after finishing Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian I was surprised to learn that not just the setting of the novel but also some specific characters and events had been adapted from historical sources
the novel's Glanton Gang segment is populated by characters and events based on the 1856 memoir My Confession: The Recollections of a Rogue by Samuel Chamberlain, a soldier, painter, and author who allegedly rode with the real-life John Glanton's gang between 1849-1850.
a passage from Chamberlain's memoir is also the source of the novel's infamous Judge Holden character:
spoiler CW
The second in command, now left in charge of the camp, was a man of gigantic size called "Judge" Holden of Texas. Who or what he was no one knew but a cooler blooded villain never went unhung; he stood six feet six in his moccasins, had a large fleshy frame, a dull tallow colored face destitute of hair and all expression. His desires was blood and women, and terrible stories were circulated in camp of horrid crimes committed by him when bearing another name, in the Cherokee nation and Texas; and before we left Fronteras a little girl of ten years was found in the chapperal, foully violated and murdered. The mark of a huge hand on her little throat pointed him out as the ravisher as no other man had such a hand, but though all suspected, no one charged him with the crime.
Holden was by far the best educated man in northern Mexico; he conversed with all in their own language, spoke in several Indian lingos, at a fandango would take the Harp or the Guitar from the hands of the musicians and charm all with his wonderful performance and out-waltz any poblana of the ball. He was “plum center” with a rifle or revolver, a daring horseman, acquainted with the nature of all the strange plants and their botanical names, great in geology and mineralogy, in short another Admirable Crichton, and with all an arrant coward.
Not but that he possessed enough courage to fight Indians and Mexicans or anyone else where he had the advantage in strength, skill, and weapons. But where the combat would be equal, he would avoid it if possible. I hated him at first sight and he knew it, yet nothing could be more gentle and kind than his deportment towards me: He would often seek conversation with me and speak of Massachusetts and to my astonishment I found he knew more about Boston than I did.[5]
while the memoir is the only primary source directly attesting to a historical Judge Holden, and admittedly uses an exaggerated literary style popular of the time, amateur historical researchers have still tried to identify candidates that may have been the man Chamberlain wrote about, or merely inspired him:
https://www.cormacmccarthy.com/topic/new-historical-notes-on-judge-holden-glanton-tobin-and-the-rest/
Blood Meridian is one of the best candidates in my mind for The Great American Novel. There's something genuinely mythical in how it captures how, and by what kind of men, the USA was really created.
And McCarthy's mastery of language. Christ. Makes me feel like I don't speak anglo.
Still haunts me almost daily years after reading it.
I agree about his use of language. There are passages in The Road that speak volumes.
In particular there is a chapter that details how a house was deconstructed and it it used all the terms a carpenter would know. Joist. Jamb. Shit like that. I was very impressed. My grandfather was a carpenter.
That's dope. Apparently McCarthy is kinda like a method writer lol in that he goes and lives and experiences things to the extent he can before he writes about them. Like he spent most of his life in Texas, alot in Mexico, learnt Spanish, learnt to become a cowboy basically to write the Border trilogy, so it doesn't surprise me that he would go and learn carpentry if needed for his novel.
For sure.
Not quite on the level of Melville flexing his sexy sailor knowledge and whale expertise in Moby Dick but still damn cool.
It's tough to beat Melville. He and Steinbeck are top of my list for greatest authors from the USA. The prose for both of them is almost poetry. Neither flinched from the drudgery of their time as well. I'd toss in Hemingway and Jack London in second place. The Sea Wolf is a nice spiritual successor to Moby Dick.
Yh Melville is deffo one of my favorite US writers. Love Steinbeck as well. I once had a revealing debate with a bougie lit dude who hated Steinbeck because he found the prose 'too basic'. Like talk about not being able to feel the poetry of those who work the earth.
I recently discovered Henry Roth and read his Call It Sleep . Really loved it as I hadn't read much Jewish American literature and it satisfied my taste for modernist stuff.
For anyone who doesn't know / might be interested: its basically a modernist stream of consciousness novel which follows a young Jewish boy in the slums of New York in the early 1900s.
Apparently his massive Mercy of a Rude Stream is another underappreciated classic.
I'll have to check out Henry Roth, thanks for telling me about him. Never heard of him before.
Also lmao at calling Steinbeck's prose too basic. He was writing for the masses. That's the whole appeal.
Not really the same themes or style but a novel I read many years ago with a similar vibe :
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left-Handed Poems by Michael Ondaatje, 1970
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left-Handed Poems is a verse novel by Michael Ondaatje, published in 1970. It chronicles and interprets important events in the life of William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid, and his conflict with Sheriff Pat Garrett
The book presents a series of poems not necessarily in chronological order which fictionalize and relate Bonney's more famous exploits, after the end of the Lincoln County War. The narrative includes his relationship with John and Sallie Chisum, his formation of a gang with Tom O'Folliard and Charlie Bowdre, his standoff with Garrett in Stinking Springs, his arrest and escape from Lincoln, New Mexico, his escape and the ensuing murder of James Bell and Robert Olinger, and finally his death at the hands of Garrett.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Collected_Works_of_Billy_the_Kid:_Left-Handed_Poems
Also have you read his new books, Stella Maris and The Passenger? If so, any good?
True. Gonna pick em up soon. Pretty pumped.
I think Child of God is fantastic and Suttree is another masterpiece. Loved the border trilogy. The Road also great.
Obvious CW for all of them but if you were okay with the content of Blood Meridian then you'd be okay with the rest I reckon.
Yeah you might add a CW to that
But also, really interesting I had no idea this was drawn from older stories. TFPU
