A festival of McCarthy

Many years ago I bought a book by Cormac McCarthy called 'Blood Meridian', a rather brutal story built around a band from the US who collected bounties for the ears of First Americans which they turned into the municipal authorities of a town in northern Mexico. Sometimes without being too fussy about exactly whose ears they were collecting. Set twenty years before the American Civil War, but even then a time when a lot of damaged and unpleasant people were drifting around the wild west. A brutal but oddly compelling story which I must have read, at least in part, several times. Compelling, in part, for its evocation of the country, of the vanished south west; bright, harsh and unforgiving.

Then last year I picked up a two inch block from Picador containing three more stories, stories which I think I read about on or near publication and passed on. The border trilogy. See reference 1. One of these, 'All the pretty horses' I have now read, another rather brutal story, set in the same general area as 'Blood Meridian', but in the fifties of the last century rather than the forties of the one before that. A time when there were still cowboys on horses - and plenty of them in neighbouring Mexico. I have now paused and we wonder whether to pass the book on, or whether to retain it against the possibility that I will, one day, push on to parts two and three.

At which point we were told about a film called 'No country for old men', based on yet another McCarthy story. A sufficiently enthusiastic report that we actually paid full price for the thing from Amazon and have now watched all the way through, in one sitting.

The same mix of country and violence, but bang up to date with the story built around sanguinary infighting among the mobs which import recreational drugs into the US from Mexico - and their bounty hunters. Not to mention sundry more or less innocent bystanders. Not as much dramatic scenery as I was expecting, but, nevertheless, a well made film, which held one, but which at the end left one wondering about the culture and customs of a country which could produce such a thing. Game of Thrones might be just as violent, but it is a fantasy, a fairy tale, only very loosely based on a real world of a long time ago. While this film is based on the real world of now - which left one asking oneself, yet again, how could a sophisticated country like the US, awash with education, science and money, persist with its strange policies with regard to drugs and guns?

One also wonders about what sort of a person McCarthy might be. He is clearly sold on the country, which he describes so well. But he is also sold on brutality. Not exactly pointless violence, but not exactly pointful either; just integral to the milieu described. But what does that say about the describer? Is he a gun-nut, a fully paid up member of the NRA? See reference 2. Does he play with heavy machine guns in the ranch he has bought with the proceeds of his books? Does he like slaughtering deer? Is he covered in tattoos? Or is he a strictly arm-chair man? Perhaps wikipedia will tell me.

I think I have talked myself into recycling the two new items. If I need a dose of western violence, I can always go back to the meridian.

PS: I don't seem to be able to stop the pop-up on the illustration. From the NRA website, a website on which a great deal of money has been spent - and money which, for once, outwits the MS snipping tool.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/not-salt.html.

Reference 2: https://home.nra.org/.