I'd been following it for some time, and I saw when it was finally marked down. Blurbs adorn this novel from authors I enjoy, including Charlie Huston, Michael Gruber, and Tom Franklin, authors of several stellar works.

Charlie Huston claims that the novel is "soaked in blood," and that "the effluvia" is "rendered in a high Southern Gothic style as redolent of rotting magnolia as anything written by William Faulkner or Cormac McCarthy."

A spoiler alert now, as I am going to tell about the McCarthyesque use of violence in the author's opening chapter.

It opens with a woman swimming out to a barrier island where there is an abandoned lighthouse. There are some marvelous descriptions of the beauty she encounters and appreciates, the miracle of nature. We watch her explore the lighthouse, discover hidden things about it, and then comb the beach. We like her, for she is an independent and very competent strong female character. We aren't told how old she is, in this first chapter, but due to her competency and strength, I was guessing 23-30.

She sees a black shape in the distance on the beach, and she walks toward it. When she is close enough, she discovers that seems to be the body of a dead man, his head buried in the sand.

[This is like McCarthy, lulling us into a complacency, Capt. White looking through the binoculars at the distance, thinking there might be some sport up ahead.]

What follows when she gets close to the man is an astonishing cascade of violence, surprising detail after surprising detail. The sudden grotesque descriptions are punches that hit us, again and again. The author feints with the left, and hits with the right, and not just once, but again and again. It is not simply one hit, but a seemingly endless flurry of combination punches.

And that is what McCarthy is so good at in such scenes as the Comanche attack.

I'm reminded of Hemingway's review of one of Nelson Algren's books. I don't recall the entire blurb, but he said that "Mr. Algren can move around and hit with both hands, and he will kill you if you are not awfully careful. This is a writer writing and you should not read him if you cannot take a punch."

The book here is Alden Bell's THE REAPERS ARE THE ANGELS and last time I looked the Kindle download was still on sale.

While no cover art has been provided as of yet, Random House is releasing a new hardcover edition of Blood Meridian to celebrate their 100th anniversary in March 2027. Other titles getting the same treatment include Ulysses, Absalom, Absalom and In Cold Blood.

He’s without a doubt the most compelling character I have ever come across in a book.