It's been 15 years or more since I've read it, so maybe it has reactionary elements, I don't know, but a perfectly acceptable reading is that we can't romanticize the past, because the United States was built on sadism, oppression, and cruelty. If you liked Moby-Dick you'll like Blood Meridian.
Even if an author is a reactionary (although I haven't read them yet, McCarthy's most recent novels sound like they have some suspicious takes), you can come away with a solid leftist reading of any good novel. Balzac was a reactionary, but he was Marx's favorite novelist. His books understood certain things that Balzac himself may not have.
Yeah that's a good take. Reactionary authors can def sometimes make a piece that end up being critical of oppressive social formations. Brothers Karamazov comes to mind, like that book made me an atheist for awhile even though Dostoevsky def is a religious fundamentalist; even though it also had anti-communist themes I argued that book ended up not portraying communism in a bad light.
It's been 15 years or more since I've read it, so maybe it has reactionary elements, I don't know, but a perfectly acceptable reading is that we can't romanticize the past, because the United States was built on sadism, oppression, and cruelty. If you liked Moby-Dick you'll like Blood Meridian.
Even if an author is a reactionary (although I haven't read them yet, McCarthy's most recent novels sound like they have some suspicious takes), you can come away with a solid leftist reading of any good novel. Balzac was a reactionary, but he was Marx's favorite novelist. His books understood certain things that Balzac himself may not have.
Yeah that's a good take. Reactionary authors can def sometimes make a piece that end up being critical of oppressive social formations. Brothers Karamazov comes to mind, like that book made me an atheist for awhile even though Dostoevsky def is a religious fundamentalist; even though it also had anti-communist themes I argued that book ended up not portraying communism in a bad light.