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Topic: McCarthy's Western Novels
Thread: The harness maker

Total messages for all days: 15

The harness maker	Peter Bowes	4/2/1998
The harness maker. Is this tale just a social binder?- Or does it explain in part what Holden sees as the degeneration of man. The harness maker by his actions destroys the lives of all in close contact with him. Wife, son, stranger, stranger's wife, stranger's son, son's victims. (The daughter is missing here). Is Holden saying that because of this type of tragedy - (so common in those days) man should be culled as animals are? Children should be put in a pit with wolves? Is he advocating the view that a better life would result?

The harness maker	Greg Schmidt	4/2/1998
Peter, There is method in your madness. Step by step we are covering some of the critical places in the novel. For other readers, you probably need to start at the bottom of page 140 of Blood Meridian to pick up the trail. I need to mull this over a bit. Some hints for starts. The judge is comparing his bookkeeping, his desire to exercise complete control over his environment, to the masons who build in stone, the Anasazi. "So. Here are the dead fathers. ... For whoever makes a shelter of reeds and hides has joined his spirit to the common destiny of creatures and he will subside into the primal mud with scarcely a cry. But who builds in stone seeks to alter the structure of the universe and so it was with these masons however primitive their works may seem to us." (p. 146) Man, this story and the discusion cut throught the entire range of McCarthy's work! Where to start? The positive values of masonry are linked with the negative value of the judge. The judge argues that his way, the struggle to achieve eternity, is better, but as Tobin points out, "either son is equal in the way of disadvantage." The energy of the stonemasons weighs down on future generations just as the energy of the man who lived in the bark house. The dead traveller weighs just as heavily on his son as does the dead harnessmaker (although the harnessmaker's son becomes even more evil.) The paragraph that starts with "And the answer ..." (p 146) contains information that I cannot fully decipher. The judge at first appeared to hold out his projects as positive but then launches into a monoloque that links mankind's meridian with the onset of darkness. But he also contrasts the way of nature, to bloom, flower, and die with the affairs of men where there is no waning. What does this mean? He appears to contradict himself in the next sentence by saying that "his spirit is exhusted at the peak of its achievement." I am totally lost here.

The harness maker	Greg	4/2/1998
Is the judge full of BS or what? In one line he contrasts the reed builders with the stonemasons, stating that the reed builders have joined their spirits to the destiny of "creatures" (Animal-like, low). The stonemasons are held out as superior. In the next breath he is calling for the culling of humans as if it were a superior and enlightened way to raise children. (Animal-like, high?). This just strengthens my suspicion that the judge is nothing more than a sophist.

The harness maker	brad	4/2/1998
Greg, I've always thought of the harness maker tale told by the judge to represent a telling of the kid's origins, a reason for his behavior. As the child in the tale goes on without the benefit of idolizing or at the very least learning what he doesn't idolize about his father, he develops a taste for "senseless violence," instead, ie- the kid. Perhaps part of the reason for the judge's desire to coddle (at first) or at least father the kid in the story. I agree with the other Greg in saying that the judge is a sophist, but not only a sophist. What he says is not contradictory when he speaks of those who join the earth and those who alter the universe. I think what he is getting at is that even those that take steps to forever alter the universe (abstract the universe) can never reach, no matter how pure they run (ie-culling weak ones) an enlightened (?) stage of existence due to their path as a spiral, and infinitely recursive, never reaching a tip, but only spiraling tighter and tighter, until maybe, it breaks and there's a dark ages again or a giant meteor hits the earth and we're all dead, ie- "either son is equal in the way of disadvantage." Don't have time to revise this, I hope that made sense.

The harness maker	Greg	4/2/1998
Brad, Greg and Greg Schmidt are one and the same. (We don't think we have a double, that is, but we have been known to talk to ourselves). I just like to start my first thread entry with a full disclosure. After that I pare it down. Thanks for your thoughts.

The harness maker	brad	4/2/1998
Greg, do you agree as to the purpose of CM's inclusion of the harness maker story?

The harness maker	Greg	4/2/1998
Brad, I'm not sure. I thought of the kid's absent father, too, while reading the passage, but the kid's predilection for mindless violence was there before he left home. The judge's most important line is to the effect that if God had meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind, he would have done so by now. Interestingly, the story about the traveler can easily be read as a parable of Christ. According to Christian thought (and here I am a Philistine) Christ was God's way of "interfering" in mankind; he is a symbol of God's forgiveness and a sign of the possibility of salvation. What the judge holds up as a sign of man's hopeless degeneracy is, therefore, simultaneously a recounting of the central story of Chritian belief. So, in one respect, I see this passage as more of a dialectic (onesided as usual whenever the judge is around) between humanism and, well, for lack of a better term "religious outlook". The judge is playing Grand Inquisitor. I still do not have a coherent interpretation of the judge's full message though. At first, he appears simply to be pointing out that all men have something in common (p.141 "tabernacle"). This striving for eternity appears in a positive light and is linked with the stonemason. But then the judge twists it at the end to call for the culling of children and implying that in spite of the fact that some men strive for the eternal, man is basically degenerate and a beast. This tends to show the judge less in a humanistic light than in a satanic one. He leans on the concept of original sin.

The harness maker	Greg	4/6/1998
Peter, How do you interpret the last part of the judge's remarks? Does he not appear to move away from his "humanistic" world view and subscribe to something close to original sin? We need professional guidance here. Where's a professor or grad student when you need one? Off at some conference or locked in his office reading an exclusive copy of an unpublished work. They should be sent out to stand on street corners like Mormons for one or two years spreading the good news before being allowed to take up preachin' in the temples of learnin'.

The harness maker	Greg	4/7/1998
Peter, (no text at hand, referring back to my prior entry) Look at p 146 "And the answer..." The point after which Tobin makes his point. The judge just seems to spin off into never-never land here. I cannot follow him. He seems to move away from the rational linear ideas he was articulating earlier with his discourse on the Anasazi, contrasting them with the "Reedbuilders", and to lump all mankind into the "degenerate" category. He does not strike me as a humanist here, if he ever was one.

The harness maker	Greg	4/8/1998
Peter, Yeah, the judge just does not seem to hold up very well the minute there is someone of substance (Tobin) around. I can see what you are saying. It almost comes across as a slip-up. The facade is humanism and the progress of mankind; the reality is culling of children. Not that I think that McCarthy is necessarily going after humanism here; just the judge. I still do not understand how this ties in with the "burdens of the children" theme in the same discourse. I have the feeling that I am missing a coherent reading here that is lurking just around the next posting. Anyone have any thoughts on the traveler as parable of Christ?

The harness maker	John Vanderheide	4/8/1998
Greg, what makes you think the judge doesn't hold up to Tobin? Tobin's question in no way cuts the thread of the judge's tale. I don't quite see the facade of humanism you mention. Could you specify what you mean? You did say that Holden does not strike you as a humanist; he doesn't strike me as one either. He actually seems to anticipate the proto-typical 'anti-humanist,' in Derridean terms, the other side of the negative, nostalgic, guilty thinking of play. This is confirmed in the frequent question Holden poses in Spanish: A donde va? which is actually a subtle allusion to that other, seminal 'anti-humanist'figure, Zarathustra. As for interpreting the traveller as Christ, one could read that other interruption of the judge's tale, the eruption of disclaimers (he was no harnessmaker...), as an anticipation of all such interpretive speculations of the narrative itself. It is not often realized that all commentary is an attachment of ideas to the structure of poetic imagery, says Myles Kantor's sworn enemy Northrop Frye. Realizing this one can make sense of the schizophrenic Anasazi/harnessmaker-traveller tale. Poetic imagery or narrative itself is a little like the stone buildings of the Anasazi and interpretation or commentary is a little like the stories that accumulate about the Anasazi (or the traveller or the tale) in the absence of a specifiable origin. One could ask in the light of all this murk, why are you so interested in giving the novel a Christian spin? Are you trying to justify your enjoyment of the novel to the voice of religious authority in your head? in the same way that certain medieval figures attempted to reconcile the pagan classics (such as Virgil's 4th eclogue) to their fervent belief in Christianity? The old ones are gone like phantoms and the savages wander these canyons to the sound of an ancient laughter...there is nothing for them to grapple with.

The harness maker	Greg	4/8/1998
John, I am going to have to mull over your entry for a while as it relates to the harnessmaker. Could you send me, give me a web site reference for further readin, or otherwise more clearly describe what a "proto-typical anti-humanist in Derridean terms" is. Not sure I have anything on Frye either, but it would seem this reference ignores the "first commentary": the author's. All respect to the fact that an author loses control of his work when he publishes, i.e. subjects it to commentary that may have little or nothing to do with his original intent, this cannot eliminate the fact that an author may have really intended to say something, to make us think long and hard about an issue. As to religion, I am trying to systematically complete a second reading of this novel from that religious, even Christian perspective. If you look at my earlier entries on the thread "Religion in CMC" you will see what caused me to do this. I was surprised by the subjective impression left over after all the carnage. Going back, though, McCarthy is clearly laying a trail. Whether it is a dead end, I will not opine. You have to admit, though, that almost every significant passage (scalping aside; where people talk) expressly leans on religion, almost cries out for a religious interpretation. Try as I may, I cannot recall any catholic priests, fallen or otherwise, or baptism scenes, from my readings of Arisotle, Plato, Sophocles, Aeschylus, etc. Heed taken of your warning, John, do you think that McCarthy is just fucking with the reader here? Is the novel nothing more than the ruminations of someone who has read too many books and knows a lot about religion (and electromagnetics apparently). Is all we are supposed to do at the end say "Wow! Cool!" or "The Horror, The Horror!"? Is all that affects you in the book the beautiful language and the wonderfully contrived scenes, the action? I think that is not true. I suspect that what gives this novel its power is either the sense of loss or loneliness over the [pick one: (i)absent (ii) dead (iii) non-existent)] God or the "tragic" (loosely) sense arising from the kid's religious conversion that fails to get him out of the cycle of violence that he set in motion and that finally consumed him. Either way, I think that God is at the center of this novel, either a black hole or a path of salvation. If McCarthy uses religious themes to create powerful emotions in the reader in his novel -- and he does -- one is also justified in subjecting the novel to a religious review, even a Christian, Roman Catholic one n'est-ce pas? I have tried to deal with the religious themes in the thread "First Three Chapters" "Baptism" and elsewhere. I Would love to hear your thoughts and criticisms as they relate to specific passages. Your warning reminds me of the valuable advice of an older co-worker in the packaging department of a warehouse where I worked as a student: "Greg," he said, "if it don't fit, don't force it." (It is hard to convey the full sense of his fatherly advice here; suffice it to say, he wasn't just talking about boxes.) Maybe we should meet on another thread.

The harness maker	Greg	4/8/1998
John (here I go, cluttering up the thread again) I was able to find a short essay of Frye's on my shelves, "The Four Forms of Fiction", that was quite interesting in the context of discussing McCarthy. In distinguishing between the novel and the romance, Frye says of the romance: "The romancer does not attempt to create "real people" so much as stylized figures which expand into psychological archetypes. ... That is why the romance so often radiates a glow of subjective intensity that the novel lacks, and why a suggestion of allegory is constantly creeping in around its fringes. ... The romancer deals with individuality, with characters in vacuo idealized by revery, and, however conservative he may be, something nihilistic and untamable is likely to keep breaking out of his pages. ... The tendency to allegory in the romance may be conscious ... or unconscious. The romance, which deals with heroes, is intermediate between the novel, which deals with men, and the myth, which deals with gods." He cites examples of how early romances rose out of Classical mythology and Norse myths. He even goes on to say that "most 'historical novels' are romances." If you accept the categories, Blood Meridian and McCarthy in general fall squarely in the romance camp. Allegory and religion (mythology) are closely related to the romance. Fully aware of the fact that something nihilistic keeps breaking out of McCarthy's pages, I continue to feel justified in my desire to re-read this novel from a religious standpoint. As an aside, Frye's fourth category, the Menippean satire, appears to suit McCarthy's treatment of the judge well. "The short form of the Menippean satire is usually a dialogue or colloquy, in which the dramatic interest is in a conflict of ideas rather than of character. ... The Menippean satirist ... shows his exuberance in intellectual ways, by piling up an enormous mass of erudition about his theme or in overwhelming his pedantic targets with an avalanche of their own jargon. A ... subspecies of the form is the kind of encyclopaedic farrago ... where people sit at a banquet and pour out a vast mass of erudition on every subject that might conceivably come up in a conversation. ... The anatomy [term used by Frye for a type of satire], of course, eventually begins to merge with the novel ... ." Substitute a campsite for a banquet et voilà. The judge is occasionally the one who satirizes society, but I think that McCarthy is also satirizing the judge. What do you think?

The harness maker	John Vanderheide	4/8/1998
Greg, Derrida's essay "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" is a lot of fun to read and the enjoyment of it for me hasn't yet diminished over several passovers. I think there are some anti-humanist sentiments expressed there that you might find helpful in understanding the concept. Derrida talks about how every discourse is necessarily bricoleur, made of concepts from a heritage more or less ruined or more or less coherent. Such concepts may have lost their truth value, but until something better comes along (here Derrida is agreeing with Levi-Strauss), they can still be used as methodological tools for whatever conceptual problem is at hand. An activity poets seem to have discovered the pleasurable use of thousands of years before the terrifying monstrosity of Derrida was born. Perhaps McCarthy's use of Christian imagery (remember, nearly all of it sacreligious) should be examined as bricoleur instead of as an indication of some existential belief on the part of the author. I also don't think McCarthy is fucking with anyone. He is irrelevant to our speculations on the text's meanings. I imagine he was engaged in extremely difficult work composing Blood Meridian, work I would have been fired from on the first day. He may have been thinking about the reader, but I doubt the reader was his first or only consideration. So we shouldn't consider him our first consideration either, because we're engaged in difficult work as well. Our task is to establish the meanings of words; the poet's task is to establish the powers of words, as the obsolete father of Canadian criticism once said. As for the satire business, I don't think McCarthy satirizes the judge much, except perhaps in the phrenology department. What I think Frye means by Menippean satire is more of a stylistic choice than a character trait. The erudite narrator does use alot of arcane words, but he keeps himself in check, unlike an exemplary Menippean satirist like Rabelais, with his endless catalogues of foods, books, games...Ulysses is fun if you're into that kind of shit. And of course shit itself, shitting and other shameful bodily functions are a big part of the appeal of shatire (sorry, I'm totally drunk), images of which Blood Meridian has a whole shitload of. Peter, I found it interesting in your first post that you mentioned something about the harnessmaker's daughter. It's interesting because she's also the sister that the harnessmaker's son will never see again, having gone away to the west to become a killer. Sound familiar? Mabe here too Holden was speaking to the kid alone. Mabe he was trying to tell the kid something with the tale. It would make sense if the kid were implicated in the tale, because Elrod was, and Elrod and the kid are themselves implicated with eachother, tabernacled as it were.

The harness maker	Greg	4/9/1998
John, The Menippean satire would not work in its traditional form in Blood Meridian. This reminds me of a reference in the Tolson biography of Walker Percy where Percy comments that trying to write Father Zosima into The Thanatos Syndrome did not work. For a modern novel you have to sublimate these characteristics. Gargantua in the desert wouldn't fly either (the scatology perhaps, but not the long lists). I think that the judge's cataloging ways and his lengthy, almost nonsensical discourses are hints at satire. In particular, I think of "the judge on torts" passage. I found myself laughing at the judge as he held forth on torts in the desert when he was as close to losing his life as he comes in the whole novel. Maybe that is just my dry legal background coming out. But he starts to chatter like some suspect faced with a long prison sentence. Had the kid been of a mind to, none of the talking would have saved the judge.

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