Finished Blood Meridian. With the broadest possible brush the book (to me) is a stark examination of three types of (Heraclitean) responses played out within a liminal space, the precise moment where war is the father of all. I do not believe the book can be fully described without knowledge of this grumpy philosopher. The beauty in the book is the language, natural descriptions, and descriptions of certain realities. Particularly enjoyable: the use of beautiful and novel words. The brutality and desolation though still dominate. Also the lucid (sometimes worrying) psychology. These responses may be characterised as types of ‘closed’ or ‘open’ tensions navigating this flux, this historical period of disorder prior to the reimposition of civilisational order. Glanton closes the conditions around his own person (he is a psychopath) and the practical order he can enforce. He does not need a metaphysics but when his self-established order fails he dies with it. Judge Holden is worse. He is a closed ideological response. He is the (apparently successful) beast, the totalising doctrine: war is god. The Logos becomes a private secret to be extended over the world, extreme totalising knowledge, an order out of step with the hidden harmony of Heraclitus’ logos (reiterated in the epilogue) , so that “whatever exists without my knowledge exists without my consent”, his death doctrine becomes a motivating telos. In the final chapter he must own the third type, the open ended, unreflective kid, who engages in violence willingly, participating in strife, but who never gives himself over totally, never takes on the personal ordering of the world deployed by Glanton, or the totalising doctrine of the judge, the ideology. What happens in the jakes is inevitable. The judge must either own “the man”, or destroy him. He had hoped for a ‘fellow traveller’ an ideologue of the doctrine, but the kid would rather be alone to navigate the flux, to be an autonomous killer, or to be autonomously merciful. Judge— “I recognized you when I first saw you and yet you were a disappointment to me. Then and now. Even so at the last I find you here with me.” “I aint with you.” Later, he presses the claim, the doctrine. The Judge— “Only that man who has offered 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.” The Kid— “Even a dumb animal can dance.” (Earlier in the book the judge says, “You alone were mutinous. You alone reserved in your soul some corner of clemency for the heathen.”) The kid’s acts remain impulsive, his violence and mercies inconsistent and un-theorised. He remains indifferent to ends, reacting to conditions rather than mastering them. His system has no telos, no future. It is open. Until it isn’t— “He [the judge] was naked and he rose up smiling and gathered him in his arms against his immense and terrible flesh and shot the wooden barlatch home behind him.” We assume that the perversion of the logos, the totalising system encompasses the autonomous man (who gives no thought to systems of thought and action). And so, is consumed. And the ideology? The doctrine? The judge… “His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.” His great battle, his defeat, is yet to come. Postscript: Tobin was was a worn out, inadequate (but aware) moral carry-over from prior order, the memory of it, the hope for a foil (for that is all we had regarding him) against the doctrine of death. Whatever happened to him?