Some interesting Blood Meridian ideas in these lectures (1) (2). To build out the Moby Dick comparison a little more: the Glanton Gang like the Pequod; the taking of scalps like the taking of blubber; the almost total absence of women of in both; both having had a historical basis and relying on secondhand sources; (both maybe, who knows, a combination of history and personal history); the idiot and Pip; the westward motion; the philosophical sermonizing; the Delewares and the crew of Ahab’s whaleboat; (in general: the Glanton Gang and Pequod crew are both a rag tag, mixed-race, mixed-nationality group)…. On the other hand: what is the “white whale” of Blood Meridian? The monomania is equivalent but toward what, in Blood Meridian, is it directed? Blood itself?
I didn’t find convincing the lecturer’s arguments that the kid was not a moral figure or that the Judge, at the conclusion, is somehow celebrating his existence as an enduring literary character,– and her talk about the syntax of the bible I thought to be reaching — nevertheless
.i`` * ^ / . . . . . ` `~ 