Blood Meridian and the Right | Dr. David Holloway | And So The Judge Returns Workshop 

Thanks for uploading these. This looks like a fantastic conference. As to the topic of this particular talk: Though there seems little in Blood Meridian that stands as clear repudiation of the judge and his worldview, I think we get important glimpses of resistance to it in McCarthy’s other writings, most pointedly, perhaps, toward the end of Suttree when the title character is having his little chat with the "quaking ovoid of lamplight on the ceiling,” wherein is included the following: “Of what would you repent? Nothing. Nothing? One thing. I spoke with bitterness about my life and I said that I would take my own part against the slander of oblivion and against the monstrous facelessness of it and that I would stand a stone in the very void where all would read my name. Of that vanity I recant all.” Now consider, by way of contrast: (1) the judge’s praise for the Anasazi: “For whoever makes a shelter of reeds and hides has joined his spirit to the common destiny of creatures and he will subside back into the primal mud with scarcely a cry. But who builds in stone seeks to alter the structure of the universe and so it was with these masons however primitive their works may seem to us.” and (2) his final words to “the man” in the tavern: “Only that man who has offered up himself entire to the blood of war, who has been to the floor of the pit and seen horror in the round and learned at last that it speaks to his inmost heart, only that man can dance [by which he means: be a ‘true dancer’]. … There is room on the stage for one beast and one alone. All others are destined for a night that is eternal and without name. One by one they will step down into the darkness before the footlamps. Bears that dance, bears that dont.” So Suttree, near the end of his existential journey, seems to reject not war explicitly, but the very impulse by which war acquires its allure: the drive to leave one’s indelible mark upon the world (more generally, the drive for immortality). I think McCarthy actually has a fairly nuanced and astute moral worldview. He fully recognizes the appeal of embracing one’s Will to Power but knows well that that path leads only and inevitably to ruin-even, as No Country for Old Men and The Counselor demonstrated, for those who only set foot upon it in brief crossing. Yet unlike a number of other writers who’ve grappled with it (*cough* Dostoevsky), he rejects this view without retreating into some hackneyed nostalgia for a false-colored past or a reactionary religious conservatism (which one may argue, with some justification, is just the same dark master clad in white robes). McCarthy, I think, understands just how fragile and precarious real goodness is. It’s a fire, a vulnerable thing that must be constantly tended, mended, rekindled (see: The Road). We carry it the best we can, in flight of the huntsman and his hounds, and if we’re lucky enough or if it’s bright enough, we find others with whom we can share it. Others who may keep it burning and traveling once we can no longer carry even ourselves. There’s little glory in this task, but there is warmth, and that’s not nothing. I think it no coincidence that the “false moneyer” who hopelessly seeks the judge’s favor is a “coldforger” in “exile from men’s fires.”

Political order is just another ritual. Another part of the dance. ..and dance it does. Never sleeps and will never die.

"The political thinkers mentioned [Montaigne, Macchiavelli, Hobbes, Leibnitz, Bossuet, Fichte, de Maistre, Donoso Cortes, Hippolyte Taine, Hegel, Carlyle] do not enjoy popularity with the great masses of human beings. As long as things are going well, most people do not wish to hear talk of power-struggles, violence, wars, or theories relating to them. Thus in the 18th and 19th centuries was developed the attitude that political thinkers- and Macchiavelli was the prime victim- were wicked men, atavistic, bloodthirsty. The simple statement that wars would always continue was sufficient to put the speaker down as a person who _wanted_ wars to continue. To draw attention to the vast, impersonal rhythm of war and peace showed a sick mind with moral deficiency and emotional taint. To describe facts was held to be wishing them and creating them." - Francis Parker Yockey, _Imperium_

There’s no moral relativism in those novels. How do you come away from Blood Meridian without feeling uneasy with the Judge. How do you read No Country without knowing Chigurh is a monster? Though I’d agree that conservatives would very much hear “war is the ultimate game” as an affirmation of their ideology, how do you read this novel without a deep uneasiness with that position? I would argue that the characters function similarly to the tarot cards they pick at the beginning of the novel. Google an image of the four of cups. This is the card the kid draws. If this book is a bildungsroman, then the knowledge the kid gains is his own certainty of his moral intuition. In one scene he tells a traveler “what’s wrong with you is wrong all the way through you.” I believe the novel functions as a critique of the kind of ideology this country was founded on.

Look all I’m saying is that maybe we shouldn’t listen to what Brits have to say about westerns

Wasting so much time trying to connect McCarthy to modern politics. It's pretty disgusting.

I am a bit old fashioned...but i don't mind carrying the fire for the old timers nowadays...especially when it comes to the argument of the aesthetic vs the politic. i guess, some would say, that, in itself is a political statement...but in this world in which Dr Holloway would have us live...all artists would first be made to stand and give a full and accurate account of all their political leanings...every corner, nook and cranny investigated. A full disclaimer about what they think, entirely and with no reservations- before ink hits paper, or digital devices powered up...and then...after we, whoever 'WE' are...can wholly and unequivocally verify that the artist is indeed, one of US...only then may they then proceed to write a novel, paint a picture, write a poem or play a tune. to quote bella lugosi...bullshit!

I am a writer, unpublished. All my stories are direct representations of dreams I have had that were really long, really vivid & for some reason carried a strong straightforward & cohesive storybook narrative. Epic stories that wrote themselves in matter of moments. In my opinion an anomalous occurrence that must be recorded. Anyway... One time after i had first began my Blood Meridian obsession in high school i had a dream I was at the movies where showed a trailer for a Blood Meridian movie. I remember feeling very excited & nervous & then waking from fear. The details i recall is that it had a morbid mutation of Lonesome Dove meets John Wayne epic vibe, like corny & epic tone with very dark & brutal asthetics. It was being narrated/marketed by a theatrical old movie-man voice like a trailer for a western from the birth of color television. Then my dream turned nightmarish as it went on showing saddening montage of clear genocidal imagry with the beauty & production quality of the old American classics. The ending tag line of the trailer was: "Americans will never feel more ashamed" Then I woke up. I'm conservative.

I see this is pretty old, but I was going to reread this as it is one of my favorites and started looking at videos about it, so I checked out this one. I almost shut it off halfway through when everything quoted wasn't even Blood Meridian and it was tied to politics? I was an English major in college, and it just reminded me of making up BS to write papers on novels and come up with some different take than anyone else. The scene he quoted was the Comanche attack. That is literally how the Comanches were. I know he's trying to do some 'white guilt' thing, but the Comanches were the most feared and deadly group in the country at that time and until they were conquered, there was no westward expansion as they controlled the middle of the country. Read "Empire of the Summer Moon" and there are plenty of historical fictions about them. People want to romanticize the natives, but the fact was they were neolithic pagans and were quite violent on their own without help from the white man. They would exterminate any Apaches they found. They tortured, raped, pillaged, and killed anyone not Comanche. Some of the most horrific tortures I ever heard about came from the Comanche. This passage also is purposely done in the Biblical style of and...and...and..., but an 80s political message? Nah, but I would still give him an A.

The books were written before 9/11. Think they had nothing to do with “neoconservatism” (stopped keeping track of how many times that was said: maybe more than “they rode on”

I'm at the 18:00 mark and he still hasn't made one substantial claim about the relation between the novel and political temperament. For God's sake man, get to the point!

For a novel thats about the pointless of violence, and wriiten with such vagueness that it boaders on narcissistic or fetish poetry... Why are we putting so much meaning into it?

Very good lecture.

Interesting analysis, though a bit wordy. I'm surprised how few competent reviews and analyses there are yet on youtube on this masterwork. This is the rare novel where I did not want to skip one sentence. The delicate work of a master craftsman, a literary artist honed in on every word. Like many great works ranging from the Bible, to Melville, to Nietzsche, etc. there is a lot that can be gleaned or interpreted to support dialectic view points. As the professor notes, lazy ideologies appeal to emotion and deep psych cravings that fulfill the greed of the demos at the thrift of logic. I would suggest that Cormac is not an overtly political writer, and that to assess his work in the narrow purview of 80s politics is a disservice; he is imbedded in the timeless qualities of (hu)man. Moreover, simplest readings focusing myopically on the "war is god" mantra are nauseating in their sloppy reductivism. The blood thirst, it is real, and any half-witted observer can see it beats continuously within the hyperbolic rhetoric and scandalous exploitation via our corrupt political economy happening thruout the world. But yeah, ultimately as always, it is up to the reader to decide what to do with it. Humans, rationis capax as Swift said, are placed on the terrible crucifix of deciding how to deal with such a lust.

You using the word ‘disgusting’ to describe people talking about a book is really interesting. You could say your ‘structure of feeling’ challenged, but I wonder if you made it that far in the video to know what I’m even talking about.

Incoherent and incredibly dull. Of all the things you can plan a discussion on as an intellectual, how on earth can you come to this and the belief it is interesting? It's simply staggering to me this person's avocation is to teach other humans anything. You're _reallly_ reaching here and grasping the air at every pass.

There are always interpretations to be found in poetry and literature that were never put there or intended by the author. I remember listening to a lecture by Robert Frost who said, "Some people think that 'Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening' is a death poem. It is not a death poem. It's about stopping in the woods on a snowy evening." As for Blood Meridian, if I were to assign political leanings or motivations to characters, I would say that the Judge is the quintessential Democrat (better, leftists of various stripes), and the kid is a typical Republican (or better said, conservative). The Judge, like your typical leftist (Marxist, communist, Democrat, Progressive), think that all that they do is imbued with the scientific method, and therefore is historically inevitable. They absolutely love war! At least in the US, all 4 of the 4 major wars of the 20th century were started with Democrats in office (Wilson, FDR, Truman, Johnson). They feel justified in their imposition of war on anyone of their choosing, because those people upon whom they make war are merely obstructions to their important ends of creating a more perfect world. They think that whatever they know is at the edge of all knowledge, all knowing, (like the Judge) and if you are not in accordance with them and their point of view, then you will be made to suffer for your recalcitrance. As for the kid, he generally goes along with and partakes in the violence, but like a somnambulist, is internally apart from the doings, an internal rebel against the war status quo, but unaware of his motivations and impulses. He has a tendency to mercy (or he is learning it), which is anathema to the Judge. He would (like a typical conservative) like to be left alone to his own devices. He is violent, true, with a real potential for violence, but would be content living without violence. We see this in the scene on the plain, where he is reluctant to kill the young kid until forced to do so. The Judge would have had no such compunction.

Not sure I’d make the comparison with 80s right wing Republicans. They won’t read this book or get it if they do. I also would not be quick to lionize the “democratically elected,” pro Soviet regimes that sprang up in Latin America in the second half of the 20th Century. Atrocity in war is committed by all sides, and all ideologies. I also wonder who the U.S. should have supported if they favored democracy for those countries. There were 2 choices, the Catholic Right or the Communist Left. Neither one had much use for democracy, so the U.S. took the only one that kept the Soviets out of their continent

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ZZZZzzzz

this is almost unbearable to watch/listen to. just share the link to his article so we don't have listen to his godforsaken voice. And then we'll not click the link either.

people make too much of this book, its great, ive read it. but it aint the masterpiece its made out to be, in my humble opinion.

Complete and utter failure. Is there a Wikipedia page you can refer to that will teach you what art is?