I’m almost done reading Cormac McCarthy’s epic Blood Meridian. It was one of the books I purchased in early Lockdown I (2020), but didn’t get around reading it until recently, after hearing of McCarthy’s passing. Boy, what a visceral experience. There isn’t much I can say about it that it doesn’t say, better, on it’s own. But it really is the great American novel, or, perhaps more accurately, the great anti-American novel. What is most striking to me is, beyond his biblical, unrelenting prose, is the mundane way he characterizes such extreme violence; absolutely horrid, entirely quotidian, pathologically American violence.

Those that know me and my aesthetic tastes know that I, a conscious Black person, have a somewhat ironic affinity for Americana. I don’t consider myself a patriot, or fan of America as it exists as a geopolitical entity, but, culturally speaking, I do find it peculiar, fascinating, and, with enough distance to allow for aesthetic observation and experience, quite enjoyable. Less “God Bless America” and more “Only in America”. My America is Big Macs and Miles Davis and the iPhone and megachurches and Hollywood and knowing that none of these exist without violence and exploitation made invisible but enjoying them still because the violence and exploitation was here before all of us and will be long after us and while we’re here the least we can do is have a good time.

I say all of this to say, Blood Meridian is a truly incredible work that could only come form America.

Seated during the Pledge,
SD