Episode 268: Blood Meridian, Part 1

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist Dave Pizarro having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:17] So I guess it's just you and me against the entire radical left. Sisyphus had it easy. The Greatest Boss has spoken! Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! I'm a very good man. Good. They think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have.

[00:00:58] Anybody can have a brain. You're a very bad man. I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards. I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, a new study shows that contrary to conventional wisdom, opposites do not in fact attract.

[00:01:26] Okay, maybe. But then how have you and I been able to do this podcast for over 11 years? Answer me that. And maintain that attraction. Exactly. It's a longitudinal... Role play probably, right? That's right! You just toss in a little variety.

[00:01:48] You're the fireman and I'm like the 12-year-old delinquent arson that you find... Is that where it went? I can't make things up as I go anymore. It's taken us a while to get to the point where we're recording, so we're already a little loopy.

[00:02:11] I don't know how this is going to go. But okay, the opposites attract thing. I know that's a saying, but did anybody ever believe it? Good question. That's like the kind of psychology via pithy sayings or idioms where you're just like...

[00:02:31] It's widely believed that a bird in the hand is worth more than the bush, but is it? Recent meta-analysis shows that actually the bird in the hand is... It's actually worth three in the bush! I like in the press release, there's this quote.

[00:02:49] Our findings demonstrate that birds of a feather are indeed more likely to flock together, said first author Tanya Horowitz. No shade on Tanya Horowitz, I guess that's what you're going to say. You need to say something about...

[00:03:04] The study at least analyzed a shit ton of data and it is an interesting question. But it's hard to say because you're forced to summarize it down. We should say that on this episode we will be trying to wrap our heads around Blood Meridian

[00:03:24] and wrap our heads around trying to do an episode on Blood Meridian. Yeah, it's perhaps the most intimidating topic that we have picked at least. I don't know, feels that way to me. It feels like this is a task that we might not be up to.

[00:03:42] I should say IQ was a little more intimidating for me for various reasons. This is even harder. That was so good for me, I was just like, I'm going to be the interviewer, I can ask questions and... Oh, like let's do that now then for this episode.

[00:03:58] Yeah, sure, I'll do that again. You were like an English major. I'll be the interviewer, you be the Cormac McCarthy scholar. No, no, the opposite. What I meant is let's switch. Well, that's not what you said so it's too late.

[00:04:13] So first, this was a big meta-analysis that looked at studies from the last over 100 years, right? Like coupled with its own data collection on thousands of UK couples. Right, which I don't think are representative.

[00:04:28] How would they know whether they're similar to their partners because they never talk or say anything to each other. They just mumble, spotty. So okay, we should say this is a study that was done by researchers at CU Boulder and published in Nature Human Behavior recently.

[00:04:48] So it's a study on assortative mating. The question is like how similar are people who choose to pair off with each other? And so they looked at a ton of different traits, like features, psychological traits, physical features, behavioral patterns,

[00:05:07] stuff like alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking to things like extroversion, political orientation, height. And I guess the take-home message is just that what is referred to as assortative mating is true. That there is a positive correlation on almost everything.

[00:05:27] And the positive correlation varies, of course, like some of them are pretty weak but positive and some of them are pretty strong with positive. But the ones that are pretty strong with positive are kind of obvious, like if your partner smokes you're more likely to smoke.

[00:05:40] Those are really strong findings. If you're a teetotaler, your partner is more likely to be a teetotaler. But yeah, right?

[00:05:48] You would think that people who don't want to be around drinking, there's people with previous alcohol issues are going to not want to be with a partner that's drinking.

[00:05:58] And then if you're just a sober Sally, you're not going to want to be around like a bunch of drunks probably. Right, right. I mean, it doesn't seem like that would last.

[00:06:07] In the UK partner study that they did, and these are all heterosexual couples because they purposefully hate gay people. They think it's unnatural and immoral. Things like political values, religiosity, and educational attainment are up there at correlations of like 0.5, slightly more than 0.5.

[00:06:38] And then as you go down the line, you get still pretty strong things like on height, which is like maybe a point. It looks like it's like a 0.25.

[00:06:52] And then you start getting into some personality characteristics like openness to experience, generalized anxiety, conscientiousness, and the effects start going down. And the weakest positive correlation that they had was like 0.18, I think on extraversion. I don't know if this is obvious, but I feel like saying it.

[00:07:10] A correlation doesn't mean that people are the same level. Right. So, for instance, height can be highly correlated, but there's still going to be a big mean difference between the height of the man and the height of the woman. Correlation doesn't say anything about that.

[00:07:24] So when things are positively correlated, it doesn't mean that people are close to each other at the mean level. It doesn't mean that people are like right around the same level of liberal or conservative.

[00:07:36] It just means that as conservatism, say, goes up in one, so it goes up in the other. So the birds of a feather versus the opposites attract. Like, it made me wonder whether correlation was the right way to answer that question.

[00:07:49] Because if like across a population, what you're seeing is like that on a say, say like a scale where 10 is super conservative and one is super liberal. You might have a bunch of men who are eights and nines and a bunch of women who are ones and twos.

[00:08:06] And the ones are partnered with the eights and the twos are partnered with the nines. And you get a strong positive correlation. But for any one of those couples, you wouldn't say that they are birds of a feather. Right. Yeah. I mean, I get what you're saying.

[00:08:21] I feel like the spirit of it is still the same. Like if you're a 5'10 man and you're with a 5'10 woman, that doesn't seem to be more of birds in a feather than with a woman who is, say, slightly above average in height.

[00:08:37] Like you are slightly above average in height for being a man, you know? So I don't know. Yeah. You're right. It depends on the trait. Like it totally depends on like the thing.

[00:08:46] So like for political orientation, you could still have like a people could still be on the opposite sides of the political spectrum and be positively correlated. If the groups are that radically different. Right? Yeah. Exactly. There could be a mean difference.

[00:09:06] And they don't really talk about that. And I could be getting some interpretation wrong. But that's just my understanding.

[00:09:12] The other thing they don't, as far as I could tell in my cursory reading of the article, they don't seem to differentiate between whether they grew to evolve to sort of having these same types of interests or orientations or traits.

[00:09:30] Obviously, you couldn't do that with height, but you could do that with politics. You could even do it with drinking or you could do it with smoking. You know, if like so like did they start out one was a smoker and one wasn't a smoker.

[00:09:43] So it doesn't distinguish between people who just naturally want to be with somebody like them and people kind of their interests converge over the course of their relationship. And I do think that's a big thing, too.

[00:09:56] It's like the difference between somebody who got together early in life, you know, your interests almost by the nature of you being in a relationship have to start getting a little closer probably than they were before.

[00:10:09] Versus like people who get together in their 30s and their habits and interests are more set. And so that's always a little trickier to negotiate. Yeah. No, you're totally right.

[00:10:20] And for it to really be called assortative mating, like what assortative mating is, is that there has to be a choice made at the time that they choose to be together.

[00:10:30] And if they were different when they chose or the same when they chose and then they changed over time, then that doesn't count.

[00:10:38] It also doesn't count. It doesn't count really if what's going on is you're getting pockets of people who are the same and they have no other option than to mate with each other.

[00:10:50] Exactly. Yeah. And it doesn't count in situations where the similarity might be there because someone else chose like in the cases of arranged marriages where you might get a similarity.

[00:11:01] And I don't I don't think I feel like they mentioned those those possibilities in the paper, but I don't think that they had a way of actually being able to tell which was which.

[00:11:15] And I think that definitely would matter. And those are like interestingly important, like especially the one that you said, like whether you grow to be more similar.

[00:11:23] In a small town, everybody's an Episcopalian or somebody like that, something like that. They all went to the same church. So of course they're going to have similar traits as defined by the study.

[00:11:33] So let me ask you just in general, if you and Jen took a personality test, political orientation test or whatever, like do you think that you guys are kind of similar?

[00:11:42] I do. I mean, I would have to go like trait by trait. I think I'm probably a little taller for being a guy than she is for being a woman, but barely.

[00:11:54] And, you know, neither of us smoke. We both drink, but I drink more. I don't know if I drink more compared to other guys than she drinks more compared to other women.

[00:12:05] I would say that because we've been together for so long, we've definitely had our interests merge. You know, like, well, I think we came equipped with a lot of similar attitudes and predilections, tastes. We both love to travel. Yeah, I don't know. I guess I think we are.

[00:12:25] And what about you and Nikki? Yeah, I guess so. It's like it's almost like my first wife and I were different in more ways. That's because you don't have the wisdom when you get married at 22. So for instance, I was hetero and she was not.

[00:12:47] I don't know if they looked at that in this study, but that is a pretty significant negative correlation. I mean, depending on how you measure it, we both really liked women. That's true. Exactly. And that's the thing. Statistics are so flexible.

[00:13:04] You know, it's sort of like a Necker cube where sometimes depending on what's going on, you focus on like the glaring differences and you're like, I can't believe like two people who, you know, one likes super violent movies and one likes rom coms.

[00:13:17] That's crazy that they're so different. But, you know, I'd say like in large part we're similar. And the similarity on the things that are important to you.

[00:13:28] Yeah. Like I feel like I have more overlap. So sense of humor, I think, is a huge one for me where if somebody, you know, like there are people who barely put up with the things I say and would constantly be sort of judging me for the things I say.

[00:13:44] And I couldn't like be with somebody like that, obviously. You know, it's already hard enough to feel good about myself. I need somebody to laugh at my jokes. Yeah. That is something that every man has a right to have. Exactly. Sex and...

[00:14:00] Yeah. We can mold their sense of humor in their tastes and preferences.

[00:14:05] Totally. That's what I was telling my friend who's wondering whether to have kids or not. I was like, no, listen, you have this little thing of clay, this like this big stone that you can carve into exactly like how you want and how they should be objectively also.

[00:14:24] You did kind of an epic takedown of the way this study doesn't support that birds of a feather are likely to flock together. I want to also put some pressure on the opposites attract and that this study shows that that conventional... Omar, shut the fuck up! Goddammit.

[00:14:48] Now you can threaten him. Now you can really threaten him. I know, exactly. Like this. I'm calling the mobile euthanasia like van. You have a syringe in your hand like, what did you say?

[00:15:00] They'll be like, well, he seems fine. Yeah. No, trust me. He's in a lot of pain. He's suffering.

[00:15:06] So I feel like opposites attract isn't about being together over the long term, which is what this study is actually analyzing. Right? They're not analyzing who you might want to hook up with at a bar or in the office or something like that.

[00:15:30] There's something about just, OK, you're going to live together that you just have to. There's only so much difference that like living in the same household and having that be remotely harmonious can tolerate. You know what I mean?

[00:15:45] It still might even be true for all the study shows. I don't know if it is, but that you might be attracted to a whole different kind of person in the short term, in the long term. And when you're really... that might be quite different.

[00:16:01] Yeah, it's interesting. So they say our analysis was restricted to studies of co-parents, engaged pairs, married pairs and or cohabiting pairs, cohabitating pairs.

[00:16:11] All I'm saying is the opposites attract saying is more, I think, for the short term, the immediate. Like what kind of porn are you looking at?

[00:16:21] That's the real question. Yeah, yeah. I thought it was actually an interesting question to people look at at people who differ from them in terms of whatever height, weight, ethnicity. But yeah, I guess ethnicity being a big one, you can't tell things like income and extroversion.

[00:16:42] I feel like you can. Maybe. Riley Reed is an extrovert. She's very short though. I mean, who? I actually know a woman who ran into Riley Reed at a grocery store in Las Vegas and totally went up to her and was like, oh my God, I love you.

[00:17:06] But see, I bet Riley Reed was cool about that. Oh, I'm sure she was. All right. Do we have anything else to say about this?

[00:17:17] I don't think so. You know, this wasn't one of those studies that we had strong opinions about, but I do like it is an interesting question and I still think there's more research to be done.

[00:17:31] Yeah, you might almost say that there's an unlimited amount of research that could be done about a question like this. Yeah. A lot of careers can be sustained. A lot of status quos can be maintained. All right. Should we come back, talk about Blood Meridian? Let's do it.

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[00:23:51] All right, let's dive into Blood Meridian. So this was our Patreon selected topic, the most voted on topic for our, what is it, bi-annual? Patreon selected episodes? Bi or semi-annual. Semi, semi-annual. We don't know. One of those two every twice a year. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.

[00:24:17] It was published in 1985. It's considered, I guess, by many to be his best book and considered by others to be one of the best American novels ever written. Which is all to say this is like an extremely well-regarded book, even though initially it apparently wasn't that well received.

[00:24:34] Critics like Harold Bloom, I pulled up an interview with Harold Bloom where he said that though it took him three times to get through the book because he was upset by the violence,

[00:24:43] by the time he finished that reading on the third try, he thought that Cormac McCarthy had attained genius with the book. I had a similar experience with the book, like started reading it twice, got about 70 pages in.

[00:24:59] I don't know if it was just the violence, but also just the lack of a kind of driving narrative or a character you could follow and empathize with.

[00:25:10] It's funny because I came across a lot of people who said that they had the same experience that Harold Bloom had, that they started it and gave it up. Once you read it though, you realize this is fucking total masterpiece.

[00:25:24] This is like one of the best books I've ever read. I don't even know. I don't know what to make of it.

[00:25:30] I think I made a mistake in trying to listen to it on an audio book on a long road trip that I had because the way that it's written just does, you really need to read it. I think you need to look at those words.

[00:25:44] And in fact, I needed to many times reread passages because of the style of writing. So one of the things that makes this impressive, it took McCarthy, like McCarthy started it and stopped it. It took him a few years to actually get it done.

[00:25:57] He conducted like just a ton of extensive research.

[00:26:01] So one of the things that he did was travel to the geographical locations in the northern Mexico and southwest US and just took extensive notes of like the plant life, the geographical flora and fauna and the rocks, like all that stuff that he describes in such great detail.

[00:26:22] He learned Spanish. There's a lot of Spanish through the book, which I meant to ask you, did that trip you up at all? Yeah, when I was reading this while I was camping, I didn't have access to the Internet.

[00:26:34] And so like there was Spanish where like I just had to move past it. Sometimes the Kindle knew what it was, but sometimes there was no Internet. My daughter is taking five years of Spanish was no help. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:50] And even for me, like there were a lot of times where I was like, how would I know what this is if I didn't know Spanish? But then there's like a lot of Mexican words and I'm sure a lot of historical words as there are in English.

[00:27:01] You want to know a funny little thing like that? Like there's this guy, Tobin, the ex-priest. But when I first he doesn't put dashes in things. And so when I first came across it, I thought he was the ex-priest.

[00:27:14] And I just thought that was some Cormac McCarthy with some new word that would probably has some reference in like 19th century American Western. So literally like two thirds of the way of the book that I realized, oh, it's the ex-priest.

[00:27:30] I probably was spared that because of the audio. So another way that this is accurate, that McCarthy did his research, is that it's based on real historical events and people.

[00:27:41] So it's based on the Galantan gang, which was a group of men who had been paid by Mexican authorities. So they were veterans of the Mexican-American War.

[00:27:53] And a couple of years later, they were paid by Mexican authorities essentially to just travel through that region to clear the area of Apaches. Right. They were a nuisance to to the settlers there. And bring back scalps.

[00:28:06] And bring back scalps. So they were paid like 200 bucks per scalp to bring back. Galantan and his, we believe to be second in command, the Judge Holden, who we'll talk a lot about, actually let out this gang. And they didn't stop at killing Apaches.

[00:28:24] They started killing like peaceful Indians just to take their scalps so that they could get more money. They started killing Mexicans en masse in these small towns. They really seemed to be indiscriminate and capricious about their violence.

[00:28:41] And so many of the events of the book seem based on the actual events that happened.

[00:28:46] And, yeah, so and like one of the primary sources was this book, McCarthy was this book, Confessions of a Rogue by Samuel Chamberlain, who's I think the only person who ever mentions Judge Holden and describes him.

[00:28:59] And describes him fairly, you know, like I think there's certain things that McCarthy took to a greater extreme. But really tall. He was beardless, if not completely hairless, like the judge. And, you know, this kid is from New England, not from where is he from? Tennessee?

[00:29:17] He's from Tennessee. Yeah. Chamberlain felt that the judge disliked him but was always very polite to him. Yeah. Yeah. It's really, really cool quote. Yeah. And you can see the seeds of the villainous judge appear in like a couple of passages in that Chamberlain book.

[00:29:36] But, of course, McCarthy turns him into arguably one of the greatest villains ever put to paper. A really interesting, compelling might be the wrong word, but. No, definitely compelling. Yeah. But in a way that makes you. I mean he's also repelling.

[00:29:53] No, true. That's very true. Like he's not this kind of roguish antihero. I mean, he has a kind of charisma, but it's one that makes you feel icky.

[00:30:06] You know, when I was reading it, I thought to myself, this is a lot like Colonel Kurtz from Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now. Kurtz has more of a weariness to him than the judge. The judge never gets tired. No, that's right. In fact, he doesn't sleep.

[00:30:29] He appears to not need to sleep. Yeah. So we're just going to give the rough outline of the plot because it's really more a book about some powerful scenes that are strung together.

[00:30:41] But the gist of the plot is that this kid, a 16-year-old from Tennessee, joins up with the army. This is after the Mexican-American War. And he joins an outfit commanded by Captain White, right? Yeah. That is essentially running an illegal war.

[00:31:02] I think what happened is after the Mexican-American War, there were still Americans who were upset at the way that the treaty had been made. And so they took it upon themselves to go down there and conquer land in Mexico back for the U.S.

[00:31:19] So it's totally off the books. Maybe the proto CIA was a higher-up. Yeah, exactly. You think it's going to be the whole book when you read it for the first time. And this is like a critique or satire of Manifest Destiny.

[00:31:36] Because the way this captain talks about it, he talks about Mexicans as incapable of governing themselves. He actually says manifestly incapable of governing themselves. And so they just need us to come and civilize them and show them the light. It doesn't end well. Early in the book.

[00:31:57] That's so funny. I love that. Apparently in the book they get their ass handed to them by Comanches. And the kid escapes death but gets imprisoned. The kid gets imprisoned for this, you know, by Mexican authorities for this illegal shit that he was doing with Captain White.

[00:32:21] And the way that he gets out of prison is that the Glanton gang comes into town and they are being paid to scalp Apaches.

[00:32:32] And they essentially, one of the kid's friends, Toadbine, convinces the Glanton gang that he and the kid and another guy are effective Indian killers and they should recruit them. And so they essentially get taken out of prison, join the Glanton gang.

[00:32:48] With the Glanton gang, they traverse large, like large portions of the US and Mexico on a rampage, killing again. They're hired to kill Apaches, but they go, like I said before, they go into these sleepy towns, start killing people just like sometimes instrumentally, sometimes for kicks.

[00:33:13] And finally, they end up sort of settling down in Yuma territory, the Colorado River, where they commandeer a ferry. And the Glanton gang is sort of running this ferry and they're like killing people and stealing their money, people who want to cross.

[00:33:32] And there the Yuma Indians get pissed off, basically attack them, kill them all. It's like a massacre. Glanton dies. Only a few people escape. The kid escapes, the judge escapes. They go their separate ways.

[00:33:46] He gets down to San Diego finally in California, gets a doctor to heal him. And at that point, like he sort of just moves on with his life. Like there's the judge makes an appearance in San Diego when he's in jail and then disappears.

[00:34:03] And boom, fast forward 30 years. The kid is now the man and he's been roaming the country, the territories like Mexico, the US, and I don't know where else, like seemingly a lot of different places.

[00:34:16] 30 years later, encounters the judge in a saloon. The judge hasn't aged, looks exactly the same, seems like he hasn't changed. And at the very end, as the man goes to the outhouse, he walks into an outhouse and the judge is standing there naked.

[00:34:36] We read that the judge grabs him naked and shuts the door. And that's the last we hear. We really don't know what happened, but I think we can assume. Well, we get the perspective of somebody who opens the door.

[00:34:51] Who opens the door and they say, like, good God. Yeah. Like you don't want to go in there. Yeah. Yeah. But that could be referring to like the shit that somebody did before, you know?

[00:35:02] I mean, the judge is described as seven feet tall, so I imagine it's really impressive. Yeah. And then we get an epilogue, right? Yeah. People picking up bones. Yeah.

[00:35:16] Should we talk about as a way of launching into like what we think this is about the epigraphs? What do you think? Yeah, let's start with the epigraphs. I think they do set the stage. The first is from Paul Valéry, French poet.

[00:35:32] Your ideas are terrifying and your hearts are faint. Your acts of pity and cruelty are absurd, committed with no calm, as if they were irresistible. Finally, you fear blood more and more, blood and time.

[00:35:45] I'd say one of the more inscrutable of the epigraphs, like in terms of trying to parse out its connections to the rest of the text. Yeah. As opposed maybe to the next two.

[00:36:00] Yeah. Although the next one by Jacob Böhm, I don't know how to pronounce it, who is a German mystic, reads, it is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost as if in sorrowing.

[00:36:11] There is no sorrowing, for sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death, and death and dying are the very life of the darkness. So this is where like the Gnosticism of the book and a lot of the criticism about the book usually starts.

[00:36:26] He was a Gnostic, right? And isn't the idea here from this epigraph that, like I feel like the judge could say this. He has such a cheerful perspective about the darkness and death of the world.

[00:36:43] Like I feel like if there's one thing he stands principally opposed to, it's sorrow. Yeah. And McCarthy makes it a point to have the judge smile across various times in the book where nobody in their right mind would be smiling. Yeah. Like a beaming smile.

[00:36:59] Yeah, yeah. Like glowing. Exactly. Yeah. And it almost makes him endearing at times. It seems to me like, oh, he's a nice guy. Well, he is like a broken clock is right twice a day and that sometimes for whatever reason, something will strike him.

[00:37:16] Like he wanted to save the tarot card dealer from Glanton and like the old lady that Glanton is about to shoot. And so he does. Do you want to read the last one?

[00:37:25] This is from the Yuma Daily Sun, June 13th, 1982. Clark, who led last year's expedition to the Afar region of northern Ethiopia and UC Berkeley colleague Tim White, also said that a reexamination of a 300,000 year old fossil skull found in the same region earlier showed evidence of having been scalped.

[00:37:49] These do a pretty good decent job of setting the stage. Yeah. I mean, like this one, I feel like there is a almost straightforward reading to that of like this shit has been going on for 300,000 years.

[00:38:04] This kind of evil and war and brutality and depravity. And it's going to go on for 300,000 more or however many more that this earth is still like pumping along.

[00:38:17] Yeah. To me, these three do seem unified in this bleak view about the world being so intrinsically evil so as to not even we shouldn't be surprised.

[00:38:33] So the Valery quote, to me, seems like a condemnation. Like the judge would be telling the kid, you are faint of heart. Like you act like the kid does act sometimes out of pity and sometimes out of cruelty in a way that I think the judge would find absurd.

[00:38:48] The judge, I think, isn't motivated by either of those things. The world is a toy to him. He just wants say over what happens. And you fear blood more and more blood in time, which I think maybe over time the kid starts feeling that way.

[00:39:06] The Jacob Berman quote about the universe being pretty dark, I think is straightforward or the world being pretty dark. The sorrow though, the part about that, that sorrow is not compatible with the life of darkness is kind of interesting. I think like in that way it's not straightforward.

[00:39:25] I like it took me, I'm still not sure that I understand it right. But in the context of the other quote, I took it as like the sentimentality that would make you be sad that the world has darkness and death has no real place in a world that is this dark and bleak.

[00:39:43] It just gets swallowed up. Yeah. Let's talk about the like what we loved about this book. We haven't really talked that much about it. Right. So so I'm curious what you thought.

[00:39:53] I've never read anything quite like it. And that's almost an understatement. And I've read Cormac McCarthy. I've read like four of his other novels, four or five of his other novels. And this is a different thing. It kind of pulls you in once you're in. It pulls you in the plot, even though like, you know, they're they're moving gradually west.

[00:40:16] You know, there are some character arcs if like barely if you can call them that. Although often those seem to take place off off page or something.

[00:40:27] And it's just scene after scene of just blood soaked depravity to the point where you you almost can't believe it. Mixed in with the judge waxing philosophical and these gorgeous, beautiful descriptions of the desert in all the all the seasons in the deathly heat and then in the snow and rain and cold.

[00:40:57] And I think towards the end, it becomes more explicitly or blatantly surreal. It's always teetering on the edge of some kind of predator natural just nightmare. You know, like some kind of nightmarish vision.

[00:41:12] And once you get to that last scene in the bar and the whorehouse, the brothel with the judge 30 years later and the bear, the dancing bear that gets shot. Yeah, you're just like I like I just like I'm gonna have nightmares about that. The dancing bear. I'm gonna have nightmares about the judge in the fucking toilet.

[00:41:33] Yeah. And it shows the lie of that. You know, I've seen that before. I've read this would be like the best example of it. It is that like in one sense. But then it becomes way bigger. It becomes more like all and come compensating, more mythic, more metaphysical.

[00:42:22] It really becomes about like the soul of humanity and like the those maybe even bigger than that. Just the universe. You know, like what kind of universe is this good or evil?

[00:42:34] Yeah, yeah. I totally I absolutely agree. I think that it is shrinking the book to try to make it such a local critique when when I think it really is a cosmic book. And moreover, I just like, you know, there everybody is evil. Like there is it's indiscriminate in its description of the savagery of of Apaches and Yuma Indians as well as the Glanton gang.

[00:43:01] So it seems to be talking about humanity. It's like to give an example of the visceral violence that makes even I think somebody like me who kind of digs like fiction violence recoil is like scenes in which some of the Indians are killing babies and hanging them like by their like over by their throats like they're.

[00:43:28] McCarthy describes them as like larvae of some some sick creature that's not of this world. It's like or, you know, or part of the Glanton gang is like killing babies by like grabbing them by the legs and swinging them bashing their head against the rocks and their brains are oozing out through their little baby soft spots. It's just so fucked up.

[00:43:50] Like there's just so many scenes like this. One of the things that plenty of people have have said about this that makes it extra distressing is there's no McCarthy isn't saying as he's telling you about this. He's not he's not saying it's evil. He's not saying it's bad. Like the characters aren't saying that they're just sort of matter of fact like going about this violence and McCarthy is presenting it to you in a way that is just more distressing to me and in a super effective way.

[00:44:20] Of conveying the true to like terrible nature of humankind and perhaps of just existence.

[00:44:51] Although like thinking back you realize I guess like some of the most depraved and arbitrary acts of cruelty and viciousness. Like I don't remember the kid being involved in any of those. But but but also the kid kind of disappears for a lot of the book. You know you're you stop getting it from his perspective.

[00:45:10] And the fact that this kid is considered the good guy in this book or at least that's how it's set up at the end. You know with the judge representing this I don't know satanic Gnostic archon like evil.

[00:45:26] The judge has remembered these 30 years that the kid was like he showed a little empathy for the for the Indians when he was killing them and only killed them when there was a reason to. He didn't do it completely indiscriminately.

[00:45:42] That's your window into something that is you know maybe resist like some kind of resistance against the addictive force of violence and war and brutality.

[00:46:00] There are little moments throughout when the kid is part of the Glanton gang that the kid seems like maybe the only person who is not really that afraid of the judge and will do things even say like even just in his speaking loudly enough where everybody else is afraid that the judge will hear.

[00:46:22] Small moments where the kid seems to exert his own will in a way that that is not concerned with the judges. If I'm right the judge might view him as an antagonist but also as a like it does seem like the judge is calling him to be more like him because he sees maybe that this kid has will.

[00:46:49] The potential.

[00:46:50] And most of the other people don't have a will and the will for the judge is so strong that I think that if he can't call him over to be on his team he's going to view him as as a competitor of sorts or as like somebody that he needs to like come to terms with.

[00:47:09] Like the judge has this I don't have it in front of me but the judge has like a really interesting little speech about how it bothers him that there are there is life in this world that he has not like approved of. Yeah I have the quote actually.

[00:47:24] Whatever exists he says whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent. This is after he just killed like birds and was like put it like pinning them in his little book.

[00:47:36] He looked about at the dark forest in which they were bivouacked. He nodded towards the specimens he'd collected. These anonymous creatures he said may seem little or nothing in the world yet the smallest crumb can devour us.

[00:47:48] Any smallest thing beneath young rock out of men's knowing only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he properly scissoring the earth. Yeah I think you're right.

[00:48:04] I think he had high hopes for the kid because he sensed like the will in the kid like an agency that the other men lacked.

[00:48:12] But it was a surprise to me when the kid after the day of the whole gang is most of the gang has been killed by the Yuma. The kid just decides I'm done with the judge and won't rejoin with him like I was a little surprised.

[00:48:31] I was like did I miss something that they have a fight because there was no real indication that he would just all of a sudden decide I'm done with this guy. Was it Glanton like did he have loyalty to Glanton. What was keeping him there in the first place.

[00:48:46] You know yeah I don't know. And that's like what you know one of the things about this book is even though it is from the perspective of the kid we don't get much understanding of what's going on in the kid's mind.

[00:48:57] He doesn't speak a whole lot. We don't we're just being told what the kid is saying. So we never have like the kid's inner thoughts and nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing like that.

[00:49:07] I you know I don't think I was surprised like I I think I got the vibe. And this is it's weird to say about a book like but I got the vibe that the kid never really felt kinship with the judge and that the judges like attempts at like befriending him.

[00:49:24] Kind of like exactly like that Chamberlain quote that I didn't read until after where where he says like the judge would always be friendly with me and talk to me but I hated him.

[00:49:33] It made sense after reading that quote that maybe McCarthy was like maybe this kid just never really cares for the judge. And what's going on is just like you know he's a wandering soul that's pretty fine with violence. So this is a good way to get paid.

[00:49:47] Like if it's just the weird judge with his like weird imbecile right to him. Right. That's the difference. But and by the way like also a child probably a child molester rapist. Well that's real life. Do we get the sense in the book that he was.

[00:50:02] So there is a scene where it's in the Yuma River when they break into his room and it's he has the imbecile and he's naked and he has like a 10 year old girl naked with him.

[00:50:18] You block certain things out almost with this. But when he's walking around with the imbecile on like the leash and then you just picture that it really is just an insane fucking book and the imagery of it.

[00:50:48] It's like was it in the McCarthy article that we read where maybe it was in this where he's talking about like the unconscious. But I think I was reading something about his writing process like how actually even though he spent years planning this book he wrote a lot of it in like very few bursts.

[00:51:10] I think I read a quote from him about like not that writing is really about channeling. Like he's tapping into something. Like it's like the muse. What was your experience reading this book?

[00:51:26] It's incredible. So like the thing that makes me put this book like hold it in such high regard is it's not just like this amazing historical fiction about like a real life gang and like these villainous people super detailed and you know told in a way that I'm compelled to keep reading.

[00:51:49] Like that's all true. But it is those moments of weirdness and the language like the religious imagery that he uses like the weird symbolism like the descriptions of the judge as being like almost supernatural early on and like almost definitely supernatural late on.

[00:52:09] He's like tying this genre of Western historical novel and making it into something that seems to just tap into a deeper layer like you know ripping the seams of the world apart to show you like what lies beneath. I don't know. I don't think I've had the experience of.

[00:52:33] I texted you that the secret joke of your soul is that you are like a secret Gnostic. Like from what I understand about Gnosticism isn't it that that evil is in the heart of the world like the world itself reality itself is evil.

[00:52:51] It's only something not earthly that can be good. And one clear interpretation of this novel is that that's what at bottom this world is. That's how this civilization got built. Not just the American the United States of America although for sure.

[00:53:08] For sure that but like all civilization. And we can pretend that we have progressed morally but at bottom this is what it is you know just killing buying a dog and then throwing it in the river and having a drunk guy shoot it.

[00:53:28] When I was reading that I was like I need to know what Tamler felt about this.

[00:53:30] So there was somebody else who had read it and was like did you get to the scene. I don't want to spoil it but did you get to the scene where like I can I'm not like my daughter like I can see a movie or read a book where a dog dies. But yeah.

[00:53:42] The Gnostic part. I'm sure like if I dig around to Cormac McCarthy interviews or something maybe he's talked more about this but you know Gnosticism like is an umbrella term for so many different things.

[00:53:56] But one of the things that's that seems to common is this belief that the material world is actually evil. That matter just just the world of matter is actually just the result of a demigod like an evil demigod who who created matter and trapped like the human like trapped pieces of the divine spark.

[00:54:18] Like so in every human being like there is a little piece of the divine spark. We're just like encased in this like evil material world. So everything about this world is actually just evil.

[00:54:30] Like there is a God beyond this God like beyond Yahweh who is associated with the demiurge. It's just sort of like it's evil all the way down. It's not that this was created like Christians believe as a perfect world that then fell that evil got into it.

[00:54:46] I have this quote from a paper on talking about the Gnostic interpretation of this book. He says,

[00:55:16] And I think that's the judge's view like like evil doesn't really describe the judge well. It's like I think he sees existence in this completely different way that like the thing to be explained is why people would have demigods.

[00:55:44] Like this is a sort of a weird view that there is good and evil. All there is for him is as he says war. War is God but then also the dance for him is important. And the dance.

[00:55:59] It's like well this is the world you have to flow with the world as it is. And so he's like, well, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that.

[00:56:11] It's like, well, this is the world you have to flow with the world as it is rather than resist it or pretend it's not like this or get dour about it and start empathizing with the people that you're being paid to empathize with.

[00:56:39] The people that you're being paid to kill. You know, the one thing the judge does is he is he is all in on what he's doing. And I think it offends him when people are in whatever way resisting that.

[00:56:56] He's described in these ways like so some of the things that he does seem really incredible and magical and like even gives like us, you know, it's like McCarthy creates the scene where he's like giving a sermon on the mount basically.

[00:57:10] Like he is like a like a twisted Christ figure. He's like the opposite. He's like some sort of Antichrist.

[00:57:16] I do think the judge, somebody from the perspective of the judge would think the kid having the occasional pang of sympathy for you remember the guy who was dying like the judge told him to kill him but the kid was unwilling to actually do it.

[00:57:33] That weakness is one thing. But imagine how absurd it seems to think that your task in this world would be to like promote good. Like what are you doing? Like that's you're not going to get anywhere that way. Like this world can't you can't like make this world a good place.

[00:57:49] There's the epigraph to this James Elroy book American Tabloid. He says America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't describe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception. That feels like what this book is like and not just America but humanity.

[00:58:14] Like you said humanity was never innocent. There was no fall from grace. People were scalping people 300,000 years ago before any remnant of what we understand as civilization started. So you know there's no noble savage. There's no noble civilized person. It's just all depravity and cruelty.

[00:58:39] And I guess the kind of mindless violence you know that's the part that makes you that might make you feel like the world is really evil. These aren't even people who are doing it for some higher purpose or even their own benefit.

[00:58:55] They're not even sadistic. Yeah they're not even like really. They're not like taking delight in this. It's just like another day. It's like a Wednesday for them to kill and tie up and rape.

[00:59:06] They go into some Mexican city at one point. Mexican little town not just to get supplies and to get some food and drink and they end up just killing the whole town and scalping them. That was not the plan. You know it was just every time they go somewhere they'll just end up getting drunk. Sometimes it can almost have a kind of nobility like when they kill the guy who wouldn't let the black Jackson sit at the same table.

[00:59:34] Right. You know you almost feel OK about it because again like everybody is just on the spectrum of evil somewhere. But I think what's interesting is you're right. They don't take a kind of sadistic pleasure in doing it except for maybe the judge you know who at least.

[00:59:56] The judge takes like a delight. Like that's the game for him. Like yeah. Like with the little little kid. Yes. Right. He takes a little kid. He's like playing with you almost think OK maybe he's going to like glant and dead with the dog. Maybe he's gonna. That's just for some reason he likes this kid. He's going to save them but no he just scalps him after bouncing him on his knee and like playing with him.

[01:00:17] Yeah. You know like they will suffer. Like a lot of them like they could end up dead. They could end up in jail. It doesn't matter. They just can't stop themselves from like lighting some guy on fire in a bar for no reason.

[01:00:31] It's like the movie trope where like everyone's laughing and like you know they just do it. And McCarthy is I think shows a lot of restraint or maybe he was a twisted mind himself but I think he shows a lot of restraint to be able to present this violence in such a way where where I would have the temptation to moralize even unwittingly like describe these things as evil whereas he just describes them.

[01:01:00] And that does something to me to just have them described.

[01:01:04] Yeah I know this book resists judgment. I think we both came across an article where someone said the book is written in a way that makes ethical judgment seem naive which I think is a very good way of describing how this book this book makes you feel stupid for trying to reduce it to a critique of how we should be.

[01:01:29] You know how we should be treated indigenous people indigenous communities. It certainly makes you feel stupid if you think there's anything exceptional about America exceptionally good and moral about freedom and respect for human rights.

[01:01:45] It's like no that's not how this thing gets built you know but I do. I think you're right in that the weirdness of it that like nightmarish just phantasmagorical quality of it is what kind of sets it apart from even like the smartest critique of easy moralism you know like it's beyond.

[01:02:07] It's beyond like as we might be demonstrating beyond talking about almost. It's really a book that you feel good and evil. It's a book that you feel more than you can try to articulate what it is that that feeling reflects.

[01:02:25] This is just like one of the many details that I'm so impressed by in the book but the way that the geography is described like the setting that McCarthy puts these people in like the it's it does seem like if you want to describe the world as being so evil to its core the wasteland of the desert that's often described sometimes explicitly like referencing a hellscape with demons walking on it.

[01:02:53] But it just also like that just beauty like yeah amazing beauty the difficulty that you have surviving out there like nature is both your enemy but also like this grandeur this beauty.

[01:03:11] One thing we didn't mention like the kid is described as being born under the Leonid meteor showers like a bunch of falling stars and the night that he goes out to meet the judge at the out and unwittingly meet the judge on the outhouse there's also a meteor shower.

[01:03:26] Yeah I agree the geography you know and I have a special sympathy like I really love the desert and I love that so I see the possibility of it you know the whole go west young man that is what apparently just motivated Chamberlain who's loosely who the kid is loosely based on the kid just you know his home life is untenable so he just heads west.

[01:03:50] One thing that's kind of interesting is that the judge his name is Judge Holden from Texas we don't get the sense that he's like went to law school and has a degree.

[01:04:01] The kid asks judge of what and and is it Tobin who's like shh he's gonna hear you. Yeah right and he has this speech where he talks about like himself as a suzerain. Which I had to look up by the way.

[01:04:17] He at least gives his definition of it. He says that it is above the law above local laws. He's the leader of the leaders.

[01:04:28] So in one sense he's he is the thing that makes a mockery of whatever local laws happen to be and those laws could be you know moral principles principles of human rights prints you know Declaration of Independence whatever like he makes a mockery of all that he stands above it he rules over that.

[01:04:47] And yet he is very well versed in the law and it's very funny when when at the end when the kid kills his horses so that he won't be able to follow him.

[01:04:58] Yeah he he ends up tracking him down and while the kid is there with a gun kind of trained on him he just spouts what I think I put this down. Like horse law. He just spouts.

[01:05:10] It's like oh like this is property and like this is the penalty for like stealing a man's birth for like. Yeah they lay under the board like hide of a dead ox and listen to the judge calling to them.

[01:05:19] He called out points of jurisprudence he cited cases he expounded upon those laws pertaining to property rights in B's Mansuet and he quoted from the cases of a tainter insofar as he reckoned them germane to the corruption of blood in the prior and felonious owners of the horses now dead among the bones.

[01:05:38] Then he spoke of other things and it's what's interesting is the ex-priest leans like like don't listen to him like this is some kind of deadly temptation like stop your ears. Right. It's like the sirens. Yeah like the sirens exactly.

[01:05:50] And so there's this interesting relationship with the judge in the law. He's at once like beyond it but then also a representative of it in some way and an expert in it.

[01:06:02] Yeah like he's like fascinated like maybe it's part of just the game that he likes to play. You know one thing he shows is expertise across like all domains like he's like delivering lectures on paleontology and and biology and spirituality.

[01:06:16] I don't know like this is maybe we save this for later but what the fuck is the judge then because 30 years later the kid is like he didn't look any different like he hadn't aged. Yeah.

[01:06:28] Throughout the judge demonstrates like exceptional skill like that amazing scene where he he directs the men on how to like make gunpowder so they can like at the last minute save themselves from the Apaches or the Comanches. You must have geeked out about that.

[01:06:45] Oh my god man it was like yeah but it was like a yeah he's like MacGyver but like Promethean MacGyver you know.

[01:06:53] He's literally the power of fire in his hands and he's and but like I don't know how else to say it like a pagan version of this like where like where they're performing like a ritual like a Dionysian ritual but pissing.

[01:07:10] You know where he's like chanting for them all to like piss into this pot as he's in a frenzy stirring it and then like and this is all to save their lives and the sun that they need to dry out the the gunpowder that he's made with bat guano and piss and and sulfur.

[01:07:29] Maybe blocked by a cloud and they're all staring at that cloud and it barely squeaks by without blocking the sun and only because of that they're able to like load up their guns with gunpowder and and successfully and then the judge tricks them and and they massacre all of the Indians.

[01:07:47] That's just insane and then you get these moments where he seems to have praternatural like ability and like there's a tease where you know the judge is doing coin tricks which also of course has got my heart. You just love the judge.

[01:08:02] And then like he performs this this trick that all of a sudden doesn't seem like sleight of hand like it seemed like he was actually doing magic and and by the end where he's like not aged a bit.

[01:08:14] Like this is gonna sound stupid man, but the very last scene when we just assume that he killed the kid.

[01:08:24] I like I felt like what happened is the judge devoured him ate him or engulfed him like when he wraps his big arms around him almost like a like it feels like it's an unholy sort of like absorption of the kid.

[01:08:43] And so I got the sense of the like the shock and horror of the men at first I thought rape because men like that wouldn't be shocked at just the killing right? Someone gets shot in the bathroom like that's whatever you know.

[01:08:55] No, you get the sense that something beyond what we can but when you say devour do you mean in that supernatural way like it just like opened up and enveloped the kid into his body like he didn't just chop him up and start eating.

[01:09:12] Yeah, I mean yeah, I mean or like this is why it sounds really stupid for me to say it like I mean the visceral reaction I might have to seeing some completely unnatural way in which somebody might be devouring somebody else like opening their jaws so big like to reveal he's like some sort of actual monster or like like something that just doesn't look natural.

[01:09:37] Like of course McCarthy's not telling us for this very reason like I'm sure he likes.

[01:09:42] And not telling us whether he is indeed supernatural although there are a lot of hints in that direction the fact that he doesn't age or grow hair but you know, you know at the end if the style changes and it becomes almost like the style of it is something that you might find in like a fantasy novel like a dark fantasy novel or something like that.

[01:10:08] They say he will never he says he will never die and it and you know, it just keeps repeating and it becomes like an evil spell or something but he's chanting it but he's it's still him saying it and we don't know if he never dies.

[01:10:24] No in fact yeah what I was gonna say when you're saying that is either he either he is supernatural or he's convinced that he is supernatural. Yeah. Yeah, there's hints throughout the book not hints but a couple of times there's accusations that he's just crazy. Yeah.

[01:10:44] And at the very end the kid says like I don't want any of your craziness but when the kid says it I still think the kid there is some draw that he's had but what he's doing is resisting the judge like we're here the judge is like a devil tempting.

[01:11:00] And it does seem like maybe the kid succumbs to it finally you know he almost escaped with his soul and then he didn't you know he still went back to the to the brothel that night or he still he didn't leave once the insane violence of the bear being shot a lot of animals being shot and killed the mules going off the cliff and then just exploding onto the rocks.

[01:11:28] That's another one of those like senseless like I think they just think it's funny that like 127 mules or whatever who are like on the edge of a cliff they just knock him. Yeah. He can get moralistic too.

[01:11:41] I think you're right that the kid gets under his skin but he has that speech at the end where he says look look at that man see him this man is hatless you know his opinion of the world you can read it in his face in his stance yet his complaint that man's life is no more than a dream.

[01:11:57] That man's life is no bargain Max masks the actual case with him, which is that men will not do as he wishes them to have never done never will do.

[01:12:07] That's the way of things with him and his life is so balked about by difficulty and become so altered if it's intended architecture that he's a little more than a walking hovel hardly fit to house the human spirit at all.

[01:12:21] When he say such a man that there is no malign things said against them that there is no power no force no cause what manner of heretic could doubt agency and claimant alike.

[01:12:33] Can you believe that the wreckage of his existence is unentailed no leans no creditors the gods of vengeance and compassion alike lie sleeping in their crypt so it's almost like I am acting on behalf of men like this who just are dominated by the world they cannot express agency they have no autonomy and they can't make other people do what they want.

[01:13:00] I'm acting on their behalf or acting in a way that they can't for them you know yeah and I don't know if the judge doesn't he pompously will speak and like he will pontificate with the best of them but here he seems almost like he is feeling defensive and that's the thing that only the kid can make him exactly.

[01:13:25] Yeah you put your finger on it right that's it only ever comes out with a kid he's so confident about everybody else yeah and like it's you really feel like a one look from the kid and he can tell I can tell wait this kid isn't really like like buying this like I gotta get to.

[01:13:43] Yeah he's calling he's not calling me on my bullshit like publicly he's just not taken in by it whereas the other people go you crazy but they don't they're just spellbound by him anyway you know.

[01:13:56] Yeah and in fact like the there is one time when Toadvine when he does that that when he kills the little the little Apache kid that he was keeping as a pet Toadvine is the one who goes up to him and says like you feel like fuck you like I don't remember the words he says and I don't think the judge even bats an eye to like the regular moral judgments of like regular people like that's like whatever you know you're I'm he so clearly feels of himself as beyond that.

[01:14:26] As if he were no mystery himself the bloody old hoodwinker. And Toadvine interestingly does join him at the end when the kid. That's right.

[01:14:36] So I mean maybe we should do this in two parts and we can this is can be one of the things we talk about next time but you know we meet Toadvine early in the book he is the kids entryway I think into both armies but certainly the Glanton gang and Toadvine also just engages in a.

[01:15:00] Totally random and inexplicable act of violence ends up burning down a bar like killing a guy getting the kid involved in it. But you wonder this was right after the scene with the judge where he just calls the Reverend a pedophile and goat fucker.

[01:15:20] Everybody like burns down the barn that he's in and probably kills him and he did it and then they find him later he says I yeah I didn't I didn't even know the guy. So I heard of him.

[01:15:32] And it's right after that that Toadvine does it which almost suggests that maybe the judge is having this kind of contagious. Yeah. Malignancy effect or something like that. Yeah.

[01:15:45] Like you do get the sense that that the judge is is maybe on some spiritual mission of like getting disciples. Yeah.

[01:15:54] And maybe in part two we can talk about some of the other characters and some of like some key scenes but the Glanton himself is kind of an entry. Like we haven't talked pretty much at all about Glanton. All right. Should we wrap it up here for now?

[01:16:07] It's late also at night here. There's so many things I want to talk about. Yeah. And this is good because they're like it can brew like this stuff needs to brew in my head. Like after we talk at the more even more bruise. All right. All right.

[01:16:23] Well join us next time if there is a next time on Very Bad Wizards. Are you thinking we're going to die? Is that where you're going with it? Yeah. The world is going to end.