thread: 2007-10-11 : Blood Meridian
On 2007-10-20, Adam Thornton wrote:
Those two things aren't unrelated.
Most things—even awful, unforgettable, pivotal things—are crap stories. That's why we have people who take chains of events-that-happened, and turn them into stories, and why we reward those people.
But then what do we do with Blood Meridian? It's largely consistent with the historical record, insofar as there is a historical record (Chamberlain's Confession should be arriving here Real Soon Now). But it's clearly been organized to be a story. Is it a particularly good story? Not, maybe, as story; certainly not as narrative. As prose, it's astounding.
But how about as myth-creation, which is, I think, what it is?
Blood Meridian can certainly be read, anyway, as a deconstruction of How The West Was Won: by means of the spilled blood of lots and lots of people, some of them innocent. It's an anodyne both to the Heroic Story Of Americans' Bringing Civilization To The Heathen In The West and to the story of the Heroic But Doomed Noble Savages^W Indigenous Peoples Fighting Valiantly Against The Bloodthirsty Colonialist Power.
Is it "real" or not? Dunno.
Digression: "236-6132" is probably the saddest song I know. Probably because it's dressed up as not-such-a-sad song. Notice the conditions—especially as the song progresses—for the lover to come charging to the rescue. "When Casey cracks the ball," indeed.
