My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment’s surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed – The Wasteland
And they are dancing, the board floor slamming under the jackboots and the fiddlers grinning hideously over their canted pieces. Towering over them all is the judge and he is naked dancing, his small feet lively and quick and now in doubletime and bowing to the ladies, huge and pale and hairless, like an enormous infant. He never sleeps, he says. He says hell never die. He bows to the fiddlers and sashays backwards and throws back his head and laughs deep in his throat and he is a great favorite, the judge. He wafts his hat and the lunar dome of his skull passes palely under the lamps and he swings about and takes possession of one of the fiddles and he pirouettes and makes a pass, two passes, dancing and fiddling at once. His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite, He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing, He says that he will never die.
Cormac McCarthy’s incessantly violent Blood Meridian has been described as the apocalyptic American novel. This is helpful. One interesting thing about this particular apocalypse is that, given the novel’s setting in the 19th century unsettled American West, it is an apocalypse of a society which has yet to exist. Those who read here and know I cast a sullen eye on descriptions of America as some end of history light-of-liberty on the Hegelian hill might understand why I can imagine that nearly any American novel is similarly apocalyptic – an end of the world for a world yet to exist. A judge is one who guards justice – and “justice” in America is nonsensical. Judge Holden, Satanic Antichrist, is the most terrifying character in American literature precisely because he is the apocalyptic modern, American brutal whimsical adjudicator.
Wood Faileth 