(no subject)

[proximoception]

For those who've read it, here's something that might help me: what do you most vividly remember, from Blood Meridian?

Because the overstuffing method would seem to lend itself to the simplification-through-intensity that Bloom sets against Yeats' intensity-through-simplification. But only if the same moments are similarly intense for most.

Might be some white noise here due to the novel's horrors. Like how everyone shrugs off most of what goes down in The Ring but no one shrugs at everything.

I'll write down my own answer now and post it later for comparison.

Comments

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

The hard thing is remembering that first read. But I know I was struck by:

The yard fight with Toadvine.
The tent scene where the Judge first appears.
The tree of dead babies.
The falling mules.
That first lakeside massacre.
The war sermon.
The Kid becoming cut off from the others.
The Judge escaping with a cannon.
The Judge trying to kill the Kid among animal bones.
The Judge letting the Kid know he knew about his reservations (at the same time letting us know about them).
The Judge visiting the Kid in jail and in dreams.
The kid the Kid kills.
The jakes at the end.
The wtf epilogue.

In the second reading I was most struck by the dried woman and the horses by the Pacific - as well as the curiously spaced-out direct allusions to various authors. And how closely the unseen Maker whose work the Judge judges resembles Ibsen's button-molder.