Is this wrong? I don’t think so

I don’t want to think about politics. Who is an exceptional writer without immediately obvious politics? McCarthy.

Why not focus on a book of his that’s even better than The Road?? With living writers it isn’t so easy to gauge their prowess, so let’s just say I was contemplating writing about Heart of Darkness (the book the movie Apocalypse Now is based on) then I remembered! that Blood Meridian exists…

Oftentimes art has a subterranean effect on us. It causes pre-verbal sensations. This is why I like to look for secondary texts, because they tend to articulate feelings I didn’t know could be put into words. For example, McCarthy is also the writer of No Country for Old Men – are you able to put your experience of that film into words? Some people have a knack for that. (I know you’re at a loss for words when you think of No Country for Old Men).

You have to wonder to what extent authors are the characters they “create”. If you think of Judge Holden from Blood Meridian in this context- why isn’t McCarthy in prison?

So, in case you haven’t gotten to it yet, arguably one of the best novels of recent times (1985) is about a gang of scalp-hunters.

Is this not true?

Certainly the book has taken a mysterious grip on many of its readers.

There are lots of novels that haven’t been made into a movie (yet) so they lack a certain cultural currency, one that is only understood by a small “cult” following. PKD’s Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said is better than “Blade Runner” for instance. I bet some people want to raise their fists over that judgment.

“Why does this nazi understand America better than I do? Wahhh!” Funny you ask that.

Okay, spoiler alert- don’t read any further if you haven’t read the book (it’s not one you want to have ruined for you).

The Tarot scene

The card the kid chooses is of special importance: the “Cuatro de copas,” the four of cups [which] is designated, in kabbalistic interpretations of the tarot, by the Hebrew word “chesed,” which is translated “mercy”. One answer to the question “Why does the judge destroy the kid?” is that McCarthy has twice associated the kid with a card whose symbolism suggests a divided heart and has generally associated him with the quality of mercy.

Judge Holden accuses the kid of “clemency for the heathen”.

Oh, I thought I wasn’t going to get political here, rats.

Your family is going to get scalped and EATEN- you have mercy for these savages, kid?

The Native American reservations of today aren’t… teepees, are they? Without people like Holden they still would be.

Glanton’s gang represents the imperial spirit. It can even be seen as the spread of “high culture” through violence. Holden himself was based on a real guy. He is described as “by far the best educated man in Northern Mexico”. He was one of those psychopath geniuses, a musician who was also an expert on archaeology, geology, military tactics, and chemistry.

Okay let me repeat something now

Certainly the book has taken a mysterious grip on many of its readers.

“That’s not me, that’s not why I love this book!” Yeah right.

This is one of the bloodiest books you can think of. It brings out your inner psycho, just admit it.

That’s why they say they haven’t made a movie out of it yet, though it has been tried- because it’s too violent, too dark. Crappy reasons if you ask me. Isn’t that right, Sugar?

One of the two new novels being released at the end of the year features McCarthy’s first female protagonist, so that might be interesting. Just what we need, right?

Anyway, did you catch this occult side to the book?

The [Tarot] cards drawn in this pivotal reading leak their symbols and allusions into the whole of the story.

I have to reread it for this Kabbalistic idea alone

the pillars of Mercy and Severity…These opposites are in many instances represented in the world of the kid and the judge.

They’re a bit like you and me, huh?

McCarthy quotes Böhme in his epigraphs so that itself alerts one that something hermetic is to follow.

The section of Böhme it’s taken from includes references to Lucifer. Is Holden Lucifer or are the ones he scalps? The progmind seems lowkey schizophrenic in the face of this type of question.

He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.

For the judge, war is a dance. One of the most well-remembered lines from Blood Meridian is when the judge says war is god.

Are the zogprogs Putin is scalping a type of cannibal Apache? He is dancing, dancing.

When a novel initially “hits” you I speculate all of the above knowledge about it and more is experienced through the emotions. You already felt the mercy and severity there, just not in words.

Here are some words

Holden, as mentioned above, walks through fire (96). McCarthy includes a paragraph in which he writes that “each fire is all fires” and “does contain within it something of men themselves”

Burning down the villages of savages to build something better there – not a thought you’ve ever had.

Would this beautiful work of art be published in a time like today when the Washington Redskins have to change their name? If I were to watch me some foozball I’d be rooting for a team with the most Judge Holdens on it, frankly. I like my philosophers that way too. Most things in the world don’t deserve ~mercy~. The poor one-teardrop-rolling Native Amewicans were essentially Satanic cults. Kind of like most of our media! SCALP! They’ll be scalping you first if you don’t.

I’m really starting to see the injuns in our progs

John C. Cremony writes of the Apaches: “Deceit is regarded among them with the same admiration we bestow upon one of the fine arts” (86). “Cheating,” Dodge writes, is a “recognized part of all games among all Indians,”

As I’ve shown, drawing from Heisman’s study, this is truer than people want to think. Saxon serf mindset —> turdworldified white mindset

It verily is a return to the America as we found it.

-whispers- You’re living in it.

Yeah anyway cool, I thought McCarthy was going to drop dead before publishing anything else, he’s 88.