It is 1849 in the Southern reaches of Texas, and Captain White is on a civilising mission as he interviews the Kid for his army. He tells him about the "godless mongrel race" of Mexicans who had gone back on every signed treaty. Mexicans were beastly people with no industry, government or religion. Elucidating on these "degenerates" who were unfit to govern themselves, he tells the Kid that "enlightened Mexicans" were already asking for American intervention on their behalf. By the time Captain is finished with his high minded pitch, the Kid, nobody's fool, is ready with his own set of questions.
"What about a saddle?
Saddle?
Yessir.
You don't have a saddle?
No sir.
I thought you had a horse.
A mule.
I see."
Cormac McCarthy has always had a great ear for the dialogue, with humour coming from seemingly nutty conversations. This interview ends with the recruitment of the Kid with the promise of a horse, saddle, rifle, clothes and potential new farmland once Mexico is conquered and brought under American sovereignty.
That this "civilising mission" will end in disaster, either for the conqueror or for the conquered, is never really in doubt. In "Blood Meridian" however, these dialogues may seem a respite from the thoroughly bleak world that McCarthy creates so successfully.
This is the world of a rag tag band of murderers, who have been contracted to "protect" the Southern, border towns of America from the marauding bands of Apaches. There is a price for each dead Indian, measured in scalps and paid in hard cash. And every scalp counts, with neither age nor gender hindrance in cost or conscience. At the center of this band are two pivotal men - the Kid and the Judge - who provide the vital force to the novel.
The Judge is a heavily built, bald man, with not a single hair on his body, a veteran of Indian hunting expeditions. A complex and voluble personality, he is a man of science and reason, highly learned in both religious and secular literature, who enjoys liquor and dancing. He has a deranged, but highly developed, sense of morality, and spends considerable time philosophising about, when not actually, committing the murders. The Kid is his alter ego. Less than seventeen, of slight build but with large hands, he has fought his battles in streets and bars where knives and pistols come out in lost card games. His motivations, as in the conversation above, are apparently plain in terms of "gainful employment".
To the Judge's penetrating eyes however, the two are not very different, and when they meet years after they participated in unmitigated slaughter, he asks, "Was it always your idea that if you did not speak, you will not be recognised?"
------------------
McCarthy has always depicted the Southern rural landscape - the prairies and mountains and rivers and horses and wolves - very evocatively, embedding it in his sparsely peopled novels as an intrinsic character. In "Blood Meridian", this imagery gets transformed dramatically. In the prairie of blood soaked marauders, there is sand and grit and dust, with blood colouring even the sunrises and dusks. As he writes, in a numbing passage,
"In the morning a urinecolored sun rose blearily through panes of dust on a dim world and without feature."
The darkness is unremitting throughout, with passages abounding in death and squalor and debauchery. But this misery and violence is described with precision and detachment, but without sorrow or sentimentality. And humour, in rendering all the violence meaningless, is quite inimitable. One of the first street fights of the Kid is over crossing a thin plank, surrounded by mud and grime, to, of course, avoid muddying themselves. By the end of a short, lightly provoked, vicious fight, as both the survivors lie belly up in a pool of blood and mud, you wonder and chuckle about the stupidity of it all.
The capacity of the marauders, particularly as they become more and more adept in killing, to ruin any place is singularly striking. This is true not just for their victims, but their hosts and contractors as well. When they enter the city of Chihuahua after their murderous campaign, they are given a hero's welcome. As McCarthy describes in characteristic graphic prose,
"Small boys ran among the hooves and the victors in their gory rags smiled through the filth and the dust and the caked blood as they bore on poles the desiccated heads of the enemy through that fantasy of music and flowers".
They are followed through the streets by trumpeters and drummers, women fall over and touch them as if they are saints, and lavish parties are given to celebrate their homecoming. A month later, when they leave, with another "contract" in their bags, gold had run out, stores had closed, boulevards deserted and young girls kept indoors. McCarthy writes laconically, "...not even a dog followed them to the gates".
Running through this meanness and violence is the central concern that is probed with urgent inquiry - why do men kill? Most animals kill to eat, or to defend. Men kill for various reasons, mostly for money or food, but also in passion, fear and prejudice. What lies underneath is what psychologists and spiritualists call, peculiarly, "animalistic self", that lies dormant with desire to destroy and kill. But there is, of course, nothing "animalistic" about it. As the Judge argues persuasively, it is all too human. After all, the ritual of sacrifice, animal or human, is as old as the civilisation itself - with evidence of scalping found even in 300,000 years old fossils.
And it is all rooted in the need for the thrill and gamble of sports, the desire to beat and pin down the other. In the Judge's formulation, "War" is the ultimate sport of life and death. It is not about pride or honour. Honourable men die sooner in wars. It is about the kill.
It is also enticing to see, in this mad story, madness of a whole nation, built through aggressive expansion by settler colonialists. As the settlers expanded towards the West from the tiny Eastern settlements, these new men usurped land, created industries, and developed and sustained mythologies of free enterprise, race pride, and dignity of labour.
"Blood Meridian" is a dark, disconcerting novel, apocalyptic in scope, and written in fantastic, lyrical prose. McCarthy's style is complex, situated in the here and now, but with cadences of religious literature. I have read nothing quite like this, and doubt if anything comparable is there in all of literature. This is a great, must read, novel, which works at all levels, and which will sustain for all ages.
"What about a saddle?
Saddle?
Yessir.
You don't have a saddle?
No sir.
I thought you had a horse.
A mule.
I see."
Cormac McCarthy has always had a great ear for the dialogue, with humour coming from seemingly nutty conversations. This interview ends with the recruitment of the Kid with the promise of a horse, saddle, rifle, clothes and potential new farmland once Mexico is conquered and brought under American sovereignty.
That this "civilising mission" will end in disaster, either for the conqueror or for the conquered, is never really in doubt. In "Blood Meridian" however, these dialogues may seem a respite from the thoroughly bleak world that McCarthy creates so successfully.
This is the world of a rag tag band of murderers, who have been contracted to "protect" the Southern, border towns of America from the marauding bands of Apaches. There is a price for each dead Indian, measured in scalps and paid in hard cash. And every scalp counts, with neither age nor gender hindrance in cost or conscience. At the center of this band are two pivotal men - the Kid and the Judge - who provide the vital force to the novel.
The Judge is a heavily built, bald man, with not a single hair on his body, a veteran of Indian hunting expeditions. A complex and voluble personality, he is a man of science and reason, highly learned in both religious and secular literature, who enjoys liquor and dancing. He has a deranged, but highly developed, sense of morality, and spends considerable time philosophising about, when not actually, committing the murders. The Kid is his alter ego. Less than seventeen, of slight build but with large hands, he has fought his battles in streets and bars where knives and pistols come out in lost card games. His motivations, as in the conversation above, are apparently plain in terms of "gainful employment".
To the Judge's penetrating eyes however, the two are not very different, and when they meet years after they participated in unmitigated slaughter, he asks, "Was it always your idea that if you did not speak, you will not be recognised?"
------------------
McCarthy has always depicted the Southern rural landscape - the prairies and mountains and rivers and horses and wolves - very evocatively, embedding it in his sparsely peopled novels as an intrinsic character. In "Blood Meridian", this imagery gets transformed dramatically. In the prairie of blood soaked marauders, there is sand and grit and dust, with blood colouring even the sunrises and dusks. As he writes, in a numbing passage,
"In the morning a urinecolored sun rose blearily through panes of dust on a dim world and without feature."
The darkness is unremitting throughout, with passages abounding in death and squalor and debauchery. But this misery and violence is described with precision and detachment, but without sorrow or sentimentality. And humour, in rendering all the violence meaningless, is quite inimitable. One of the first street fights of the Kid is over crossing a thin plank, surrounded by mud and grime, to, of course, avoid muddying themselves. By the end of a short, lightly provoked, vicious fight, as both the survivors lie belly up in a pool of blood and mud, you wonder and chuckle about the stupidity of it all.
The capacity of the marauders, particularly as they become more and more adept in killing, to ruin any place is singularly striking. This is true not just for their victims, but their hosts and contractors as well. When they enter the city of Chihuahua after their murderous campaign, they are given a hero's welcome. As McCarthy describes in characteristic graphic prose,
"Small boys ran among the hooves and the victors in their gory rags smiled through the filth and the dust and the caked blood as they bore on poles the desiccated heads of the enemy through that fantasy of music and flowers".
They are followed through the streets by trumpeters and drummers, women fall over and touch them as if they are saints, and lavish parties are given to celebrate their homecoming. A month later, when they leave, with another "contract" in their bags, gold had run out, stores had closed, boulevards deserted and young girls kept indoors. McCarthy writes laconically, "...not even a dog followed them to the gates".
Running through this meanness and violence is the central concern that is probed with urgent inquiry - why do men kill? Most animals kill to eat, or to defend. Men kill for various reasons, mostly for money or food, but also in passion, fear and prejudice. What lies underneath is what psychologists and spiritualists call, peculiarly, "animalistic self", that lies dormant with desire to destroy and kill. But there is, of course, nothing "animalistic" about it. As the Judge argues persuasively, it is all too human. After all, the ritual of sacrifice, animal or human, is as old as the civilisation itself - with evidence of scalping found even in 300,000 years old fossils.
And it is all rooted in the need for the thrill and gamble of sports, the desire to beat and pin down the other. In the Judge's formulation, "War" is the ultimate sport of life and death. It is not about pride or honour. Honourable men die sooner in wars. It is about the kill.
It is also enticing to see, in this mad story, madness of a whole nation, built through aggressive expansion by settler colonialists. As the settlers expanded towards the West from the tiny Eastern settlements, these new men usurped land, created industries, and developed and sustained mythologies of free enterprise, race pride, and dignity of labour.
"Blood Meridian" is a dark, disconcerting novel, apocalyptic in scope, and written in fantastic, lyrical prose. McCarthy's style is complex, situated in the here and now, but with cadences of religious literature. I have read nothing quite like this, and doubt if anything comparable is there in all of literature. This is a great, must read, novel, which works at all levels, and which will sustain for all ages.
