1 reactions
Blood Meridian ~ some thoughts
This is my second reading and I found it even more impactful than the first. The disorientation I had felt was gone. I knew what characters to focus on, I knew the setting, the rival parties, and the violence and bloodshed that lay ahead. I was forced to focus instead of being at a more comfortable arm’s length.
With all the horrible violence Blood Meridian is also full of beauty.
“All night the wind blew and the fine dust set their teeth on edge. Sand in everything, grit in all they ate. In the morning a urinecolored sun rose blearily through panes of dust on a dim world and without feature. The animals were failing. They halted and made a dry camp without wood or water and the wretched ponies huddled and whimpered like dogs.”
“They halted in the dark to recruit the animals and some of the men stowed their arms in the wagons for fear of drawing lightning and a man named Hayward prayed for rain.”
Subtle things like “and a man named Hayward prayed for rain” makes this basic sentence stand out for reasons I can’t really describe. Maybe it’s just a matter of flow and specificity.
This is a magnificent work of art. I don’t know that it’s my favorite of his works but it is undoubtedly his masterpiece.
Written at a time when the two modes of thought were the superiority of the white man and the noble savage Blood Meridian obliterates both myths. I don’t know that the book played any part in developing a more clear view of indigenous peoples and their relations with each other, Mexicans, and white settlers but it could have. For that reason among many others I consider Blood Meridian one of the great American novels.
Blood Meridian obliterates. It obliterates our conception of our nature, the myths of our nation, our very soul.
“Nothing moved in that high wilderness save the wind. They did not speak. They were men of another time for all that they bore christian names and they had lived all their lives in a wilderness as had their fathers before them. They'd learnt war by warring, the generations driven from the eastern shore across a continent, from the ashes at Gnadenhutten onto the prairies and across the outlet to the bloodlands of the west. If much in the world were mystery the limits of that world were not, for it was without measure or bound and there were contained within it creatures more horrible yet and men of other colors and beings which no man has looked upon and yet not alien none of it more than were their own hearts alien in them, whatever wilderness contained there and whatever beasts.”
From Wikipedia ~
The Gnadenhutten massacre, also known as the Moravian massacre, was the killing of 96 pacifist Moravian Christian Indians (primarily Lenape and Mohican) by U.S. militiamen from Pennsylvania, under the command of David Williamson, on March 8, 1782, at the Moravian missionary village of Gnadenhutten, Ohio Country, during the American Revolutionary War.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3841590071
This is my second reading and I found it even more impactful than the first. The disorientation I had felt was gone. I knew what characters to focus on, I knew the setting, the rival parties, and the violence and bloodshed that lay ahead. I was forced to focus instead of being at a more comfortable arm’s length.
With all the horrible violence Blood Meridian is also full of beauty.
“All night the wind blew and the fine dust set their teeth on edge. Sand in everything, grit in all they ate. In the morning a urinecolored sun rose blearily through panes of dust on a dim world and without feature. The animals were failing. They halted and made a dry camp without wood or water and the wretched ponies huddled and whimpered like dogs.”
“They halted in the dark to recruit the animals and some of the men stowed their arms in the wagons for fear of drawing lightning and a man named Hayward prayed for rain.”
Subtle things like “and a man named Hayward prayed for rain” makes this basic sentence stand out for reasons I can’t really describe. Maybe it’s just a matter of flow and specificity.
This is a magnificent work of art. I don’t know that it’s my favorite of his works but it is undoubtedly his masterpiece.
Written at a time when the two modes of thought were the superiority of the white man and the noble savage Blood Meridian obliterates both myths. I don’t know that the book played any part in developing a more clear view of indigenous peoples and their relations with each other, Mexicans, and white settlers but it could have. For that reason among many others I consider Blood Meridian one of the great American novels.
Blood Meridian obliterates. It obliterates our conception of our nature, the myths of our nation, our very soul.
“Nothing moved in that high wilderness save the wind. They did not speak. They were men of another time for all that they bore christian names and they had lived all their lives in a wilderness as had their fathers before them. They'd learnt war by warring, the generations driven from the eastern shore across a continent, from the ashes at Gnadenhutten onto the prairies and across the outlet to the bloodlands of the west. If much in the world were mystery the limits of that world were not, for it was without measure or bound and there were contained within it creatures more horrible yet and men of other colors and beings which no man has looked upon and yet not alien none of it more than were their own hearts alien in them, whatever wilderness contained there and whatever beasts.”
From Wikipedia ~
The Gnadenhutten massacre, also known as the Moravian massacre, was the killing of 96 pacifist Moravian Christian Indians (primarily Lenape and Mohican) by U.S. militiamen from Pennsylvania, under the command of David Williamson, on March 8, 1782, at the Moravian missionary village of Gnadenhutten, Ohio Country, during the American Revolutionary War.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3841590071
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