5 Quotes From the Greatest Terrible Book Ever That'll Make You a Better Thinker (Blood Meridian)
'Whatever exists without my knowledge exists without my consent'
Hey hey,
Before we talk about the Judge and “Blood Meridian.”
I'm about to join the 99Bitcoins YouTube team with 700k subscribers.
That’s where a lot of my time has gone lately.
Don’t look at the current uploads—they’re really bad!— but that’s why they’ve hired me as the new voice.
It’s time to get back to regular Substack updates (and Medium too!)
No American writer has changed my life more than Cormac McCarthy.
Notice I say American writer because Dostoevsky is still my literary GOAT.
Cormac was the first author who accomplished two firsts for me as a reader: He led me to finish an entire book in one sitting with "The Road," and now, with "Blood Meridian," he has become the first to compel me to reread the entire thing after completing it.
“Blood Meridian.” Holy shit. It's worth three reads.
It's a very intense book, not one you will easily forget.
And now they’re making it into a movie? Wow.
Judge Holden—pictured above—is the most evil yet complex character I’ve ever read in literature. Some call him the devil, and others call him God. The Judge is hard for people with 150 IQ to handle, The Judge will fucking wreck the minds of the masses in film. Here’s how the book describes him:
“A massive, hairless, albino man who excels in shooting, languages, horsemanship, dancing, music, drawing, diplomacy, science and anything else he seems to put his mind to.”
All I know is these quotes from the book will make you a more complex thinker:
1. “Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work.” - The Judge
Now, you have to be careful with this one.
The Judge says the ultimate game for people is war.
He adds that before man was, war waited for him. Having a negative opinion of it is like being critical of a stone. What men think of war makes no difference. War endures.
It’s very scary.
“Blood Meridian” is a book set near the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, depicting the battles against Native Americans, and war was on everyone’s mind.
But on a smaller scale, those who approach life as a series of games within games tend to find the most success and happiness in it.
I heard Naval Ravikant describe on Airchat that Elon Musk doesn’t have more time in the day than any of us. He runs nine companies, has sixteen wives but his secret isn’t more time. All of it is a game for Elon. That’s the secret.
2. “The truth about the world is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor preceden…”- The Judge
I believe it. I wish others did too.
The world is a crazy acid trip, and if you’re smart, disciplined, and willing to take risks (unlike most people), you can truly have anything you want.
This is what makes the Judge a great villain.
Midway through the book, he plays with an Apache child, makes the baby laugh, and acts like a dad. Then he scalps the baby and leaves it dead.
He gives the best advice in the book. He’s also the most evil.
3. “When God made man the devil was at his elbow” - A Hermit
A lot of the book deals with fate. Amor Fati.
It asks: Why was the world not created to suit everybody?
Another character, an ex-priest called Tobin, puts it like this:
“The gifts of the Almighty are weighed and parceled out in a scale peculiar to himself. It’s no fair accounting.”
There is so much unfairness in the world I could spend a million Substack articles spelling it all out.
The real question is, what will you do about it?
It reminds me of people who bitch about the Federal Reserve or the debasement of currency. Okay, great. So what’s the plan? For some it’s crypto, others gold—but don’t be someone who sees the problems and does nothing about it.
As Nietzche said, “If pity were to rule the world for one day, it would end it.”
4. “Whatever exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.”
This is the money quote.
Once again, said by the Judge.
I think it’s relatively agreed upon that Judge Holden is the embodiment of the violent aspects of American culture that we wage.
Expansionism, Manifest Destiny, etc.
This quote is undoubtedly badass. We should all aspire to it … to some degree.
But it’s important to understand that the Judge’s quest for knowledge is sought purely so that he can dominate and destroy. On top of that, McCarthy has obviously also taken many aspects of the satanic figure in Western lit, theology, and mythology and placed them into the character of Holden. Hence the constant idea that Holden is the devil.
He is the personification of the underbelly of the Enlightenment.
5. “When the lambs is lost in the mountain, he said. They cry. Sometime come the mother. Sometime the wolf”
I think this is a good quote to leave you with.
None of our lives (ostensibly) will be as horrid and as nightmarish as “Blood Meridian.”
But they will not end up the way we expect them to. The ones who ultimately move the world embrace this. You should, too.
That said, this book is damn good. A lot of mysticism is placed in juxtaposition with the activities of the Kid (the main character we didn’t even get to!) and the gang. Many symbols in the book carry a religious and hermetic invocation which can add a lot to your reading.
The mystery of the novel's conclusion is one of the best things about it, so don't be disheartened if you finish the book and not everything makes sense. Like life, sometimes the mystery is not meant to be solved.