Cormac McCarthy- Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West

I think that if I had to categorize this book, I would call it a "messed-up masterpiece." Cormac McCarthy is a genius, but I can't help but think that he's more than a little crazy.

Blood Meridian is the second-to-last book for "Ideas of the Western". We're in our revisionary phase, and damn but is this revisionary. The story follows a group of men called the Glanton Gang (historically there were 19 of them, although I'm never quite sure in the book how many there are), led by a man named Judge Holden. The protagonist of the story, if there is one, is "the kid", who joins with the gang in their scalping escapades. Originally, the Glanton Gang were supposed to just protect the locals from Apaches, but they seem to have lost of sight of who they were supposed to be killing, and murdered nearly every citizen in 10,000 sq.m. Crazy. The Judge is also an absolutely inconceivable character. No one is sure if he's God, or if he's the devil, or if he's both. Either way, he is a HUGE character (both in presence, and it stature), and I agree with the critics who say that he is McCarthy's masterpiece.

This book has to be the most violent piece of fiction that I have ever read. Think of Kill Bill style violence- so unrelenting that you sort of become immune. That's Blood Meridian. It is insane, and it makes you feel like you're going to go insane, but it is also exquisitely written. If you feel like this review is really contradictory and vague, that's because my opinions of the book are also the same. I can't decide whether it is grotesque or wonderful.

McCarthy's newest book, The Road, has just been chosen as Oprah's book club selection. McCarthy is notoriously reclusive, and so he is going to do his first television appearance ever with her. I'm sure the sales of that book have already gone through the roof; it will be interesting to see what America thinks of Cormac McCarthy. I'm not sure I know what I think, yet. I'll let you know.

Leslie Marmon Silko- Ceremony

Ceremony is this week's novel for "Ideas of the Western", and it fits into our section on "revisionist Westerns". Ceremony is quite different from the other books that we've read so far in that it is the only book on our syllabus to be written by a Native American author, and because it focuses on issues that we haven't come across yet- the Vietnam War and recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Tayo is a half-native man of the Laguna tribe in New Mexico who has just returned from the Vietnam War. He signed up to protect his cousin, Rocky, the family favourite, from harm overseas. However, Tayo is captured by Japanese soldiers while trying to carry an injured Rocky to safety, and Rocky either dies or is killed by a Japanese soldier (we're never quite sure). As well, when Tayo is forced to execute Japanese soldiers, he believes that one of them is his uncle Josiah, who on a rational level he knows is still back in New Mexico, but who he can't help but feeling like he has killed.

I think what interests me most about Ceremony is how relevant it is to issues that are going on today. This Monday's Maclean's has a cover story about soldiers coming back from Afghanistan and trying to reintegrate themselves into society, which is exactly what Tayo is trying to do. However, he has the additional difficulty of having been treated as an equal by white people while he was a solider, but having to go back to being treated as a second-class citizen now that he is just a Native war veteran. As well, much of Tayo's journey towards recovery is also a journey toward healing his country from the ills inflicted on it by wasteful and greedy white characters. What is making Tayo ill is not just the experience of the war, but the imbalance that he sees between what the land can offer and what white people are taking from it. His people, who know the secret of living in harmony with the land, have been pushed onto reservations and into poverty, while the white ranchers, farmers, and city dwellers take everything that they can.

This is something that I've really been thinking a lot about lately. There is this fascinating online quiz that measures your ecological footprint; I took it recently, and although I live a fairly minimal lifestyle, at least by North American standards (I live in a 700 square foot apartment that I share with someone else, I don't have a car, I don't fly very often, and I don't use a lot of electricity), we would still require three planets to support us if everyone lived the way that I do. It is really a wake up call. And this is part of what is making Tayo sick. His surroundings are completely out of balance, and that is reflected not only in the land, but in the war, and in his illness.

Ceremony is a fascinating look at a culture that seems to make a lot more sense than ours does a lot of the time. Tayo, through the medicine man Betonie, comes to understand that in order to make himself well again, he must address the imbalance that exists in society around him. He does this by reclaiming his Native identity, and rejecting his white one. He stops drinking, refuses to sleep around like his other war veteran friends do, refuses to return to the veteran's hospital, and reclaims Josiah's cows from the white rancher who stole them when he died. At the end, Tayo is breeding a new kind of cow that can live with very little food and water- a pretty good symbol of how we should perhaps be breeding our new generations so that we don't end up completely consuming our planet.