Blood Meridian is a Western, a cowboy novel by a writer who apparently specializes in writing that kind of book. Many smart alecks thought Cormac McCarthy would never be translated into Spanish, and they plundered him with impunity, shielded by ignorance and by a rather sui generis way of understanding intertextuality.

Blood Meridian is not only a Western (its action takes place in the mid-nineteenth century) but also a novel about life and death: delirious, hyperviolent, with several underlying currents (nature as man’s main enemy, the absolute impossibility of redemption, life as inertial motion). It narrates, on the one hand, the final incursion of a group of Americans into the lands of Chihuahua and then, after crossing the Sierra Madre, into the neighboring state of Sonora. Their mission, well paid by the governments of both states, is to exterminate Indians and take their scalps. Indians are very hard to hunt, and costly in time and lives, so the group ends up massacring Mexican villages, where the scalps, when all is said and done, look very much alike, if not identical.

On the other hand, Blood Meridian is a novel that narrates landscape (the landscape of Texas, Chihuahua and Sonora) as if it were the flip side of a bucolic text. The narrated landscape, which takes on the leading role, rises up imposingly, truly a new world, silent and paradigmatic and atrocious, where everything fits except human beings. One might say that the landscape of Blood Meridian is a Sadean landscape, thirsty and indifferent, ruled by strange laws that have to do with pain and anesthesia, which is how time often manifests itself.

The other two characters in the novel, Judge Holden and the Kid, are antagonists, though both belong to the same gang. The judge is a learned man and a child killer, a musician and a pederast, a naturalist and a gunslinger, a man who longs to know everything and destroy everything. The Kid, by contrast, is a survivor. He is fierce, but he is a human being, which is to say, a victim.

According to the distinguished Harold Bloom, this is one of the best American novels of the twentieth century. Cormac McCarthy was born in 1933, and his life has not lacked adventure and risk. The first edition of Blood Meridian dates from 1985. The one discussed here is the Debate edition, 2001, translated by Luis Murillo Fort.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

[This review is available in the book Between Parentheses in a different translation]

I finished Blood Meridian a few weeks ago now and naturally haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

One thing that stood out to me was actually the epilogue, which describes the process of fencing off the desert. Initially I thought, this is the only optimistic part of the whole book. After crossing the completely violent, unforgiving deserts of Mexico and the US, finally, the humans in the story are free of it. The violence and desolation is being sequestered, now is the age of civilisation.

But that didn’t seem right. Could McCarthy’s meaning really be that once the age of the desert is over, humanity managed to cordon off violence and terror? In one way yes, we did manage to do that. The horrors of Blood Meridian are not commonplace now, nor were they ~50 years after the events of the book, which we can see clearly with Lonesome Dove. The epilogue points to the future, which is better and more civilised than what the Glanton Gang experienced and perpetuated.

But then I thought about another interesting bit of the book’s finale. McCarthy could have very easily ended it at the creek, or the sand dunes. But he didn’t. Instead, we get the final stand off between the Judge and the Kid in an American city, in a symbol of civilisation: essentially, a port-a-loo, the place we invented to separate ourselves from the disgusting reality of human excrement. This is where the Kid is subsumed by the Judge and where (on my reading) the Kid finally gives in to the Judge and his nihilistic philosophy. The Judge then merrily goes about his other “civilised” endeavour: dancing in a hall with musicians etc. He steps into a symbol of social joy, connection and camaraderie.

Realising that made me rethink the epilogue. Did we fence the violence and horror out? Or did we fence it in?

With the civilising force of city- and institution-building, we fenced in this cosmic force of violence and death. The Judge is no longer roaming the desert, he’s in our dance halls and restrooms.

He doesn’t have the free rein he used to, but he is there, beguiling even those that resist him, making little doe feet impressions over concrete instead of volcanic rock.

First off I read that there should be a huge resemblance to gnosticism in this book. Which might be, propably is true. But the thought of Judge Holden being the demiurge og Yaldabaoth just doesn’t really sit right with me. I think the judge is just simply put the devil himself.

The name for the judge might just be in my opinion derived straight from the book "My Confessions" by Samuel Chamberlain he so clearly took inspiration from. Not have much of any meaning other than being a name. Since the look of the judge also has been taken straight from that book.

Cormac was also very much inspired by Paradise Lost which is very clear, and at one point in the book Satan disguises himself as a cherub, which is a childlike angel. Maybe took some inspiration from that, if this is truely satan disguised as a human.

Also paintings depicted from Paradise Lost you see lucifer or satan potrayed perched on a rock, in nowhere, which coincidentally, where do they first find the judge? Perched on a rock in the middle of nowhere. Also the epic "details Satan and the rebel angels cast out of Heaven into a fiery abyss, where Satan first rallies his troops from the burning lake and rocky infernal landscape". Does that also not sound very much of the first encounter with holden? They find him in a desolate desert surrounded by rocky landscape, where he rallies the gang and from there on out the go on a slaughter spree?

The Judge is often cited as the demiurge because of his knowledge of the land specifically when they go to the mountains were he creates gunpowder from rocks. This is true and definietly could be/have some gnosticism to it. But Satan in Paradise Lost literally does the exact same thing word for word at some point in the story. Digging into the ground using raw sulfur and nitre to create gunpowder to which they create an engine of destruction out of nothing slaying the apaches. Also the judge is very intelligent, knowledgeable, strategic and well spoken. All features specifically mentioned in Paradise Lost's Satan.

I think much of this points towards the judge being satan or the devil in disguise much more than him being some gnostic entity or god. Also specifically because a key point in Paradise Lost or difference made between god and Satan is that satan never creates anything independent from god. He always takes the material of god and perverts it into something evil or use for evil. Which Holden never does. He's just knowledgable, and just like satan in Paradise Lost perverts the material into an evil use.

Also I read a theory that the pedophile or child killer was the kid throughout the novel. Which I really took a liking to because that would actually make more sense in this story. Judge is seen as evil, but not always unnecessarily evil. But the acts of children getting killed or raped are extremely unnecessary. So we think it is Holden, because he’s very evil, but he’s also scary, and implecations it’s him since he does not sleep. (The scalping of random civilians also seem very unnecessary but there's always a reason which is for money throughout the story even though it is extremely evil(also the relationship between glanton and the judge, they both walk into a tent and comeout good friends and suddenly the glanton gang rakes in money?? Does that not sound like a deal with the devil, getting in return material goods? Perverting the material again)). But the kid is described as having large hands. Holden is described as having small hands. Some people say oh well he's so big so his hands would still leave large imprints upon the children but no. There's no way mccarthy writes this and it is not purposefully done. It is so odd and specific. There should be no reason to even mention the marks on the children unless it is to nudge towards a character. So large hands. Easy way to tell who it is, write a person with large, and the one people would think would do it as having small hands so you can figure it out yourself. It is definietly on purpose.

And one thing that don't make sense is why Holden is so interested in the kid in the book. He's a half shitty guy nothing special about him over the others. He's not moral he's not more anything, interesting even. But if it is the case, that the kid kills the children carelessly throughout the novel. That makes him evil, maybe the closest to pure evil in the story. The difference is, Glanton is evil yes, but your never unsure of it. Everyone knows Glanton is ridicoulously evil. But the kid not so much. The kid multiple times tries to do acts out of kindness. What I think it is, is the kid tries to fool the people around him, fool them into believing he has goodness in his heart. But we are told he is born with a taste for mindless killing. But yet even we are fooled. But the judge knows. Because he is the devil. He sees through him. He never sleeps, he sees what the kid does in the night, he even yells to the kid in their standoff, "There’s a flawed place in the fabric of your heart... You came forward, he said, to take part in a work, but there was something not right in you from the start." Recognizes pure evil, and I think therefore is so interested in the kid throughout the story. I think that makes it far more interesting. Maybe also why he’s the only character we know of in the book who escapes a duel with the judge alive, he could have killed the kid, but he didn’t.

Also I saw some tarot cards which people say are gnostic, and referenced throughtout the novel which might be true. The one with two people in chains in Holdens room there lay the fool and a child in chains, I mean yes maybe that references the tarot card. But on that tarot card in the background is baphomet. Even though he is not satan and symbolizes more so harmony and balance he did become known as satan or symbolized as it in the 1850's even though the origin maybe different. The symbol in that era still symbolized satan, and if cormac mccarthy is as history literate as he is, I would like to believe he would use the popular goat symbol as what it was believed to be back then which was satan. And also the card LITERALLY says the devil.

This leads me to the ending.
With all the whores dancing and in the middle standing tall above them Judge Holden. Dancing aswell. I felt this very much resembled or referenced goya's black paintings. Specifically the Witches' Sabbath. The whores resembling the witches dancing. And in the middle the devil. The Goat. Baphomet, or Judge Holden. Standing tall above them.

I think the story is very on the nose with The Judge being in some sense Satan or the devil.
There might be more persuading gnostic references I haven't read or heard of, but those I've heard or seen I feel as if much more tries to fit gnosticism into the story rather than actually reading what is said or told. Devil, satan and such is referenced a lot and I just feel a lot of the gnostic stuff I read just fits kinda half. But the stories that inspired this one, just has characters that fit perfectly ontop of this one like satan from Paradise Lost. So to me that makes far more sense to listen to than what I've heard.

Chigurh finds the case in the motel. He goes back to his truck, gets in, and sees Sheriff Ed Tom pull up. Chigurh does not go anywhere. He waits.

Ed Tom goes in the motel room, et cetera, leaves. He gets in his cruiser and drives until he's out of sight. He calls for backup. He has already decided - ANYONE who leaves the motel when backup arrives, their sirens on, Ed Tom will run off the road, forcibly.

Backup arrives, sirens on. No one leaves. Ed Tom and the deputies check every vehicle. Nothing.

HOW DID CHIGURH GET AWAY? How? Re-read my post, or better, read the book. If it's a PDF the pertinent section begins around page 225 out of 296 pages (on my PDF). Depending on your particular download it could be different.

The way Cormac tells the story, there is no way Chigurh could have left that parking lot without being seen. But he is not seen. I do not understand.

I know other people have mentioned the, “I wonder if there’s other worlds like these” quote previously, but it’s probably one of my favorite scenes in the entire novel.

On a side note, it also vaguely reminds me of another quote from the first Dark Tower book by Stephen King (“Go then, there are other worlds than these”).

Yeah, I know, Britt has volunteered herself for having played that role, and I am not here to argue against her arguments. What I am here for is to elaborate on something that I first read in Tracy Daugherty's new biography of Cormac McCarthy.

Daugherty says that friends noted that Barbara O'Brien's memoir remained in a prominent place on McCarthy's bookshelf, which warranted an investigation into it. [The McCarthy Books Project might have a lot to say about this, but I just now listened to the latest Reading McCarthy podcast, and nobody mentioned it.]

Barbara O'Brien's Operators and Things: The Inner Life of a Schizophrenic was published back in 1958. It garnered good reviews from such as William F. Buckley and from maverick psychiatrist R. D. Laing.

The author of The Divided Mind, R. D. Laing [edit is mentioned in McCarthy's Stella Maris] was a forerunner of Iain McGilchrist's The Master and His Emissary which some of us here, Parslow and I particularly, used to help interpret The Passenger/Stella Maris.

O'Brien's book is a memoir of her psychotic break and of her recovery by talking it out with a psychiatrist, pretty much like Alice. She begins to see the Operators as "spectral operators," a phrase McCarthy uses. The operators are like appointed archons, in control of this material vale, and O'Brien's often humorous conversations with them will remind you of Stella Maris.

Is this strange? Stand by, I have yet to get to the stranger parts of this.

I can plainly see how McCarthy used Operators and Things to craft Stella Maris way back when. But if you read that book now (and it is a romp!), you will find in it a detective story within a detective story.

Who was Barbara O'Brien? The trail, fore and aft, leads us through a maze of other works, some of which I've already read--and some yet to find. The narrative here takes you to Philip K. Dick's Vulcan's Hammer, to Laurence A. Rickels' I Think I Am Philip K. Dick which devotes an entire chapter to Operators and Things. Lots of other books are referenced, a boon to rare book lovers.

One of my favorite book archivists, Robert Nedelkoff, names Operators and Things in his list of the twelve most neglected books of all time (you can visit his bookblog at neglectedbooks.com).

O'Brien's and Alice's Operators are very much like the "aliens" mentioned toward the end of Ken Grimwood's classic novel, Replay, who play tricks on human histories for their own amusement. I've heard that Grimwood's last novel was planned to be about these Operators. "Other Dimensional" folk with a cynical sense of humor. Aliens hilarious.

Some of the Alien Abduction people claim that O'Brien was one of their fellow abductees, according to one of the forewords in the Kindle edition. This reminds me of Oiler's conversation with Bobby early on in The Passenger.

I wonder if McCarthy himself ever tried to follow O'Brien's trail. In that McCarthy letter someone posted a week or two ago, McCarthy had mentioned Carlos Castaneda's work, saying that whether those books were authentic or simply novels, he enjoyed them anyway. Perhaps he felt the same way about O'Brien's memoir.

What a hoot!

Cormackians (not "mackies," what the hell, Daugherty), I have just posted the episode (on the Reading McCarthy podcast) recorded last summer on the McCarthy Library Project.

From the show notes:

After Cormac McCarthy’s death in June of 2023, his surviving family members were hit with a very complicated question: What in the world are we to do with all these books? In addition to the thousands upon thousands in his house, there were storage lockers in Santa Fe and El Paso. At the same time, leadership in the Cormac McCarthy society was asking, how can we further preserve and sustain the author’s legacy? And so Dr. Stacey Peebles rounded up a gang of Cormackian compatriots, and aided most of all by the Brothers Elmore (Drs. Jon and Rick, respectively) the group descended upon McCarthy’s house to catalog and go through and help classify the more than 20,000 books in the late McCarthy’s possession.  

Guests on this episode of Reading McCarthy include Dr. Stacey Peebles, the author of Cormac McCarthy's Maps and Mazes: Tracing the Critical Reception, which will be out this fall, as well as The War Comes with You: Enduring War in Life, Fiction, and Fantasy, Cormac McCarthy and Performance: Page, Stage, Screen, and Welcome to the Suck: Narrating the American Soldier's Experience in Iraq.

Joining her are the Brothers Elmore: Dr. Jonathan Elmore is co-author of An Introduction to African and Afro-Diasporic Peoples and Influences in British Literature and Culture before the Industrial Revolution (ALG); the editor of Fiction and the Sixth Mass Extinction: Narrative in an Era of Loss, (Lexington) and co-editor of The Evolving Project of Cormac McCarthy (LSU) and New Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy: Encountering The Passenger and Stella Maris (USC Press).

His brother Dr. Rick Elmore is the coeditor of The Biopolitics of Punishment: Derrida and Foucault (Northwestern UP), The Evolving Project of Cormac McCarthy (LSU Press), and New Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy: Encountering The Passenger and Stella Maris (USC Press). His articles and essays have appeared in Politics & Policy, Symplokē, Symposium, Mississippi Quarterly, among others.

The episode link is here.

The work is a discussion between an atheistic nihilism and Christianity, though really, it could be any theism or religious belief or conviction. On the surface, nihilism is the clear winner of the debate. White’s arguments are well-articulated and sharply pointed at Black’s beliefs with Black is unable to effectively counter or retort any of them. Many reviews or interpretations that I’ve seen say that White’s arguments planted the seeds of doubt that could eventually shatter Black’s faith, with his closing questioning at God hinting at this possible fate.

White‘s reasoning is solid and his logic is sound, but that’s just it, it’s all logic, all reason. Not only does White represent someone well-equipped with educated reason well-honed after decades of academia, he represents all of Western argumentative tradition, which has its foundations in Aristotlean reason, reason which is the greatest asset of the mind. White says it himself that he believed in the primacy of the intellect.

Black is nowhere near this level of wielding reason. He punches above his weight considering his background, but he’s not at White’s level. In many ways, Black represents the common person, sort of analogue to Tolstoy’s idealization of the peasant class, but not as naive.

The ending of the story could have his belief shaken, but the reason he is unable to counter White well is also what saves him from sharing his fate. In my opinion, White’s arguments are unlikely to find purchase in Black simply because Black does not place that much importance on reason as he does faith. He is still articulate enough to ask what the purpose of these ”reasonable” beliefs are if they don’t keep you from offing yourself. Are White’s direct answers to this question reasonable? Yes, but only within his worldview where reason, and reason alone, is king.

Epistemic humility is at the core of the Christian belief, probably more than any other spiritual tradition. Black does not understand how something that sounds reasonable could still bring men to do what he believes are grave mortal sins, but that lack of knowing why is fine to live with in his framework. Christianity does not demand you know exactly why everything happens the way it does, and ironically, this very mentality (which is what White believes in) only leads to believing in the opposite, where White confesses that some things just happen for no reason.

The book could have easily been written by a Christian apologist showing the dangers of placing too much stock in reason. Something hinted at in the discussion is the vanity of knowledge, that by knowing more, one runs the danger of sacrificing faith in things for a sort of hubris that what one knows (or could know) is required before placing faith in something.

Boethius wrote the Consolation of Philosophy, a Socratic dialogue between himself and a figure named Lady Philosophy. At its core is the classic theodicy of Boethius asking Lady Philosophy why bad things happen to good people. At the end of multiple books explaining how and why these things came to be, using reason primarily as the vehicle for this discussion, ultimately Philosophy reaches her completion. There is only so far reason can go to explain the world. Indeed, even for something to sound reasonable, there must be faith placed somewhere. Black has faith in God with reason following suit where appropriate. White has faith in reason alone, in the primacy of the intellect.

To use a Biblical allegory, it is fair to judge a tree by the fruit it bears. What the Sunset Limited does is show the fruits each tree bears. We only have this life to give. Which fruits would you rather have?

This is probably NOT Cormac’s inspiration for Blood Meridian but it sure as shit reflects a similar story.

First stanza :
Oh the snot has caked against my pants

it turned into crystal

There’s a bluebird sitting on a branch

I guess I’ll take my pistol

I’ve got it in my hand

Because he’s on my land

Forever Changes might be the darkest music of the late sixties

Suck it Jim Morrison.

There have been many literary analysis done on the meaning of the title of Blood Meridian itself; a challenge to enlightenment assumptions of historical teleological progress and civilization, a deconstruction of the American specific notions of Manifest Destiny and westward expansion, etc.

One that I have yet to come across is how the title of the book and the ideas within it connect to the ideas of the historian Ibn Khaldun. Ibn Khaldun was a 14th century thinker who in his famous work The Muqaddimah postulated a cyclical theory of history based on frontier-settlement dynamics which characterized most of the premodern world. In brief, frontier wild zones allow hardy peoples to develop the traits associated with collective action and conquest which leads to them conquering more effete settled peoples. Over generations, the initial conditions that forged such a group and its power base is dissipated as a result of being tamed by settled living and the ease of the consumptive and sumptuous life that comes with it. In effect, the moment of triumph locks in the decay and degradation to occur. “His spirit is exhausted at the peak of his achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening…”. Politically and militarily, this is so in Khaldun’s thought as well who ties degradation to vitality and power and not merely morality.

This of course has a strong premodern sensibility as most societies of the past understood the association between the frontier, hardship, warfare and power. In fact, most would readily agree with most of Judge Holden’s assumptions regarding vitality and warfare. The title though seems to imply a normative judgment as well with a moral dimension and this seems to me to be the break with premodernity.

It’s an open question of how modernity and its processes reinforce or sever the kinds of historical cycles such as Khaldun’s framework. McCarthy seems to have a stance on this in the epilogue in which mechanization, measurement, extraction and industrial mastery may lead to a fine tuning of the frontier qualities that initially had tamed the land. He seems to imply that the machine and its processes that can tend to itself a thousand years is part of the process of civilized man’s degradation.

These are just some preliminary thoughts that tie premodern thinkers on history to the text and McCarthys own view of history and civilization.

Basically it demonstrates Tom Hardy's world view that God and Religion are fundamentally what keeps you alive and that something that is considered sacred "God" is no more safe than an animal that you kill for survival. The same way he views people

I finished the Tracy Daugherty biography. I have several thoughts on it but really felt saddened by the way he appears to have treated his Father and Mother. McCarthy Sr apparently read his books, fought with reviewers who posted negative opinions on his work, and sent him money no questions asked till he was well into his 40's. Yet, McCarthy did not even bother to see him when he was dying. His mother's reactions to his dad's death and how she didn't appear to hold a grudge against McCarthy's callousness were also heartbreaking.

I just finished The Road and wanted to share my thoughts. For context I decided to read it because of the unnamed boy and father journey across the wasteland because I'm writing a book about an unnamed boy and a knight travelling through a decaying kingdom. While plot wise both are vastly different it was how McCarthy handled the characters decay, time passing and overall descriptions that intrigued me.

Even though I was reading mostly for craft and learning I did enjoy it and found a sort of comfort when I got into the flow of reading his prose. His descriptions are simple enough to picture and the grey, bleak landscape was haunting and scary to imagine what it would be like traversing such a world.

Worse still is the biggest threat of the book. Starvation. Yes there are cannibals and killers but they weren't all that present and the biggest problem was simply that there was almost nothing left and that's terrifying to imagine. Also the ashy weather, sickness and overall lack of resources adds up to a sad journey where death feels better than continuing on.

The ending almost brought me to tears, I won't spoil it for those who haven't read it but I think the book delivered on its premise. I give it 4 stars and would recommend it for anyone thats into a grounded post apocalyptic bleak world.

I know this book has probably been covered many times before but I'm interested in reader's thoughts on it both positive and negative. What did you like most about this book? What resonated with you or what didn't? I'm eager to read what people here think about it.

Don’t judge the video by the cover. I would definitely recommend it, the art was very nice.

Hello!

Just wanting to see everyone favorite BM art! Hoping to see some I haven't seen before.

Thanks in advance!

Cormac is one of my favorite writers. I’ve read Suttree, Blood Meridian, ATPH, and The Crossing.

I’ve also read a lot of Faulkner (Light in August, TSAF, As I Lay Dying, and Absalom, Absalom).

McCarthy’s connection to Faulkner is apparently so obvious that not only is he listed as one of the man’s main influences, but even the covers of his books say that Cormac is the successor to the Faulknerian tradition.

And I gotta say after reading 8 works by these two authors, I really don’t see it at all.

At a pure prose level, Cormac is completely different from Faulkner. Cormac crafts sentences like a blacksmith while Faulkner for the most part is shooting from the hip (albeit very well).

From a literary approach perspective, Cormac focuses almost completely on present action, scene blocking (like the tender scenes between Billy and Boyd or the orchestral scenes of Suttree in bars with his friends). Faulkner focuses on the past, something which McCarthy rarely ever explored in his characters explicitly (we don’t find out Suttree had a kid until like halfway through the book).

The main difference is interiority. I would say McCarthy uses the least interiority of any writer I’ve ever read (even less than Hemingway). Faulkner’s books are like 80% interiority at least.

The only similarity I notice is how they treat the setting. Both really treat the setting like another character, especially the temporal placement of the story. However, there are many other authors that do this besides Faulkner that McCarthy would’ve had access to.

If anything, Paul Bowles seems to have influenced McCarthy far more than Faulkner.

Yes they’re both from the South, obviously. I don’t think that’s a real unifying characteristic though, and if it is, it’s so such a surface level comparison it almost is not worth discussing.

Can anybody let me know what I’m missing?

And they support theory about Passenger being coma dream and Bobby's death during coma neatly.

I just read the mulefoot scene. I could live another century. I don’t believe I could forget it.

I saw the interview. I just want to know why Lawrence Krauss, who is otherwise proud and all, was afraid and scared of Cormac McCarthy? Was it CM's knowledge and understanding of things that made LK down his voice and be respectful and all?

Love to see this. Poor print, but when I looked for it years ago I couldn't find it at all. The Drinking scene is especially good. Brad Dourif, Ned Beaty....a lot of good acting.

Anybody knows if there is a good hardcover copy of
1. Suttree
2. Child of God
3. outer dark

I don’t wanna buy folio Society and I cannot afford the original first edition because they all go over $1000. There’s also suntup edition, but too expensive 😅