site banner
bolido_sentimental  1yr ago (text post)   3348 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 25, 2022

Merry Christmas, everyone!

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Merry Christmas, everyone. So, what are you reading?

I'm starting Balaji Srinivasan's The Network State. From skimming it, it looks like it touches on lots of contemporary things.

Finished Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Enthralling despite the brutal subject matter, it had this kind of meditative cinematic quality. Probably half the allusions and references were over my head, but the stark account of events cut with poetic landscape paintings hit the spot. Days later I'm still turning over some of the chapters in my head.

I read it about four years ago. It is fantastic. I liked it much better than The Road. It is also the hardest book I've ever read, but I'm not a native English speaker, so that might be why.

Ben Nichols made an album inspired by it, but I feel like it completely misses the mark. I listened to the soundtrack for The Revenant a lot while reading it. It just captures the feeling of dread and despair so well.

If you have any thoughts on the ending, I would love to hear them. I've read a few interpretations online, but they are not really in line with my own understanding and I didn't find them very convincing either.

I like the Nichols album. Not for listening to it while reading, dear god, no, but I like it just as its own thing. A tribute to the book; not a soundtrack.

As for the ending, I have my thoughts on it, yes. And I'd like to type them out, but I fear I don't have the time right now. Here's the very short version, please excuse me if I fail to make sense:

  • The book is nominally and thematically about things reaching their meridian, i.e., the highest point, from which they must necessarily go down towards their ending. Many individuals and groups in the book have their high point or aristeia, then decline and end, usually painfully so. Even more others have already ended, and all we hear of is their bones or leftovers or not even that but only the narrator's speculation.

  • The kid is born for violence, and seemingly goes towards his own violent meridian together with the Glanton Gang, but then rejects this trajectory and selects a different one. For decades the man just wanders, an illiterate with his bible, a refugee from violence who yet attains some triumph, a different meridian, by managing to live in peace against his own nature and former trajectory for so long a time. Then he witnesses the slaughter of the pilgrims, hopes in vain to save the old woman, kills again even if in self-defence, and suddenly finds himself back on his old trajectory, but not on the ascent he was on as the Kid, and nowhere near the Meridian, but already at the very end, at which the Judge simply collects him as a matter of fact.

  • The post-digger striking sparks is the very earliest beginning of a different such arc. McCarthy often writes of carrying the fire, and the Glanton gang were in their ascendancy associated with fires, but here the fire is in its infancy - a spark, the smallest form of fire. The book followed one arc to its meridian and decline, and in doing so passed over the remains of many older arcs, and here we are given the image that even as all the arcs we followed joined the corpses and ruins, new ones yet begin.

Don't get me wrong, I like the album as well. I've been fond of Ben Nichols vocals ever since I heard the credits song to Take Shelter.

I pretty much agree with your take, except I don't think the man is at the end of his violent trajectory when he meets the judge in the bar.

I read the last chapter again, and what I was thinking of specifically was what went down in the outhouse after they meet and the dancing bear is killed. It is very vague, and some interpretations I've seen believes the Judge literally eats the Man and others that he just kills him. I don't really like either. I perceive the Judge as someone who the members of the gang places their guilt of their terrible deeds upon. The judge is the personification of the cruelty that every man is capable of. When the Man sees the Judge at the bar, it says

"He wore a round hat with a narrow brim and he was among every kind of man, herder and bullwhacker and drover and freighter and miner and hunter and soldier and pedlar and gambler and driver and drunkard and thief and he was among the dregs of the earth in beggary a thousand years and he was among the scapegrace scions of eastern dynasties and in all that motley assemblage he sat by them and yet alone as if he were some other sort of man entire and he seemed little changed or none in all these years."

You are right, that the Kid is born for violence and has been running from his violent tendencies personified as the judge.

After the bear is killed it says that some of the patrons are looking for the little girl who was crying over the dead bear as she is nowhere to be found. I take that as when the man enters the outhouse where the naked judge is waiting for him, he is consumed by the judge metaphorically speaking and kills the little girl in there.

The Kid is not a reliable narrator. There are multiple accounts of children ending up dead and it is strongly implied that the judge abuses and kills them, but my interpretation is that it is the kid who does it, but he absolves himself by letting the judge be responsible.

I don't know if it makes much sense and it might change when I read it again some day as most of the book is not very clear in my memory.

I think this requires a fair bit of reinterpretation of the story's events. I wondered about it while reading, but ultimately rejected it.

Evidence for: The Judge is more often seen counselling the gang, encouraging them, teaching them, but not seen committing the deeds himself. We see the aftermath and assume he is responsible. He is almost inhuman, impossibly skilled, knowledgeable, strong. His being the personification of evil/violence/war/his philosophy, he certainly doesn't seem real.

Evidence against: But on the other hand, he does act a fair bit himself and can't easily be removed. I'm not sure how to reassess scenes like the stand-off with Toadvine, Brown, Tobin, and the Kid toward the end without the Judge there as a real character. Holden negotiates on behalf of the gang with some of the more cultured/learned characters in the story. He teaches the gang how to make gunpowder, etc. Sure, these events could be waved away, but.. who did it then? Is that another aspect of Glanton's personality? If so, why is it the Judge the more intellectual, rational part rather than the violent, impulsive part that is still attributed to Glanton.

I thought it worked better if he was a real, though possibly supernatural character. The confrontation at the end is the two of them committing to their respective philosophies. The Judge again lectures the man on war and the way of the world. The man again rejects it. "You aint nothin".

The Judge will have him anyway, but not willingly.

I didn't mean to imply that the judge isn't real. I do think he is an actual person in the gang and possibly the worst of them all. I'm just not sure everything can be ascribed to him. It is not easy to reconcile and maybe even impossible on a second reading.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats