Blood Meridian

Or as I like to call it: The Western section of my library’s tribute to the holocaust. Good God. Okay, where to begin. The book isn’t good. But I read it because it was on the book club list and I did not want to be that guy who read one book by an author (Cormac McCarthy’s The Road) and say I’ll never open up to anything of his again…especially with how much acclaim this guy gets.

Well, I read it, open mind and all, and even liked bits of it at times, but in the end, it was just too much McCarthy. That is to say, there is no point to anything and the violence is so rampant and unrestrained one sort of gets desensitised – no that’s not right, that’s what you say about actual violence – acclimated to it.

The book begins well, a boy in a broken home whose mother died at birth and violent father could never accept him runs away, and quickly the action picks up when he enters a preacher’s tent for a sermon. The preacher has a weird way of talking, combining King James’ New Testament Gospel with that ignorant redneck western country talk, and is interrupted by a man we come to know only as the Judge. The Judge tells the crowd this preacher is a fraud, speaks the way he does because he is illiterate, and may seem new here, but is on the run because of committing several different forms of child-rape and molestation crimes in various parts of the United States. The crowd is in uproar, charges the preacher and eventually kills him. 

When we meet the Judge again in a bar, the boy (and the main character is only known as the boy in this book, except when he’s known as the man, very McCarthy-like) asks the Judge how he came to know this preacher, to which the Judge says “I’ve never heard of this preacher before today. Just wanted him out of here.” Or something like that.

Awesome start, right? Well the awesome was basically over right there. The Judge is a very interesting character and all, but he helps lead a band of Cavalrymen on an Apache hunt gone wrong and every chapter ends up following the same basic order: travel, massacre, rape, massacre, rape, murder, molestation, other violent crime, massacre, capture, escape, repeat.

About the only thing of interest is its historical significance, which is mostly in regards to John Joel Glanton. Apparently the Glanton is one of the most notorious scalp hunters of the American West. That’s great. Really terrific. It just doesn’t make for an interesting fictional book to read of his adventures skinning Native Americans, impaling enough dead babies on a tree to create a sort of “dead babies don’t grow on trees” irony, picking fights in bars and killing everyone inside, things like that. I just felt nothing reading this other than “I can’t wait for it to be over and me to never have to read another Cormac McCarthy book again.” 

And I’m sorry if you liked The Road. It was really terrible. But if it is your style, you may just like Blood Meridian. 

John Dies at the End

Good news everyone! It's a fucking movie now, so you don't even need to read this book!

The first thing I realized about this book is that it is funny. Not like, here is a shitty joke, or that character has a weird tweak, or the idea that monsters and demons are just like bullies, sort of funny. I mean full on f***ing hilarious. If you have a dark sense of humour, think exploding people and goofy spiders with little hands and fake wigs could be funny, combined with the absolutely strange intuitive near-superpowers of demon slaying kids who are basically f***-ups and a guy who loves to deliver cheesy one-liners before he blasts monsters, then yeah, this shit is really great.

I can’t speak too much of the plot, because I think it is actually quite messy and not very good. The fact that it bounces all over the place only to be tied in all together at the end is cool, but nothing unique and leaves for a lot of unanswered questions in terms of how and when things took their turn into the alternate reality or crossed-universe that the narrator, and the reader by the end, are familiar with.

But my goodness, weak, discontinuous or fragmented plot slopped together or not, this book is full of great moments. So much so that I honestly laughed out loud, in real hearty gutlaughs, and it really made me feel like I didn’t care what was happening in the plot at that particular moment; the writing is funny enough to cover the tracks of any literary crimes.

David Wong, the alter-ego of Cracked.com writer – Jason Pargin – is the main character/narrator and has a really great way of bringing a subtle fantasy of monsters and demons into the world of a semi-rational, cynical young bastard. He was troubled as a youngster, and this helps him touch upon actual issues that affect real people, making him a character that’s pretty easy to relate to. Even aside from him calling John a dumbass repeatedly, there is a large amount of angst he holds against humanity. As the story moves along, we learn more about why he was sent to special school to finish his senior year of high school, as he comes clean to Amy about committing the violent crime against jocks that were bullying him that landed him there.

The anti-bullying explosion of his was a very interesting point, I thought. It comes as he learns the truth about Amy, and why he feels bad about noticing her lack of a left hand when John never made an issue of it, and her depression, which actually makes David feel less optimistic about humanity than normal. He reciprocates by telling her of his story, and why he felt he had to do it. Bullies can only push so far before it all collapses against them. There was a moment the book, though funny and not truly very thought provoking, really got to me though. When he finished his spiel on stabbing a bully’s face, and was making a point of how no one should feel bad for those who prey upon kids – kids they feel are weaker in order to get an emotional high from beating them up or making them cry – when the victims fight back with an uncontrolled eruption of psychotic rage, he mentioned a bit about the Columbine School Shootings I had never considered: that the look on those jocks faces when the kids they had bullied had guns aimed for their chests must have been fucking priceless.

So yeah, if you are thinking of bullying someone, please don’t. Especially if the potential victim is a Cracked.com editor.

In all, very funny, very silly and though not a great plot line, carries a bit of a cult sensation to it that I can get behind. I’m happy the author is having it turned into a movie. I will watch it, and whether or not it is any good, I hope he made a serious amount of money from it all.