Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and Red Dead Redemption!

How the West Was Won!

-For the Uncensored!

            As I constantly come to terms with the Western and the long lasting legacy that Westerns bring to American life, the two most outstanding westerns to come across the novel and video game, for me, are Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and Rockstar Studio’s Red Dead Redemption II. The outlook of both games are wide in scope, as McCarthy’s book pushed the extent of modern westerns, told by an American genius, while Rockstars Red Dead series were created by foreigners who have one certain outlook on America. Both are going to be examined as indivual achievements based on their merits, alone, and then what they share together.

Part 1: Cormac McCarthy and how the West was Won!

            It’s no secret that Cormac McCarthy is a legend among the writing community. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, July 20th, 1938, is an eccentric person to say the least. For many in the publishing industry, Cormac McCarthy was always a “good writer” to most who knew him. His early achievements, the Orchard Keeper (1965) Outer Dark (1968) Child of God (1973), and Suttree (1979), created a magnetic aura. Orville Prescotts May 12th, 1965’s observations in “Still Another Disciple of William Faulkner” praised McCarthy with this observation: “Cormac McCarthy grew up in the hills and mountain coves east of Knoxville, Tenn. There he must have spent much of his time inspecting flora and fauna, listening to the talk of the hill people and acquiring a nostalgic yearning for a society not so much outside the law as indifferent to it. Later he must have spent as much time studying Faulkner's novels. In his ‘The Orchard Keeper’ he has his own story to tell; but he tells it with so many of Faulkner's literary devices and mannerisms that he half submerges his own talents beneath a flood of imitation.”[1]

            To be correct, Orvile Prescott isn’t wrong. To be fair, recognizing McCarthy’s imitation of Faulkner, is telling, because if he wasn’t a critic, he wouldn’t be doing his job. What McCarthy in his imitation, at best, holds the American principle in high esteem that would make any novice writer flee to the hills. McCarthy’s uncompromising vision is what allowed me to be daring and try my own writing style, too. But always realize what uncompromising genius looked like. It’s also worthy to note one small detail. Cormac McCarthy, until 2007’s release of the post apocalypse novel The Road, agreed to his first interview in his forty year literary jaunt. He put his family through poverty, and also survived off distinct fellowships, like the Faulkner and McArthur Fellowships, to support himself and his writing.

            With 1985’s Blood Meridian, Or The Evening Redness in the West, is a novel that defies all concept of modern literature. The story itself, follows a protagonist named the Kid, and his adventures with a man named the Judge, as they are being paid to hunt and kill Native Americans. Along the way so much happens. The Judge, in his way, represents Ahab, a man of his time, pursuing his fate toward a bitter end, where the Judge, in all of it, lives. After the atrocities committed in his wake, while meeting a vampire, too, gets away clean with all of the murder and bloodshed. Harold Bloom, the famous literary critic dubbed it, through Leonard Pierce’s 06.15.09’s AV Club, “Harold Bloom on Blood Meridian,” spoke about the Judge, “He was beginning to give me nightmares just as he gives the kid nightmares. And then the third time, it went off like a shot. I went straight through it and was exhilarated. I said, ‘My God! This reminds me of Thomas Pynchon at his best, or Nathanael West.’ It was the greatest single book since Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. In fact, I taught it for several years in a class I gave here at Yale—interestingly enough, in a sequence starting with Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, moving on to Miss Lonelyhearts, then The Crying of Lot 49, and the fourth in the sequence was Blood Meridian.”[2]

            It’s a story that can’t be defined in a short amount of words, but even though this ending is hotly praised, maligned, it cemented one truth about Cormac McCarthy. His testament to the Western genre, as it would often be imitated in its wake. Including myself, too. As he was imitating Faulkner, according to the original NYT Orville Prescott review. Cormac McCarthy surpassed and met himself, as many outlaws of westerns do, and achieved the namesake of being the descendent of Faulkner, Hemingway, and Melville. Cormac McCarthy, in 2022, is set to publish two novels, The Passenger and Santa adsf one month apart, at the same time, since 2007, sixteen years since the Road. To be taught in colleges from living in poverty is an amazing feat. Ever since Cormac McCarthy has been a staple of American literature, and hasn’t had to starve in a long time. As Harold Bloom claimed in the AV Club interview, Blood Meridian is the “the final” Western[3].

(One of the best sections of Blood Meridian’s audio book but highly demonstrates McCarthy’s prowess.)

Part II: Rock Stars Red Dead Remption 2, and how video games conquered the West

            For Rockstar Studios, started by Dan Houser, creating such famous games such as Grand Theft Auto, Bully, Manhunter, all of which are games that proved their salt in voracity, over the top humor, and story telling that all represent a quirky perception of life that novels have been lacking since the 80’s. There are some good novels, but Rock Star studios leader Dan Houser knows one thing’s for certain. They value of story telling, and in the Red Dead Series, none finer expression of visual media can express itself more masterfully.

            What makes Rockstar Studios stand out in the crowd, along with Naughty Dogg studios, is that they both obsess on story telling. Rockstar Studios, with Red Dead Redemption, itself, has the ability to use the open world as Cormac McCarthy used the novel to tell his story the way it needed to be told. Although, much of Rockstar studios, as there team, all worked furiously hard at bringing Red Dead Redemption to life, created motion tracking for horses that could accurately represent the way Arthur, the main character, sits, rides, and how the horse can react to weather, and its behavioral patterns.

            As someone who considers Blood Meridian, Unforgiven, and Outlaw Josey Wales the triumverant of Western films, Rock Star Studios, have one fatal flaw when it comes to their portrayal of the American West. Not in the visual presentation, but Europe’s perception of America is that we’re all gun fanatic, robber barrons, and ignorant descendents of civil war veterans. It’s the easiest stereotypes to attack America for, and rather lazy. Only when Kiernan, an Irish bank robber in the Dutch Vanderline gang goes off on a racist diatribe, Arthur states, “I hate everyone equally.”         

            The barebones plot of Red Dead 2 is rather simple. The Vanderline gang is experiencing tough times after a failed robbery in the fictional town of Blackwater, and they have to escape to the mountains to hide away from the Pinkertons, a private detective agency, hunting them, but also the dissolution of the gang members, including John Marston, who both him and Arthur, are Dutch’s metaphorical sons, come to an agreement. Their time is over. The Wild West is coming to an end.

(legacykillahd, does a great YouTube documentary about the years of Red Dead development in a fascinating and comprehensive style)

            Arthur Morgan is a character lost out of time, but Dutch VandeLinde, is frustrated, repressed sexually, but also can’t think long enough to come up with an affective plan of escaping the law. While much of the plot can be experienced in the open world, where the player can go off on adventures of their own, finding hidden weapons, hunting legendary animals, collectible outfits, but also explore a wide open expansive world where Arthur can make moral decisions that benefit or degrade his image.[4] Which is entirely dependent on the player to make, creating a world that the player can make according to their own playstyle and manifest destiny.[5]

            What Dutch personifies is not just evil, but something close to betrayal generated by madness, and the inability to make sound decisions for the gang. But consistently, the game does prove one thing. Arthur is to pay for the sins inhabited by Dutch, his father, as he dies of Tuberclosis, helping John Marston escape, and set for the events of Red Dead Redemption.

            Overall, the game has been overwhelming acclaimed by both gamers and game critics. With its release in 2018, Metacritic holds a damn near perfect “97 percent” based off 99 critical reviews and “8.6” as for the player base is 8.6, and over 19,078 user ratings.[6]

For me, this is my Ghost of Tsushima, because it manages to pull off so many things an open world can do. But it took Rockstar nearly fifteen years to achieve the level of perfection only seen in modern technology. And Rockstar did indeed, conquer the west, in their own way. Moralistically not as complex, but still effective writing and story telling that create weight and density unrivaled unless by Naughty Dogg.

Part 3: Similarities and Differences Between Blood Meridian and Red Dead Redemption 2

What makes this a treat to behold is one simple notion. To control or at least preserve the basis of two mediums, and holding no contest between either being supremely better than the other. Both works have their strengths. It’s often two works that hold a moment of prowess. The difference being that Blood Meridian has never been adapated to film or otherwise, holds itself as being unfilmable, in 2022’s world of modern visual terms. Blood Meridian is a theater of the mind, and Red Dead Redemption 2 is a theater for the eyes and hands. A book can be interpreted in ways that most visual media cannot. Both are, in their own ways, views of the American West, but Red Dead Redemption 2 is a view created by Europeans, as their symbolism of greed is not what Americans see. Both are separated by time, as Blood Meridian was published in 1985, and Red Dead officially began in 2004, with production helmed by Capcom studios and then sold to Rockstar productions.

With the differences out of the way, theirs’s one similarity that happens upon both mediums. The involvement of vampires. In Chapter 5, pages 60 to 64 of Blood Meridian concerns the Kid and the gang. They encounter an earlier bloodshed, where a massacre has happened in a church, where “The primitive painted saints in their frames hung cocked on the walls as if an earthquake had visited and a dead Christ in a glass bier lay broken in the chancel floor. The murdered lay in a great pool of communal blood.”[7] The kid and the gang don’t really have an idea who did it, until Sproule, a character in the gang calls the Mexicans, “loonies”[8]

The vampire is seen as a man, or at least Mexican. The leader even “drew a sword” and they charge the kid, making no intention to hide. Only the Kid and Sproule were spared, but as they went to sleep, something flapped up out of the night ground and perched on Sproule’s chest. Fine fingerbones stayed the leather wings with which it steadied as it walked upon him. A wrinkled pug face, small and vicious, bare lips crimped in a horrible smile and teeth pale blue in the starlight. It leaned to him. It crafted in his neck two narrow grooves and folding its wings over him it began to drink his blood.” Tossing it off him, the kid makes one final incantation to the vampire, “I know your kind, he said. What’s wrong with you is wrong all the way through you.”[9]

In Red Dead Redemption 2, it’s a side mission in Saint Denis[10], and you find mysterious markings near the Butcher Shop. You have to use the clues in order to find the mysterious writing, until Arthur finds the vampire, but it calls himself the “undead” and Arthur the player, shoots down the man before he eats a poor soul he has attacked. The player is rewarded with a special knife. The scenarios in both are different in scope, but one point should be made. Once a vampire of sort, enters any work of fiction, it should change the scope dramatically. McCarthy uses subtlety of the man to then enter its true form, but the vampire in Red Dead is already a man, with no significant features other than a rat like face and slurring voice. Nothing like this is represented in Cormac’s vision and doesn’t share that similarity at all.

Another final similarity/observation that is an extra, almost nugget, is that Dutch Van Derlinde comes from a passing name, Vanderlinde, in Blood Meridian. It’s rather a small mention, but it’s not mentioned beyond much to give it much literary depth. But a slight homage, perhaps. Both have their strengths and weaknesses, but for today, it’s fair to look at what is directly linked between both text and visuals.

Conclusion

As many other things could be discussed what’s important is this final examination. A Western does not have to play by the rules in order to achieve its ultimate goal. The idea of the west represented by artists who have a singular, or evolving mission of artistic ingenuity and craftsmanship.  

(While I might not share a lot of opinions regarding this, it was good for me to find a video that might discuss other things I hadn’t pointed out, but could offer a counter opinion, too.)

-Louis Bruno is the author of more than 19 books, including, The Michael Project, The Michael Project: Book 2: The Lost Children of Eve, Thy Kingdom Come, The Disintegrating Bloodline Part 2: Chaos, The Data Chase, The Disintegrating Bloodline part 3: Solvè, The Disintegrating Bloodline (and the original text re-released in 2019), Apocalypse Soldier, The Data Chase, Selection: The First Book of the Life and Death Saga, and Blinking Eyes: The Second Book of the Life and Death Saga, Hierarchy of Dwindling Sheep, The City of Sand, The God of Curiosity, To the Moon and Back, The Villain Lives and The Villain Lives: The Divided Pinpoint, Come Home, Young One. He has a Bachelor of Arts in English from University of Phoenix. His books can be found on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Lulu. He can be found on Gab, https://gab.com/thereallouistbruno, Minds https://www.minds.com/lbruno8063/. Instagram @lbrruno8063 and @louisbrunoofficialbook. Twitter: https://twitter.com/LouisBr88881650. He has written for the Intellectual Conservative and Ephemere. His newest book, The Voices Are Alive is out now: https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/louis-bruno/the-voices-are-alive/hardcover/product-mvggdg.html?page=1&pageSize=4. Also, if you can’t subscribe so that you can get members only content, please be sure to share the articles, as well. If you do Subscribe, you have long term access to the paid articles that some readers won’t get to see or access after the articles/books go private. If that doesn’t tickle your pickle, I am also selling merch from t spring, if you want to help support me in other ways. I sell hoodies, shirts, phone cases, and trying to find something there loved ones would like. Link is here: https://thereallouistbruno.creator-spring.com/listing/too-many-strings-not-enough. https://thereallouistbruno.creator-spring.com/listing/duck-fuckery. https://thereallouistbruno.creator-spring.com/listing/headless-corpo. Every little like, subscribe share, helps. Thanks for reading.

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[1] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/17/specials/mccarthy-orchard.html. Found 08.09.2022.

[2] https://www.avclub.com/harold-bloom-on-blood-meridian-1798216782. Found on 08.09.2022.

[3] The original quote can be found in source 2.

[4] This is what game writers/developers call a “morality system.”

[5] Merriam webster defines it as “a noun, often capitalized, as a future event accepted as inevitable.” You often hear this term in Westerns, or at least described within imperialistic personifications. But it’s applicable to gamer playstyle, but often conflicts with a main quest narrative. I’m not going to go into Pludonarrative dissonance, here, because it’s not the aim of the argument, at all. Source here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/manifest%20destiny.

[6] https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/red-dead-redemption-2 . Found 08.10.2022.

[7] Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian. P. 60.

[8] Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian. P. 64.

[9] Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian. P. 64-66.

[10] A fictional interpretation of New Orleans.