How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Blood Meridian

Part III in a limited series.

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Let me say first off that Blood Meridian is not for everyone. In fact, I'm not sure just yet it's for anyone. It's certainly the most riveting novel I've read in years - but that in itself doesn't indicate much, other than perhaps a peculiarity in taste. I suppose I could be accused of being drawn to the ghastly level of violence in the book - I'd like to think it's more than just that, but I be equivocating if I tried to minimize how fascinating McCarthy's depiction of Western expansion is. Perhaps he swings the pendulum too far, but after years and years of sanitized presentations, his version makes it easier to believe that the truth might lay somewhere in the middle. Unfortunately though, I suspect it's closer to McCarthy's vision than what most people would like to accept.

But focusing on the particulars of Blood Meridian misses the forest for the trees. Of McCarthy's Border Trilogy, Cities on the Plain - even if it is a lesser work - is still indicative of his depth. Every criticism that can be - and is - leveled at McCarthy may be valid; pretentious writing, obscurantism, self-indulgence, violence for voyeurs, and yet the point I keep returning to is that McCarthy is struggling to put something universal down on the page. His style might remind me of a bearded, ragged hermit transcribing the intoned words of Yahweh onto a clay tablet sometimes, but the metaphysics that lay at the root of his novels transcend the fond contemplation of our social navel that propels a good bit of the current crop of American literature.

I'm not saying that a clear, honest evaluation of American society isn't worthwhile, whether it's done satirically or with dead seriousness. But I simply do not believe that concentrating solely on the social aspects of America in the last half of the twentieth century and through the first decade of the twenty-first, to the exclusion of more expansive (and inclusive) questioning of what it means to be human, is beneficial. In fact, I think it is short-sighted, vain, and ultimately - after following the exhausted trend to its current state - boring. McCarthy isn't trying to represent what it meant to be an American in the times that he writes of, and he isn't writing his historical novels as disguised allegories for our current situation. These novels are trying to expose something that lies at the core of a human being. Whether he succeeds or not is up to the reader, and whether the reader is even interested in being exposed to such a concept.

It strikes me that McCarthy comes from an older tradition, one that would probably include Melville and Thoreau, perhaps even Henry James and D.H Lawrence (Faulkner, if he isn't too regional, and Bellow, if he isn't too ancestral); writers who would not have taken for granted that chronicling the contemporary American experience was the only worthwhile avenue open to them. I think a question worth asking is if cultural presumptuousness concerning American Exceptionalism hasn't influenced our literature from the last sixty years to the extent that writers equate our personal struggles with archetypal augurs. Metaphysical novels won't ever be in the majority - and probably shouldn't be - but when I scan a shelf full of dysfunctional family dramas, writer's writing about writer's who are writing about themselves, and satirical send-ups of social mores, all of which masquerades as existential yet seems more angst than anything, I have to wonder if we just haven't become too full of ourselves. Although these other forms of literature are perfectly legitimate, and can also often touch on deeper themes, they are no substitute for the probing examinations from McCarthy.

Part of this trend comes from how our modern writers are groomed - a subject I'll explore a different time - but at the root, it is a decision by the author of how he assigns importance to his characters. Is society his main character (or man within this society, which amounts to the same thing), or is it man? If the subject is man, then the writing has a chance to be instructive, constructive - at least it clears the way for self-knowledge. If the subject is social, then it lends itself to mockery by those writers who feel above their subject, to clever self-indulgence by writers who feel they have a special dispensation to accurately portray our world, or to angry, disenfranchised authors looking to correct social ills. This can be clever, witty, or provoking, but the point is that this places man subservient to the society of which he's a part, rather than the other way around. Cumulatively, it is corrosive and demeaning.

What generalizations! I suppose there are more exceptions to what I've written than can be listed. As always, my points are only designed as an initiation of a discussion, and I'm always on the lookout for the claim that will alter my suppositions or change my mind outright.

Pynchon begets Wallace, or Another brief look at contemporary American literature

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

In my last post, I went on too long about Pynchon's short novel, although I hope the reasons why are clearer when I finally get to McCarthy. Whether they are or not remains to be seen, but regardless, I wanted to move on to David Foster Wallace, or DFW to his fans.

I've read quite a bit more of Wallace than Pynchon - not only Infinite Jest, but also Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and the two non-fiction collections Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again - and it was my aggregate impression of Wallace's work of which I was reminded while I read Lot 49. Much of the similarity lies in the way the two men write - both are wordsmiths, crafting complex, challenging prose that effortlessly references classical literature as well as pop culture; and both favor absurdist situations for their characters as a way of promoting life as a series of meaningless events. However, what truly links these two in my mind is the feeling that both of them write as if they have already figured things out, and that their major works are obscure and entertaining puzzles - puzzles that, if decoded, hint at the true nature of the world. (As an added bonus, once the reader accepts this general drift, there is a tendency to feel as if he is now in the know, and parted from ordinary saps. Defending this exalted feeling may explain the nature of some of these author's rabid fans, or their defensive posture.) Unraveled, this worldview looks a bit glib and charmless to me, but when I look around, the world does look a bit glib and charmless.

I'm tempted to call Wallace the better writer, although that opinion is premature for several reasons - mainly in that I haven't read enough of Pynchon to accurately judge. But another reason is that Pynchon was writing in response to an America shaking off the 1950's, and Lot 49 assists in breaking down that old order. Wallace comes along after all the idols have been pulled down - in fact, the available icons he had to choose from in our time were once the rabble rousers - and writes from amid the rubble. It seems to me that, given such a situation, one of three things are possible - either you begin to re-build, hopefully better this time; you can lie amongst the rubble, satisfied; or else, as Wallace does with Infinite Jest, you can go looking for large chunks passed over by your authorial forefathers and smash them into smaller chunks. Where Pynchon attacks ways of thinking about society, Wallace attacks ways of thinking about the literature that attacks society.

Bluntly, I'll say that both Pynchon and Wallace do what they do very well. There is writing within Infinite Jest that is simply stunning, and the passages concerning the addict Don Gately may be the best sample of writing that I've ever read. But does this literature edify or demolish? Should it? Knowing what we know, what sort of literature would be reconstructive?

Next, Cormac McCarthyism, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Blood Meridian.

A Brief Look at Contemporary American Literature part I

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

These three selections have the happy circumstance to all be listed on Time's list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923, and also that I've read them in the last year. With such a small sampling, all I can do is make some rather vague generalizations, yet because of their high profile in modern American lit, I don't think it's completely unfair to note some observations based on these three works alone.

Although my intention with these blog posts was primarily to note similarities and connections, in this case there will be comparison and contrast. On the comparative side, there is The Crying of Lot 49 and Infinite Jest, and it almost seems to me I can draw a genealogical straight line from one to the other. Both Pynchon and Wallace are technically brilliant (as is McCarthy), and both have a penchant for complex, convoluted prose and humor, which is showcased either as situational or as wordplay. Readers could also consider these two particular works mysteries - more so Lot 49 than Infinite Jest - but mysteries that are never conventionally resolved.

In The Crying of Lot 49, this mystery takes the shape of a vast conspiracy whose roots go back hundreds of years. It is easy for me to get sidetracked, to try and sort out the clues to solving the mystery, when I think Pynchon's intention all along was really aimed at illustrating the vague feeling one can have that sometimes life seems meaningless, and sometimes it seems as if hidden forces were directing the action from the shadows. By book's end, I also get the impression that Pynchon is saying that if there are controlling forces operating behind closed doors, they plan to stay that way, no matter what they have to do in order to sustain their anonymity.

From a distance of forty-five years (and having not even been alive when it was published), it may be presuming a lot to think I can place Lot 49 within the context of its times. Regardless, my theory is that Pynchon wrapped up several prevailing ideas in a snappy hip package that wasn't only entertaining, but probably seemed to capture an intellectual mood as well. In the following quote, Tristero signifies the mysterious cabal that, according to the main character Oedipa Maas, may or may not exist, and may or may not exert an untold influence on society.

"For there either was some Tristero beyond the appearance of the legacy America, or there was just America and if there was just America then it seemed the only way she could continue, and manage to be at all relevant to it, was as an alien, unfurrowed, assumed full circle into some paranoia."

These thoughts seem to dovetail quite nicely with the historical record of the subversive ideals that emerged in the late sixties/early seventies. (I'm not trying to suggest that Pynchon's work precipitated subversion, or that subversion was more than only a tiny part of that time - just that the text and ideas from Lot 49 appear indicative of that mindset from that period.) Dig it, man.

I've went on too long for a blog post - to be continued with A Brief Look at Contemporary American Literature part II, or Pynchon Begets Wallace.

Post War Films

Rashomon: Akira Kurosawa

Umberto D.: Vittorio De Sica

Enigma of Kaspar Hauser: Werner Herzog

I did a quick search on both Google Books and Amazon.com, but I couldn't find any titles that suggested a comprehensive look at the film industry of Japan, Germany and Italy following their defeat in WWII. There are books that look at each individual country, and some that are concerned with post-war world cinema, but - as film is a powerful document of time and customs (even inadvertently so, sometimes) - a concerted effort to compare and contrast films from these three countries seems like an obvious topic. While no one movie or filmmaker can sum up the entire output for any of these countries, these are three examples I've seen within the last year.

It's hard to think of another face that represents Japanese cinema better than Akira Kurosawa's, or perhaps, by proxy, Toshiro Mifune's - at least until it was replaced by this one in 1954. I feel somewhat like the boy who pointed out that the Emperor doesn't have any clothes on when I say that I don't think Rashomon deserves its continued reputation as the best from this time period, but that's another subject for another post. I do feel as though both Kurosawa's own Throne of Blood and Kon Ichikawa's The Burmese Harp are more challenging films that hold up better over a half century later, and though I have not seen it yet, a highly trusted source recommends Masaki Kobayashi's The Human Condition as a personal favorite.

From the handful of Japanese films from this time period that I've seen, a couple of observations without conclusions. Several seem bent on reclaiming the samurai reputation, by either presenting positive representation (Seven Samurai), or with morality tales of power's rebuke (Throne of Blood, and Sword of Doom). The other intention is spiritual - either turning away from falseness (Rashomon) or from war (The Burmese Harp). My objective isn't to claim that the decade following the war was only concerned with these ideas, and so Floating Weeds, Tokyo Story, and Ugetsu are all on my list of films to see in order to broaden my comparison base.

Umberto D., on the other hand, is the only Italian film I've watched from this same time period, which, I discovered after some research, is thought of as a classic of the Neorealist movement, maybe even the best. The parallels between this movement and Rashomon are interesting, as both are credited with being hugely influential and affecting directors from all over the world. A parallel between Rashomon and Umberto D. is that while I recognize them for being important when released, I'm ambivalent about them both today. No matter really - what is noteworthy is the Neorealist movement itself, and what one might deduce from the country it came from. Whereas the Japanese focus on historical legend, or else on the disintegration of their traditions in the modern world, the Italians go 180 degrees in the opposite direction and point their camera lens directly at their rubble filled streets. Again, without drawing conclusions, I wonder exactly what the fascination was, both for the directors and the audience. For a short time, they were fixated on their reflection, but apparently there was little left to look at after Umberto D. Everything that could be done with Neorealism had been done, and the filmmakers moved on.

Which brings me to Germany, which will eventually lead to Herzog. In comparison with the film industry of Japan and Italy, I'm unable to find much to distinguish Germany immediately after the war - certainly no group of directors like the Japanese produced, and no movement like the Neorealists. There were notable films (The Murderers Are Among Us is on my list to be watched), but I can't find a coherent trend such as a fond look at the dim past, a wistful regret for fading traditions, or an obsession for looking in the mirror. This could be because the Nazis had seized the past and tradition for their own use, and there was no relief there, or that a frank look around them or in the mirror was still to ghastly to contemplate. Surely the division of East and West played a part too.

The New German Cinema, to which Herzog belonged, didn't really get its start until about the same time I did, in the late '60's. The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser may not be indicative of Werner Herzog's output, let alone his contemporaries, but I think it does reflect a theme inherent in the work that I've seen of Herzog's, Rainer Fassbinder and Wim Wenders - and which might aptly be summed up by Herzog's translated German title for Kaspar, "Every man for himself and God against them all".

What sort of medium is film, anyway? Is it how we wish to see ourselves, or is it a reflection of how we really are? Both, I suppose. These particular country's films, given their unique positions in history, I think are worth examining in tandem to shed more light on social trauma. It's entirely possible I've skipped over important connections due to my limited exposure to the film heritage of these countries. If so, feel free to discuss.

Being In-Between

César Aira: Ghosts

André Aciman, Editor: Letters of Transit

Adam Zagajewski: A Defense of Ardor - Essays

César Aira is an Argentine author, perhaps better known for An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter due to its favorable mention by John Leonard in Harper's Magazine. Ghosts, published in 1990 but not translated until 2008, is one of the most peculiar books I've ever read. Essentially it is the story of Patri, a teenage girl whose stepfather is the security guard for a partially constructed condominium. Together with the girl's mother and her four step-brothers and sisters, they live atop the building in a makeshift apartment, and the book describes the events of the afternoon and evening of the last day of the year.

Aira's book is about the in-between. The building is skeletal and still open to the air - there and not there. The tenants own their apartments, but do not live there yet. The construction force is made up of Chilean temporary workers who are from Chile but no longer live there, and who reside for the moment in Argentina but aren't from there. The girl, Patri, is 15 - not a child and not an adult. She is not the security guard's real daughter, and so she is part of the family, yet apart also. The family does not really live in the building, but on top of it. On the afternoon and the evening the book describes, the family is hosting relatives for a New Year's Eve party - the one moment of the year that is in-between time. Of the relatives that come, one is the sister of Patri's mother, who is not single and not married, but engaged. She has no children, but is pregnant.

And presented matter-of-factly throughout the book are the ghosts that populate the building's upper floors, creatures completely made up of the In-Between, whose motives are un-guessable, but who invite Patri to a party that will last eternity. Aria has a plain, unvarnished style which suggests a bit of irony then within the context of the story, where it seems as though each element is a symbol of the in-between, although the author uses few if any similes or metaphors or other literary tricks. I'm afraid I haven't yet grasped the purpose behind Aira's description of this middle state (evidently I'm in-between myself), other than as a reflection of our continual state of becoming.

Letters of Transit (which was selected at random right after I finished Ghosts) is also about becoming, as each essay is from an exiled author, exiled from his or her birth country and who has had to make their way in foreign lands and foreign languages. With Aira's ghostly ruminations about the transitory nature of even daily life, Letters of Transit illuminates lives that are defined by their in-between character.

These related aspects must have only been simmering, because I didn't make the connections - truly didn't even recognize the links within Aira's book - until the next random selection, which was Adam Zagajewski's collection, A Defense of Ardor. Though Zagajewski's intentions are slightly different, the experience of reading these three books was like cinching up the drawstrings of a leather bag when he broached the subject of metaxu. Metaxu is the summation of the human condition that is perpetually 'in-between' - one that is reaching for beauty and transcendence, yet also required to perform the necessities of daily existence. For instance, it is difficult to concentrate on the sublime when changing a flat tire or washing the dishes. Likewise, while in the presence of great beauty, or perhaps on the verge of a spiritual revelation, no one would want to stop and take out the garbage. Zagajewski defines the human then as "a being who is incurably 'en route'". (page 9)

It is interesting that I habitually assign a value judgment to the ends of this spectrum - that I equate transcendence and beauty with Good, and the quotidian as Bad. One may certainly be more pleasurable than the other, but neither are intrinsically Good or Bad. Actually, the transcendental and the everyday seem to have the seeds of one another planted firmly in the middle of each others opposite - if they can even be considered opposites. This would lend them a yin/yang appearance. A stable flux? A contained transubstantiation? Hmm, perhaps too complicated, but from experience, it seems to me that there is merit in the idea that these mundane requirements for daily living are fundamentally necessary to experience beauty as beauty. Otherwise, beauty is the new mundane. Hence, the mundane, instead of a necessary evil is a necessary good. Perhaps an apt analogy would be the canvases that Monet used to paint on. Or the foundation stones at Monticello. Our daily drudgery is the bony interior that allows beauty to stand up and walk around.

To think that the everyday, the sublime, and the 'in-between' are laid out like a straight line map route seems limiting, and it reminds me of Edwin Abbott's characters from Flatland, who were un-equipped to conceive of any other dimension.

Biblionaut is my father's word - let me get that in up front - though he's been gracious enough to let me borrow it. Never mind that he created this particular neologism under a bit of duress - as I considered possible titles for this blog, his creation kept floating to the top. Finally I just called him and took it out on intellectual loan.

I think it's apt though. The Biblionaut - the book sailor, or book traveler; except for my purposes here, I'd like to expand the definition to include film and music and art. And it is while traveling through these different mediums that, at times, I'm impressed with certain connections to other works, either directly implied by the text I'm reading, or suggested as my mind wanders down other tangents only indirectly related. Oftentimes I'd like to examine these connections, to talk about them, but unfortunately, sometimes the opportunity for conversation is limited. And so - the origin of this blog. Contribution and conversation welcome.