Blood Meridian

Since discovering how broad the field of literature really is around the age of 16, I have always been on the lookout for books that challenge me, both as a reader and in terms of my view of the world. Often touted among the most important writers of the late modernist era, a foray into the works of Cormac McCarthy was long overdue. Cited by many as his best work, Blood Meridian was the obvious choice.

Make no mistake, this is a spectacularly brilliant piece of writing. McCarthy adapts the supposedly true (but almost certainly exaggerated) journal of Samuel Chamberlain, a former soldier who rode with a band of outlaws in the mid-19th Century, adding in a fictional anti-hero protagonist ("the kid") and presumably augmenting still further the real-life John Glanton, the gang's ruthless leader, and Judge Holden, a mysterious figure who travels with them. But more than that, Blood Meridian is a treatise on human nature, the birth of America, and notions of good and evil.

The violence in this book is relentless. From the very start, the kid finds himself stumbling from one violent encounter to the next, beginning with bar fights and working his way up to riding with Glanton's crew for the majority of the book as they tear through the southwestern states destroying everything and everyone in their path. But for all the scalpings and massacres, headshots and hangings, not once does McCarthy set out to shock or appal with his prose or plot; he merely reports as a passive bystander, his characters bearing unfeeling witness to the atrocities before them - be they perpetrated by the characters themselves or merely a reminder of the myriad other tragic stories that are occurring elsewhere in this brutal world. It must be said that the quality of life in that area at that time was actually a lot better than what we are shown here, but McCarthy still provides a stark reminder of how comfortable we have become in the modern world, and perhaps how far we have yet to go.

The prose is relentless, plodding along without a single superfluous word like a mule through the desert - or perhaps like a vulture circling its prey. I don't think I have ever read a book so focused on maintaining its writing style, as bleak and barren as the worlds that McCarthy describes, and, in so being, as unfathomable and alien as well. The kid may be the main character, but we are not provided with so much as an interior monologue - in fact, entire chapters go by where he is not mentioned at all. Glanton is likewise a singular character, motivated only by his own personal gain, not afraid to kill with no questions asked and indiscriminate in the frontier justice that he and his men dish out. Far more intriguing, however, is the Judge: a man as bizarre in appearance as he is in character. Standing over seven foot tall, entirely hairless and possessing the strength to wield a cannon with his bare hands, he is also an expert linguist, chemist, philosopher, musician and naturalist. As the plot wears on, he begins to expand more on his world view, hinting at a supernatural background as he pontificates on the nature of the universe, extraterrestrial life and the origins of man. It's quite possible that he is meant to be an incarnation of Satan himself, or perhaps a combination of God and Satan, as he serves as judge, jury and executioner throughout - or perhaps he is merely a man driven increasingly mad by the death and carnage around him.

I thought that, in Infinite Jest, I had read the most thought-provoking book I would see for a long time, but Blood Meridian is right up there with it, in a much more convenient and satisfying package. This is a fascinating study into humanity's violent upbringing, the nature of man (or perhaps, more accurately, of men), and the huge questions of existence, belief and perception.

5/5

The Wild West has never been so metal.

Chess

Faced with the prospect of an eight-hour flight recently, I thought it might be wise to take some reading material that would keep me occupied for a decent amount of time. Stefan Zweig's 1942 novella Chess seemed like a solid bet - an intriguing-sounding study into obsession, memory and isolation that would also bring me back to the German-language fiction that I had been neglecting since my degree. And while I was finished with the book in just over an hour, it certainly kept my mind working for much longer.

Chess opens with the story of a chess prodigy, Mirko Czentovic, discovered in rural Eastern Europe, who learns the game after watching his father play and becomes world champion only a decade later. Our narrator, with an amateur interest in the game, happens to find himself sharing a cruise ship with the grandmaster and does his best to lure him into a game. He first manages to gather a group of fellow enthusiasts who are eager to join forces against the champion. Not forgetting his impoverished upbringing, or perhaps due to simple greed, Czentovic agrees only upon payment to take the group on, and wins the first game easily. The second game appears to be heading the same way until a voice pipes up from the crowd, advising the players and eventually leading Czentovic into checkmate. Amazed that the world champion could have been beaten by a complete unknown, the narrator tracks down the man, and learns his identity - a wealthy Austrian monarchist who had been kept as a political prisoner by the Nazis until quite recently. It was during this time, in solitary confinement in a hotel room, that he became an expert on chess - managing one day to steal a book laying out various historic games, he saw his only escape from insanity would be to play out each game, and then to learn them. Soon he tires of the games in the book and begins to play against himself, his personality gradually splitting into black and white as he becomes increasingly obsessed with trying to beat himself. The result is a mental breakdown that turns out to be his salvation as he is moved to a sanitorium and then released.

The length of the summary above is testament to the quality of Zweig's narrative - despite weighing in at just over 70 pages, there are very few moments in Chess that can be dispensed with without losing part of what the book is actually about. Zweig writes in a clear and concise style, saying precisely what he needs to say in exploring the depths of the human mind and the dangers of being alone with one's thoughts - as the prisoner rematches against Czentovic, it becomes clear that his fanaticism has done him more harm than good. Yet as cold and grim as all this sounds, Chess was not an unenjoyable read, an interesting insight into a time now almost forgotten and an exercise in how what could have been a good novel turned out better as a drum-tight novella.

4/5

As inappropriate as it may be for such weighty subject matter, I couldn't think of anything but this...