Blood Meridian Now

• HICCIUS DOCCIUS: Chapter 7

  Chapter 7 has so much for us to talk about!!! Like every chapter the synoptic headers can keep a feller up all night researching. We find many things here. Another chapter on blackness. Deaths of magic and the history of science. Legal motifs like crazy...some we didn't even get to. After all Cormac McCarthy had a few people close to him in law...so it shouldn't be a surprise he has words like "some vortex in that waste apposite to which mans transit and his reckonings alike lay abrogate." We read a couple of listeners comments too. Thank you for listening! Please write a review on  Spoitify or iTunes we would love that. And check out our supplementary content on our Substack page. Did you know a regular decks of cards relates to the tarot deck in some ways? Did you know, that a deck of cards is calendrical? Yep both decks have temporal allusions like this wonderful novel.   All art has elements of time-related allusions. A still life is one tiny moment frozen in an image. So is a photograph. A film is 24 frames per second.  A regular deck of cards has 52 cards, like 52 weeks in a. year. The cards are black or red, like day and night. 4 suits like 4 seasons. Spades, summer. Hearts, Fall. Diamonds, Winter. Clubs, fall. And each suit has 13 cards to represent the lunar cycles. Jokers can help with tracking a year...with adding the numbers of all the suits you get 364...use 2 Jokers for leap year!   Tarot cards also have calendrical qualities. Of interest for Blood Meridian there are 78 tarot cards in a deck. Minus 22 Major Arcana and you have 56 cards. 78 cards might relate to the several 7's and 8's in the novel 7x8 is 56.   But meanwhile...   Monday-The High Priestess Tuesday- The Tower Wednesday-The Magician Thursday-Wheel of Fortune Friday-The Emperess Saturday-The World Sunday-The Sun   Aries-The Emperor Taurus-The Hierophant Gemini-The Lovers Cancer-The Chariot Leo-Strength Virgo-The Hermit Libra-Justice Scorpio-Death Sagitarius-Temperance Aquarius-The Star Pisces-The Moon

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• IN COUNTRY: Chapter 6

  "for years now there had been no country here but the war." “How many times did someone have to run in front of a machine gun before it became an act of cowardice?” Dispatches, Herr   Thank you for listening. Chapter 6 might not have many pages but we found a few things to think about JVH finds some source material. Candy changes lead into gold. The phrase "in country" can be found in Michael Herr's brilliant book DISPATCHES. It's also in Dennis Lehane's novel SMALL MERCIES.... “Right now the sun shines during the day, but it’s pretty gray seven months out of the year. Or maybe, I dunno, it was just gray in my house growing up. I think of my house after my mother died—maybe even when she was still alive—and it just feels like everything was the color of the sidewalk, even the air. But in-country? Vietnam?” He looks around the circle. “You’ve never seen the color green until you’ve seen Vietnam.”

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• A CROSSROADS IN THE WASTE: Chapter 5, Blood Meridian

  "Allegories are in the realm of thought what ruins are in the realm of things." Walter Benjamin “Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.” Georges Bataille In this episode we talk about a few ideas and influences including T.S. Eliot, a little about allegory, the Baroque of Walter Benjamin, the Mexican basin, bats, climate, geography (hell) the strained relationship of Sproule and the kid, a little of the humour.   We would love to hear from you please email us at: [email protected]   Or check out our supplementary content on Substack...it's always going to be free for you to subscribe.   We also have some fun images on Instagram.   Some cultural references in this episode: El Topo by Jadorovsky, The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot.Versalles, Vatican City art work, Baroque. The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber, The Mushroom At The End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Jim Morrison, Lovecraft, vampires, elitist portrayal of food and street markets, and the potential intelligence of the kid.

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  1:12:29
• THE GEOLOGY OF FEAR: Chapter 4, Blood Meridian

  The novel becomes quite exciting and seems to enter a different form of descriptives...why do we feel what we feel reading this chapter? Ready. Set. Action. Simile, allegory, pagination, tools and hints of a secret architecture.  We forgot to mention how funny the line from Hayward praying for rain was..."Lord, we are dried to jerky down here." And goddammit it rained! Thank you for listening!!!!!

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  1:22:36
• THE PARATEXTS; The Epigraphs , A Special Bonus Episode

  Very little has been written about the epigraphs in Blood Meridian, especially looking at all three of them together. We fix that. Are the epigraphs misleading? Are the epigraphs another example of the art of misdirection? Thank you for listening. Please consider writing a review or subscribing to this podcast. Email us at: [email protected] Bohme April 24, 1575-November 17, 1624 (another 117 or 1117?) Shakespeare April 23, 1564-April 23, 1616 (like the kid born and died on same date?)

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  1:16:36

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