Blood Meridian is hands down my favorite book of all time. With every re-read, there’s always some nuance I never picked up on previously - in this case it was everything you touched upon in this video. Please do more!
Agreed - there are so many different lenses through which to read this novel. It gets more complicated each time I reread it as well! Thanks for watching!
Your podcast is fascinating and deserved a replay or three. It gives an incredible taste of medieval mythology that McCarthy was well aware but I wasn’t. Thanks for multiple references and please “Ride On”🤠
This was such an interesting perspective! Great video! I’ve only read Blood Meridian once but I can’t wait to read it again to see what I can decipher from it. This was awesome 👏
Thank you!! I loved your video on Blood Meridian from a year or so ago. There's so much to unpack in this book, so I'm glad I could offer a bit of a different perspective.
Excellent video man! You went really deep with the analysis. A lot of ambiguity is in Blood Meridian but there definitely is an archaic nature to the text.
I did an attempt read of The Name of the Rose after I read Blood Meridian. I found NOTR more difficult because I'm not very well versed in Medievalism or that section of history, plus I don't know Latin so it became tedious looking for translations online. Anyway, around that time I also noticed some overlap in themes between McCarthy & Eco. The postmodern perspectives & statements on human nature, especially the attention given to theodicy . The ambiguity, the obsession with historical realism. The philosophical waxing through self-interrogation & dialogue. They're both such different works that attack similar questions from seperate angles. Also last thing, what did you say in those old English languages? That was absolutely beautiful and what originally sparked my comment. Anyway God bless. 🙏🏻
I still need to get to The Name of the Rose - it sounds right up my alley! I just recited the opening lines to Beowulf in old English and the opening lines to Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. Thank you!
Bro, i'm also a medievalist. Great video! I'm from Brazil and I study medieval history in graduate school. your video is a pleasant surprise, because I recently read Blood Meridian and I was thinking about how McCarthy uses the Middle Ages. Metaphors are struggles. He Associates Judge Holden with a Djin, for example. It uses metaphors about gnomes, witches and wizards. You gave me an idea for an article. I hope I can do something different than what the other essays have already done.
Great to meet another medievalist! I'm glad to know I'm not the only one thinking about the various ways that McCarthy embeds his novels with the "medieval." There are definitely a lot different research paths one could take with this topic. I'm interested to hear what you're thinking about -- my email is in my channel "about" section.
Well this was great. I love _Blood Meridian_ but had never thought of the medieval imagery as a consistent or thematic through line in the story. Please do the other video you proposed.
Thank you, Brian! As a Texan, I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on Blood Meridian. It's a personal favorite of mine - I'll definitely make more videos on Blood Meridian and the "Epic" genre that I think he's drawing on!
Thank you for this talk. Just finished reading Michael Lynn Crews's book, and now want to track down the papers you've recommended. I say this without a medievalist background or any academic background at all: much of what you discussed resonated with me. Your interpretation sits well with things I've sat with each time I read Blood Meridian, but haven't been able to positively identify -- which is a tough thing to describe. I've always felt that, as crude and thorny as it sounds, it was Glanton above all who was written, in a kind of strictly formal sense, heroic. Even rather knight-like. Of course, which you spoke to, in McCarthy's hands this figure is artfully altered, corrupted, inverted (like the Chariot card, ??) and made hellish by the journey and its cause, almost beyond comprehension. But the figure is still all there, ruined and yet somehow more there -- at least in my reading of it. Before the "Old Ephraim" episode there is a brief passage where Glanton took an aspen leaf seemingly out of the air as it shimmered and fell, turned it by the stem "and held it and let it fall and its perfection was not lost on him." ... it is one of the more sublime images in the story, for me. The kid and the judge elicit serious critical attention for great and obvious reasons, but I haven't come across very much scholarship concerning Glanton the character in this regard, or almost any regard apart from his biographical reality. Have you? Thanks again. Good stuff here.
Thanks for watching and for your thoughtful comment (please forgive the late reply - I completely missed your comment)! Glanton as a kind of Knight-errant is a really interesting thesis that I'll need to think on more, but I think you're onto something here. There's certainly a comparison to be made between how people like Glanton were valorized in his time, much like how a knight on a quest in a Romance would be as they went and slaughtered "infidels" and "Saracens" in the East. (In fact, the part of this video that I ended up cutting compared the campaign of the Glanton gang to the Old French La Chanson de Roland -- my thoughts were half-baked, which is why I cut it, but I do think there's something there worth exploring). I don't recall coming across any articles that really focus in only on Glanton. I suspect that the kid and the judge are more tantalizing characters to focus on, but I think you're right to suggest that this is a major gap in thinking about BM. If I come across anything on Glanton specifically, I'll let you know. He's an interesting character in his own right, not just as the sort of hands to the judge's brain.
Very interesting topic. Blood Meridian was a 5 star read for me and I hadn’t picked up on any of that, really. I already thought the allegories and smiles were good. And yeah, the main take away from Blood Meridian was that he absolutely hated white supremacy and was the most critical fictional text I’d read at the time about that time period; typically much beloved by Americans. It felt very explicit to me, despite not knowing European history much at all. Fantastic video and concept!
Thank you, Fraser! The "problem" with Blood Meridian is that there's SO much to pick up on. I don't know if the medieval aspect of it is even close to the most important thematic through-lines of the novel, but it's just one that I particularly like. Completely agree with your assessment - it seems like many people misread Blood Meridian... As you say, I think he's deeply critical of a lot of "American mythology."
@@travelthroughstories yeah, I think every single book I’ve read of him so far absolutely abhors the glorification of the western and if anything his stuff is something like post-westerns, because they feel like a direct reaction to the western in culture. Even No Country For Old Men had zero interest in playing to nationalism. But I’m sure those people who think it’s racist would just say something like “it fails, then”. Because no one likes to admit their reading is so influenced by their own intentions.
@@SpringboardThought I really like the term "post-Western" that you used rather than "anti-Western," which I usually hear! I think you're right, too - McCarthy likes to piss off both the Right and the Left... I think there's plenty to criticize him for (eg, he tends to forget that ~50% of the population exists as most of his books are devoid of women...), but I greatly admire his books either way!
@@travelthroughstories ah yeah! I’ve only read three of his so far. But I have the borderland? Trilogy Everyman edition. The one with All The Pretty Horses in it, as well as The Road. So I’m sure I’ll be finding some of that out!
@@travelthroughstories As for the relative dearth of women in 'Blood Meridian', this is consistent with the bias for male characters found throughout Westerns. Not to mention this is reflective of the realities of much of the existence on the American frontier, where men did often endure substantial periods bereft of or distant from women.
Excellent video! You have a very strong clarity in your explanations that makes you easy to listen to. Did you ever end up making those videos you mentioned about the medieval epic and beowulf in their comparisons to BM?
Thank you for the kind words! I never did make subsequent videos, primarily because I decided to save some of that information if I ever decide to turn this idea into an actual journal article.
I got a lot out of your presentation, and you persuaded me of your core thesis --- European medievalism has been strangely transplanted to the new world in McCarthy's narrative. No one else I've listened to has picked up on this, and you surveyed the evidence compellingly! On entirely another point, you referred many times to capitalism as the Glanton gang's motive. Capitalism is prone to being criticized reflexively in academic circles, whether due to Marx's legacy or other influences, and I agreed when you said that greed exists apart from capitalism. In fact, capitalism is the practice of allowing freely operating markets to set prices. That is, it really has nothing to do with greed at all (apart from permitting it as a motive to buy, sell or trade), and certainly "wanting money" is an impulse entirely separate from capitalism. The Glanton gang weren't trading in an open market for scalps, their income was government subsidized. The desire for money in communist countries is certainly legendary, it is merely centrally apportioned (and thus reduced in total amount, as well). My point here is to use terms like capitalism carefully, similarly to how you use other terms studiously and circumspectly.
Fair point! I forgot what I even said here regarding capitalism, but it was certainly half-baked -- I do think McCarthy is exploring and critiquing American-style capitalism (as he does in most of his novels, esp. NCFOM...), but I probably didn't articulate it effectively here. Thanks for the thoughtful critique!
I am here for anything about this book! What an interesting take you have here with your background. I wonder how many other books have these imagery that i have just never picked up on. Wonderful video man, I'd love more like this!
Thanks, Brandon! Blood Meridian is one of my favorite books - every time I reread it I get so much new stuff out of it. I saw it on your bookshelf in one of your videos as well. Eager to hear your thoughts on BM some day!
Thanks for this fascinating video. I have to admit I had to check out Cormac McCarthy first. I think all stories are somehow rooted in old stories and sagas.
Thanks so much, Karin! Absolutely agree - my favorite kinds of books are the ones that are explicitly "rooted" in those stories. It adds so many more layers to the story!
You mention an older video where you stand by the decision or Argument but recommend not watching it as the presentation was off as one of your first videos….. yeeeep! I wonder how many of my older videos will creep towards that feeling for me too 😂
The Luke William Mills paper that I referenced is, I believe, the only paper that really digs into McCarthy's medievalism in Blood Meridian. Rick Wallach briefly touches on a few implicit references to Beowulf in a paper on the "demystification of the martial code," but he doesn't really dig too deeply into the comparison. There are a few other papers that touch on the "medieval dream visions" and how McCarthy makes use of it by AL Bourne and Christopher T. White, though the latter just mentions medieval dream visions in passing. Lastly, I believe there was a Master's Thesis a few years ago that did a comparative analysis of some medieval literature and All the Pretty Horses. Unless I've missed something that has come out in the past ~6 months, I think that's it.
Very interesting, now I have to watch the other video you mentioned. I haven't read any of the medieval stuff, I find them boring, maybe coz I have seen some of those movies and series (I can't stand queens and kings - esp English). But this gives a completely different view of the book - i knew white supremacy thing, but this is very interesting, many thanks.
Thank you, Abhilash! Fair enough - for what it's worth, I also dislike 99% of "medieval" movies. There are very few modern renditions of the Western medieval world that I find tolerable. The actually medieval literature, on the other hand, I quite like, though I can see why you may find it boring!
Saying feudalism is the result of human greed is pretty strange. There's a reason Marx and Engels considered it a form of socialism, albeit a 'backwards' kind. It is especially strange to say considering socialism as a world-historical force and ideological movement has its origins in the breakdown of the medieval order via the privatization of the commons and the subsequent proletarianization of Europe's peasantry. Say what you will about the medieval order, but peasants of that epoch were not expendable in the way 19th century factory workers were, a la a Charles Dickens novel. There was a mutual interdependence between groups of people. As for capitalism being the result of human greed, sure, but human greed is a constant and to state this as a point of analysis obscures the socio-structural and productive changes which produced it, which should not be neglected if one actually wants a high-resolution analysis or if one wants to avoid being like the Gang-of-Four in China who imagined a country could transition to communism in poverty if only they clenched their fists hard enough and were ideologically committed enough. An inattention to the development of the productive forces as a prerequisite to a new socialist order is what makes modern progressives so unable to comprehend historical socialist states and so unable to affect real change, in part.
It's an interesting although not altogether convincing interpretation. If Blood Meridian is anti-capitalist, it certainly isn't for the reasons you say. Take the Yuma Ferry as an example. You've got a ferry that charges a toll to cross a river. That's a transaction that's decidedly capitalist. But then the Glanton gang arrives, stages an attack, backstabs the attackers, all to insert themselves into what was prior to their arrival an honest business. This isn't so much anti-capitalist as it is a critique on the "manifest destiny" "go west" mentality of the time. And that's really what the book is about. It's an examination of the American West and subjugation of wills that led to some of the most brutal carnage in recent memory. I think you'd do well to read about what Cormac McCarthy said about the book, and review the source material he put into the book. When you say it's a deconstruction of Medievalism or stories of that time, as an American I think so what. But when I view this book as an examination of the brutal past of my country, and the amoral (in the literal sense of the world) mindset, it gives me great pause.
I can't believe that Cormac would be criticized for his depiction of race issues, when I thought he pulled off a masterpiece against manifest destiny. He made the Comanches look very very cool, and by the time they come over the hill, well... ok I, me personally was floored by that scene, because this band of White's weirdos were so bad, and so horrifying, that when those Comanches come over the horizon and show up, they are amazing to me, almost like knights in shining armor, or something. He also shows the horrific treatment of people that includes some total weirdo showing up with a black mean's heart in his bag. This is before the "savages" come. So he's setting it up for us to understand, that if we want to talk about how brutal some tribes were, we need to put it in to this context where white people scalped and carried around HEARTS and wore EAR necklaces. Carmac's book would be called W O K E today. Sometimes I wonder if Beloved was a rejoinder to Blood Meridian. I wonder if Toni was so moved by it, she added the slave story and fleshed out his themes, answering the questions of trauma and memory. Instead of leaning in to the nebulous mysteries of life, she leaned in to rolling out the blue prints for trauma, how it happens and its effects. Those two novels go together for me. Only the reader gets to think about the ideologies though, the characters just die. They learned nothing. I guess if White specifically said they can't lose because of god, then ok, I get it. Maybe it hit him as it hit him ha. But honestly it just was a band of people was just going to get some land. They planned on a massacre of their own, even if he did cloak what he said and mocked reality with the statement he was going to civilize these Mexicans, or whatever. I cannot believe anyone would take those words as if that was part of the plan and not just this horrible person lying his ass off and being smug and punchable,
You thought it was cool when they sodomized the dying men? Or when they slaughtered infants and children? When they placed the infants on the tree? I think your racism is tainting your view of the story. It is downright insane to view them as any kind of "knight in shining armor."
24:00 This usage of the term capitalism is frustrating. Capitalism is just voluntary exchange. It has nothing to do with killing. Murdering your competitors isn't capitalism.
People are greedy outside of capitalism, but capitalism forces people to act in certain ways and rewards greed above all else. The Judge ends up rich and totally above the law. That's the feature of capitalism, not a bug. Capitalism forces individual greed to the top of the hierarchy, and community to the very bottom. This is the inevitable way of capitalism, unless extremely regulated, and protective laws enacted to control it's monopolistic, murderous, unavoidable fate.
But ok, how do I word this. Why can't it be that McCarthy was referencing Spanish, you know, their brutal history, the Spanish Inquisition or simply the great literature that came in the 1600's Don Quixote and others. I know they are considered "Europe" too, but it seems like an omission, considering this is Mexico, and literature and ... such. Are you literally talking about Spain but just keep saying Europe?
This book is an sickening examination on racism. Horrific, projecting racism on multiple levels, without morality. Just horrific, sickening, presentation of it. The USA has a sick history, and is deeply stained by it still today. That resonates so strongly in the book.
Didn't realize how much of it was medieval. Gets my personal puny worthless vote for the great American novel of the 20th century. 19th century definitely goes to Moby Dick. They share a lot of themes Moby Dick is on the ocean Blood Meridian is in the frontier. Both young men with nothing better to do in their lives than seek rugged adventure and gets caught up in a battle of good vs evil.
@@travelthroughstories Oh wow thank you for responding! I'm glad there are people like you out there keeping literature alive. I don't get to talk about them much and these vids keep me going!
You're reaching a bit by suggesting that the author is somehow deconstructing 'Whiteness' in that passage. I chalk that up to a deconstrctionalist worldview and a critical view of history. Whats more likely is the allusion that death takes all, even the mighty 'White man' and his dreams of taming a continent...even a chouvanistic Captain of white Saxon men. Death is indiscriminate. It takes all. I recall various appropriated western garb within the march of the horribles passage, including a bloody wedding veil. What else seems presesent is the ghastly Amerindian horde as a representation of the forces of the so called natural world and Death's naturality within it. In the text the filibustering crew is dismembered, butchered, raped, scalped, etc but the tone is one of indifference. That is to say violence is as natual as breathing in the view of the author.
Did you just forget about Moby Dick? It's beyond egregious that you spend 30 minutes talking Blood Meridian and neglect to discuss Melville's classic, which is a principle influence of this work and an American classic that serves as a tremendous literary accomplishment. It essentially renders your entire analysis null and void.
LOL, what? What does Moby-Dick have to do with "medievalism in Blood Meridian"? This isn't an analysis of Blood Meridian as a whole. It's an discussion of how and why McCarthy uses medievalism in Blood Meridian.
@@travelthroughstories I mean to really understand even your "discussion" of the novel, you'd have to go to the source material for the book, especially if you're going to make the claim that the author "consciously" wrote the story in a certain way. That'd be my expectation at least in order to foster and put forth any kind of inspiring argument. I'd be legit interested to know if you have any accounting for this, or if you're really just opting to self-affirm your theory. I find it interesting because the the plot isn't really even a driving force of the book. It really feels like the characters are almost passengers. I'm surprised you didn't really pick up on that frankly. Anyway you seem to take things a little to personally for my liking, especially as presumably some kind of academic.
@Philasoma Michael Lynn Crews lists, at the least, 32 direct source texts for BM. We could add dozens more quite easily. Am I to mention them all before getting to my specific focus/argument? This video was meant to discuss some aspects of BM that very few people talk about (only one person has published on it). Everyone knows about the Melville connection - it couldn't be more obvious. Focusing on other aspects of the novel is ok.
@@travelthroughstories Dang you're a pretty angry individual. Like I said, I'm still learning and beginning my literary adventures so I like learning different perspectives. But I guess I'll have to look elsewhere for nuanced, interesting discussion. And I'll definitely check out your sources in hope for that kind of discussion. Good luck on your channel.
@@philasoma It just seems like a very strange critique given the title and topic of this video. I'm just responding in tone towards your original comment which argued that this entire discussion is "null and void" and that it is "beyond egregious" that I didn't mention a text that has nothing to do with the specific topic. I'm more than happy to have a nuanced discussion, but your original comment comes across as being rather adversarial and dismissive. Best of luck on your studies -- if you're looking for any second resources on BM, I'm more than happy to help point in some general directions.
Definitely allows me to appreciate this novel on another level. Bravo, brother!
Thanks man! There really are just so many levels to this novel. It's nice to be able to approach it through different lenses.
Blood Meridian is hands down my favorite book of all time. With every re-read, there’s always some nuance I never picked up on previously - in this case it was everything you touched upon in this video.
Please do more!
Agreed - there are so many different lenses through which to read this novel. It gets more complicated each time I reread it as well! Thanks for watching!
Your podcast is fascinating and deserved a replay or three. It gives an incredible taste of medieval mythology that McCarthy was well aware but I wasn’t. Thanks for multiple references and please “Ride On”🤠
Thank you very much for watching!
This was such an interesting perspective! Great video! I’ve only read Blood Meridian once but I can’t wait to read it again to see what I can decipher from it. This was awesome 👏
Thank you!! I loved your video on Blood Meridian from a year or so ago. There's so much to unpack in this book, so I'm glad I could offer a bit of a different perspective.
Excellent video man! You went really deep with the analysis. A lot of ambiguity is in Blood Meridian but there definitely is an archaic nature to the text.
Thanks man! Glad you enjoyed it. Blood Meridian revels in ambiguity, as the best books do!
I did an attempt read of The Name of the Rose after I read Blood Meridian. I found NOTR more difficult because I'm not very well versed in Medievalism or that section of history, plus I don't know Latin so it became tedious looking for translations online. Anyway, around that time I also noticed some overlap in themes between McCarthy & Eco. The postmodern perspectives & statements on human nature, especially the attention given to theodicy . The ambiguity, the obsession with historical realism. The philosophical waxing through self-interrogation & dialogue. They're both such different works that attack similar questions from seperate angles. Also last thing, what did you say in those old English languages? That was absolutely beautiful and what originally sparked my comment. Anyway God bless. 🙏🏻
I still need to get to The Name of the Rose - it sounds right up my alley! I just recited the opening lines to Beowulf in old English and the opening lines to Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. Thank you!
Bro, i'm also a medievalist. Great video! I'm from Brazil and I study medieval history in graduate school. your video is a pleasant surprise, because I recently read Blood Meridian and I was thinking about how McCarthy uses the Middle Ages. Metaphors are struggles. He Associates Judge Holden with a Djin, for example. It uses metaphors about gnomes, witches and wizards. You gave me an idea for an article. I hope I can do something different than what the other essays have already done.
If you can, lets get in touch.
Great to meet another medievalist! I'm glad to know I'm not the only one thinking about the various ways that McCarthy embeds his novels with the "medieval." There are definitely a lot different research paths one could take with this topic. I'm interested to hear what you're thinking about -- my email is in my channel "about" section.
Well this was great. I love _Blood Meridian_ but had never thought of the medieval imagery as a consistent or thematic through line in the story. Please do the other video you proposed.
Thank you, Brian! As a Texan, I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on Blood Meridian. It's a personal favorite of mine - I'll definitely make more videos on Blood Meridian and the "Epic" genre that I think he's drawing on!
Thank you for this talk. Just finished reading Michael Lynn Crews's book, and now want to track down the papers you've recommended.
I say this without a medievalist background or any academic background at all: much of what you discussed resonated with me. Your interpretation sits well with things I've sat with each time I read Blood Meridian, but haven't been able to positively identify -- which is a tough thing to describe.
I've always felt that, as crude and thorny as it sounds, it was Glanton above all who was written, in a kind of strictly formal sense, heroic. Even rather knight-like. Of course, which you spoke to, in McCarthy's hands this figure is artfully altered, corrupted, inverted (like the Chariot card, ??) and made hellish by the journey and its cause, almost beyond comprehension. But the figure is still all there, ruined and yet somehow more there -- at least in my reading of it. Before the "Old Ephraim" episode there is a brief passage where Glanton took an aspen leaf seemingly out of the air as it shimmered and fell, turned it by the stem "and held it and let it fall and its perfection was not lost on him." ... it is one of the more sublime images in the story, for me. The kid and the judge elicit serious critical attention for great and obvious reasons, but I haven't come across very much scholarship concerning Glanton the character in this regard, or almost any regard apart from his biographical reality. Have you?
Thanks again. Good stuff here.
Thanks for watching and for your thoughtful comment (please forgive the late reply - I completely missed your comment)! Glanton as a kind of Knight-errant is a really interesting thesis that I'll need to think on more, but I think you're onto something here. There's certainly a comparison to be made between how people like Glanton were valorized in his time, much like how a knight on a quest in a Romance would be as they went and slaughtered "infidels" and "Saracens" in the East. (In fact, the part of this video that I ended up cutting compared the campaign of the Glanton gang to the Old French La Chanson de Roland -- my thoughts were half-baked, which is why I cut it, but I do think there's something there worth exploring).
I don't recall coming across any articles that really focus in only on Glanton. I suspect that the kid and the judge are more tantalizing characters to focus on, but I think you're right to suggest that this is a major gap in thinking about BM. If I come across anything on Glanton specifically, I'll let you know. He's an interesting character in his own right, not just as the sort of hands to the judge's brain.
The warning not to become the monster you’re fighting. That Glanton was the one mesmerized by the Aspen leaf frankly caught me off guard.
Very interesting topic. Blood Meridian was a 5 star read for me and I hadn’t picked up on any of that, really. I already thought the allegories and smiles were good. And yeah, the main take away from Blood Meridian was that he absolutely hated white supremacy and was the most critical fictional text I’d read at the time about that time period; typically much beloved by Americans. It felt very explicit to me, despite not knowing European history much at all.
Fantastic video and concept!
Thank you, Fraser! The "problem" with Blood Meridian is that there's SO much to pick up on. I don't know if the medieval aspect of it is even close to the most important thematic through-lines of the novel, but it's just one that I particularly like. Completely agree with your assessment - it seems like many people misread Blood Meridian... As you say, I think he's deeply critical of a lot of "American mythology."
@@travelthroughstories yeah, I think every single book I’ve read of him so far absolutely abhors the glorification of the western and if anything his stuff is something like post-westerns, because they feel like a direct reaction to the western in culture. Even No Country For Old Men had zero interest in playing to nationalism. But I’m sure those people who think it’s racist would just say something like “it fails, then”. Because no one likes to admit their reading is so influenced by their own intentions.
@@SpringboardThought I really like the term "post-Western" that you used rather than "anti-Western," which I usually hear! I think you're right, too - McCarthy likes to piss off both the Right and the Left... I think there's plenty to criticize him for (eg, he tends to forget that ~50% of the population exists as most of his books are devoid of women...), but I greatly admire his books either way!
@@travelthroughstories ah yeah! I’ve only read three of his so far. But I have the borderland? Trilogy Everyman edition. The one with All The Pretty Horses in it, as well as The Road. So I’m sure I’ll be finding some of that out!
@@travelthroughstories As for the relative dearth of women in 'Blood Meridian', this is consistent with the bias for male characters found throughout Westerns. Not to mention this is reflective of the realities of much of the existence on the American frontier, where men did often endure substantial periods bereft of or distant from women.
Listening to this again, I really understand it better now
Love the 'Books Are Made Out of Books' on your shelf
That book is an excellent reference guide that I always have nearby when I read McCarthy!
Great points ! Really enjoyed your video and that's coming from a hardcore blood meridian fanatic
Thank you! Blood Meridian is so sprawling and there are so many different ways to approach it. Glad you enjoyed this lens!
This guy is a great source of information not just attitude or cynicism
Excellent video! You have a very strong clarity in your explanations that makes you easy to listen to. Did you ever end up making those videos you mentioned about the medieval epic and beowulf in their comparisons to BM?
Thank you for the kind words! I never did make subsequent videos, primarily because I decided to save some of that information if I ever decide to turn this idea into an actual journal article.
This is a very engaging analysis. Subscribed. Looking forward to exploring the rest of your videos.
Thank you so much for watching!
This was really eye opening. Thank you!
Excellent insights man
Thank you!
I got a lot out of your presentation, and you persuaded me of your core thesis --- European medievalism has been strangely transplanted to the new world in McCarthy's narrative. No one else I've listened to has picked up on this, and you surveyed the evidence compellingly!
On entirely another point, you referred many times to capitalism as the Glanton gang's motive. Capitalism is prone to being criticized reflexively in academic circles, whether due to Marx's legacy or other influences, and I agreed when you said that greed exists apart from capitalism. In fact, capitalism is the practice of allowing freely operating markets to set prices. That is, it really has nothing to do with greed at all (apart from permitting it as a motive to buy, sell or trade), and certainly "wanting money" is an impulse entirely separate from capitalism. The Glanton gang weren't trading in an open market for scalps, their income was government subsidized. The desire for money in communist countries is certainly legendary, it is merely centrally apportioned (and thus reduced in total amount, as well). My point here is to use terms like capitalism carefully, similarly to how you use other terms studiously and circumspectly.
Fair point! I forgot what I even said here regarding capitalism, but it was certainly half-baked -- I do think McCarthy is exploring and critiquing American-style capitalism (as he does in most of his novels, esp. NCFOM...), but I probably didn't articulate it effectively here. Thanks for the thoughtful critique!
I am here for anything about this book! What an interesting take you have here with your background. I wonder how many other books have these imagery that i have just never picked up on. Wonderful video man, I'd love more like this!
Thanks, Brandon! Blood Meridian is one of my favorite books - every time I reread it I get so much new stuff out of it. I saw it on your bookshelf in one of your videos as well. Eager to hear your thoughts on BM some day!
Medievalism is a good way to describe Blood Meridian.
Best of luck and success with this project. Great analysis.
Thank you very much!
So glad to have found your channel... Keep up the great work ♥️
Thanks so much!
One of, if not the best book I've read. Great video and makes me look at the novel in a different lens. Subscribed.
Agreed - it's definitely in my top 5 books of all time as well! Thank you!
Brilliant and engaging analysis. You have earned a subscriber!
Thank you very much!
Thanks for this fascinating video. I have to admit I had to check out Cormac McCarthy first. I think all stories are somehow rooted in old stories and sagas.
Thanks so much, Karin! Absolutely agree - my favorite kinds of books are the ones that are explicitly "rooted" in those stories. It adds so many more layers to the story!
You mention an older video where you stand by the decision or Argument but recommend not watching it as the presentation was off as one of your first videos….. yeeeep! I wonder how many of my older videos will creep towards that feeling for me too 😂
Haha! And a year after posting this, I feel the exact same way about this video... maybe one day I'll nail the delivery. Ah well!
Has an academic paper covering this topic been published already or are you going to be the first working on this?
The Luke William Mills paper that I referenced is, I believe, the only paper that really digs into McCarthy's medievalism in Blood Meridian. Rick Wallach briefly touches on a few implicit references to Beowulf in a paper on the "demystification of the martial code," but he doesn't really dig too deeply into the comparison.
There are a few other papers that touch on the "medieval dream visions" and how McCarthy makes use of it by AL Bourne and Christopher T. White, though the latter just mentions medieval dream visions in passing. Lastly, I believe there was a Master's Thesis a few years ago that did a comparative analysis of some medieval literature and All the Pretty Horses. Unless I've missed something that has come out in the past ~6 months, I think that's it.
Very interesting, now I have to watch the other video you mentioned. I haven't read any of the medieval stuff, I find them boring, maybe coz I have seen some of those movies and series (I can't stand queens and kings - esp English). But this gives a completely different view of the book - i knew white supremacy thing, but this is very interesting, many thanks.
Thank you, Abhilash! Fair enough - for what it's worth, I also dislike 99% of "medieval" movies. There are very few modern renditions of the Western medieval world that I find tolerable. The actually medieval literature, on the other hand, I quite like, though I can see why you may find it boring!
Saying feudalism is the result of human greed is pretty strange. There's a reason Marx and Engels considered it a form of socialism, albeit a 'backwards' kind. It is especially strange to say considering socialism as a world-historical force and ideological movement has its origins in the breakdown of the medieval order via the privatization of the commons and the subsequent proletarianization of Europe's peasantry. Say what you will about the medieval order, but peasants of that epoch were not expendable in the way 19th century factory workers were, a la a Charles Dickens novel. There was a mutual interdependence between groups of people.
As for capitalism being the result of human greed, sure, but human greed is a constant and to state this as a point of analysis obscures the socio-structural and productive changes which produced it, which should not be neglected if one actually wants a high-resolution analysis or if one wants to avoid being like the Gang-of-Four in China who imagined a country could transition to communism in poverty if only they clenched their fists hard enough and were ideologically committed enough. An inattention to the development of the productive forces as a prerequisite to a new socialist order is what makes modern progressives so unable to comprehend historical socialist states and so unable to affect real change, in part.
I’d love to hear your insights on the epic.
Thanks! I'll definitely make more videos on Blood Meridian and the "Epic" tradition that he's, I think, drawing on.
It's an interesting although not altogether convincing interpretation. If Blood Meridian is anti-capitalist, it certainly isn't for the reasons you say. Take the Yuma Ferry as an example. You've got a ferry that charges a toll to cross a river. That's a transaction that's decidedly capitalist. But then the Glanton gang arrives, stages an attack, backstabs the attackers, all to insert themselves into what was prior to their arrival an honest business. This isn't so much anti-capitalist as it is a critique on the "manifest destiny" "go west" mentality of the time. And that's really what the book is about. It's an examination of the American West and subjugation of wills that led to some of the most brutal carnage in recent memory. I think you'd do well to read about what Cormac McCarthy said about the book, and review the source material he put into the book.
When you say it's a deconstruction of Medievalism or stories of that time, as an American I think so what. But when I view this book as an examination of the brutal past of my country, and the amoral (in the literal sense of the world) mindset, it gives me great pause.
I can't believe that Cormac would be criticized for his depiction of race issues, when I thought he pulled off a masterpiece against manifest destiny. He made the Comanches look very very cool, and by the time they come over the hill, well... ok I, me personally was floored by that scene, because this band of White's weirdos were so bad, and so horrifying, that when those Comanches come over the horizon and show up, they are amazing to me, almost like knights in shining armor, or something.
He also shows the horrific treatment of people that includes some total weirdo showing up with a black mean's heart in his bag. This is before the "savages" come. So he's setting it up for us to understand, that if we want to talk about how brutal some tribes were, we need to put it in to this context where white people scalped and carried around HEARTS and wore EAR necklaces.
Carmac's book would be called W O K E today. Sometimes I wonder if Beloved was a rejoinder to Blood Meridian. I wonder if Toni was so moved by it, she added the slave story and fleshed out his themes, answering the questions of trauma and memory. Instead of leaning in to the nebulous mysteries of life, she leaned in to rolling out the blue prints for trauma, how it happens and its effects.
Those two novels go together for me.
Only the reader gets to think about the ideologies though, the characters just die. They learned nothing. I guess if White specifically said they can't lose because of god, then ok, I get it. Maybe it hit him as it hit him ha. But honestly it just was a band of people was just going to get some land. They planned on a massacre of their own, even if he did cloak what he said and mocked reality with the statement he was going to civilize these Mexicans, or whatever. I cannot believe anyone would take those words as if that was part of the plan and not just this horrible person lying his ass off and being smug and punchable,
You thought it was cool when they sodomized the dying men? Or when they slaughtered infants and children? When they placed the infants on the tree? I think your racism is tainting your view of the story. It is downright insane to view them as any kind of "knight in shining armor."
Very interesting, the brutes who meant to “civilize” by torture and scalping met their match. Haven’t read Morrison’s book but I will now
24:00 This usage of the term capitalism is frustrating. Capitalism is just voluntary exchange. It has nothing to do with killing. Murdering your competitors isn't capitalism.
A very good conceptual review polluted with American anxieties and false guilt. The rest of the world doesn’t think this way.
I have no guilt nor anxiety, nor do I think that the rest of the world thinks this way. This is a novel by an American about "America."
why are you even here? this is an american a book about america, so……
People are greedy outside of capitalism, but capitalism forces people to act in certain ways and rewards greed above all else. The Judge ends up rich and totally above the law. That's the feature of capitalism, not a bug. Capitalism forces individual greed to the top of the hierarchy, and community to the very bottom. This is the inevitable way of capitalism, unless extremely regulated, and protective laws enacted to control it's monopolistic, murderous, unavoidable fate.
Blood Meridian is my favorite Disney story
But ok, how do I word this. Why can't it be that McCarthy was referencing Spanish, you know, their brutal history, the Spanish Inquisition or simply the great literature that came in the 1600's Don Quixote and others. I know they are considered "Europe" too, but it seems like an omission, considering this is Mexico, and literature and ... such. Are you literally talking about Spain but just keep saying Europe?
This book is an sickening examination on racism. Horrific, projecting racism on multiple levels, without morality. Just horrific, sickening, presentation of it. The USA has a sick history, and is deeply stained by it still today. That resonates so strongly in the book.
Waycism 😭🤧
Didn't realize how much of it was medieval. Gets my personal puny worthless vote for the great American novel of the 20th century. 19th century definitely goes to Moby Dick. They share a lot of themes Moby Dick is on the ocean Blood Meridian is in the frontier. Both young men with nothing better to do in their lives than seek rugged adventure and gets caught up in a battle of good vs evil.
Agreed! The connections between Blood Meridian and Moby Dick are fascinating in and of themselves.
@@travelthroughstories Oh wow thank you for responding! I'm glad there are people like you out there keeping literature alive. I don't get to talk about them much and these vids keep me going!
You're reaching a bit by suggesting that the author is somehow deconstructing 'Whiteness' in that passage. I chalk that up to a deconstrctionalist worldview and a critical view of history.
Whats more likely is the allusion that death takes all, even the mighty 'White man' and his dreams of taming a continent...even a chouvanistic Captain of white Saxon men. Death is indiscriminate. It takes all. I recall various appropriated western garb within the march of the horribles passage, including a bloody wedding veil.
What else seems presesent is the ghastly Amerindian horde as a representation of the forces of the so called natural world and Death's naturality within it. In the text the filibustering crew is dismembered, butchered, raped, scalped, etc but the tone is one of indifference. That is to say violence is as natual as breathing in the view of the author.
Did you just forget about Moby Dick? It's beyond egregious that you spend 30 minutes talking Blood Meridian and neglect to discuss Melville's classic, which is a principle influence of this work and an American classic that serves as a tremendous literary accomplishment. It essentially renders your entire analysis null and void.
LOL, what? What does Moby-Dick have to do with "medievalism in Blood Meridian"? This isn't an analysis of Blood Meridian as a whole. It's an discussion of how and why McCarthy uses medievalism in Blood Meridian.
@@travelthroughstories I mean to really understand even your "discussion" of the novel, you'd have to go to the source material for the book, especially if you're going to make the claim that the author "consciously" wrote the story in a certain way. That'd be my expectation at least in order to foster and put forth any kind of inspiring argument. I'd be legit interested to know if you have any accounting for this, or if you're really just opting to self-affirm your theory. I find it interesting because the the plot isn't really even a driving force of the book. It really feels like the characters are almost passengers. I'm surprised you didn't really pick up on that frankly. Anyway you seem to take things a little to personally for my liking, especially as presumably some kind of academic.
@Philasoma Michael Lynn Crews lists, at the least, 32 direct source texts for BM. We could add dozens more quite easily. Am I to mention them all before getting to my specific focus/argument? This video was meant to discuss some aspects of BM that very few people talk about (only one person has published on it). Everyone knows about the Melville connection - it couldn't be more obvious. Focusing on other aspects of the novel is ok.
@@travelthroughstories Dang you're a pretty angry individual. Like I said, I'm still learning and beginning my literary adventures so I like learning different perspectives. But I guess I'll have to look elsewhere for nuanced, interesting discussion. And I'll definitely check out your sources in hope for that kind of discussion. Good luck on your channel.
@@philasoma It just seems like a very strange critique given the title and topic of this video. I'm just responding in tone towards your original comment which argued that this entire discussion is "null and void" and that it is "beyond egregious" that I didn't mention a text that has nothing to do with the specific topic. I'm more than happy to have a nuanced discussion, but your original comment comes across as being rather adversarial and dismissive. Best of luck on your studies -- if you're looking for any second resources on BM, I'm more than happy to help point in some general directions.