Cormac M

[Joseph Tracy]

Thanks for that kfan. I thought that was the case and thought it odd that the quote was presented without context in several places online simply   as a McCarthy quote from Blood Meridian. I don’t have a copy of the book.  

I was personally amazed by my first encounter with CM and remain in awe of his viscerally engaging prose. However, I came to be increasing estranged from what I perceive as the weird gnosticism he invokes, where the forces of savagery and criminality have supernatural powers whereas those who stand against such crimes have only feebler human resources. To me a world with angels requires devils and a world with devils loses credibility without angels. I was also, after a few of his books, turned off by the extreme machismo.
 To look at the human condition as a purely historic battle with no meaningful morals where any dispute is settled by struggles of force and persuasion is valid to my thinking, but McCarthy regularly imparts supernatural power to the ruthless, and only to the ruthless, and human honor to the macho and only the macho. This is not a literary or philosophic interpretation that holds my interest.  

Does anyone compare McCarthy to J Conrad? I just re-read  The Heart of Darkness  and felt myself in simlar terrain.  

> On Jun 17, 2023, at 10:51 PM, kfan <dmugmon at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> It was the judge.  The gang had made camp for the night.  Immediately preceding the monologue you quote, "Brown studied the judge.  You're crazy Holden.  Crazy at last.  The judge smiled.  Might does not make right, said Irving.  The man that wins in some combat is not vindicated morally."
> 
> "Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak..." 
> 
> The quotation you cite is followed by this passage: "The judge searched out the circle for disputants.  But what says the priest? he said.  Tobin looked up.  The priest does not say.  The priest does not say, said the judge.  Nihil dicit." 
> 
> 
> On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 8:23 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net <mailto:brook7 at sover.net>> wrote:
> Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak. Historical law subverts it at every turn. A moral view can never be proven right or wrong by any ultimate test. A man falling dead in a duel is not thought thereby to be proven in error as to his views. His very involvement in such a trial gives evidence of a new and broader view. The willingness of the principals to forgo further argument as the triviality which it in fact is and to petition directly the chambers of the historical absolute clearly indicates of how little moment are the opinions and of what great moment the divergences thereof. For the argument is indeed trivial, but not so the separate wills thereby made manifest. Man's vanity may well approach the infinite in capacity but his knowledge remains imperfect and howevermuch he comes to value his judgments ultimately he must submit them before a higher court. Here there can be no special pleading. Here are considerations
>   of equity and rectitude and moral right rendered void and without warrant and here are the views of the litigants despised. Decisions of life and death, of what shall be and what shall not, beggar all question of right. In elections of these magnitudes are all lesser ones subsumed, moral, spiritual, natural.
> Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian <https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/394535.Blood_Meridian_or_the_Evening_Redness_in_the_West <https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/394535.Blood_Meridian_or_the_Evening_Redness_in_the_West>>
> 
> So nobody remembers who said this, or if it was a commentary by the writer?  Context seems rather important here.   
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l <https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l>