Each man was seen to wear a shroud of palest fire

December 25, 2023 2:13 AM

The shed held a mare with a suckling colt and the boy would would have put her out but they called to him to leave her. They carried straw from a stall and pitched it down and he held the lamp for them while they spread their bedding. The barn smelled of clay and straw and manure and in the soiled yellow light of the lamp their breath rolled smoking through the cold. When they had arranged their blankets the boy lowered the lamp and stepped into the yard and pulled the door shut behind, leaving them in profound and absolute darkness. No one moved. In that cold stable the shutting of the door may have evoked in some hearts other hostels and not of their choosing. From A Blood Meridian Christmas

From the always intense Biblioklept, who does a regular set of seasonal posts, highlights of which include Christmas bugs (Gravity’s Rainbow) , It Is December and Already Dark Forces Are Gathering — Glen Baxter, It wasn’t so bad really, the commercial Christmas (Walker Percy), Behold!!! I am Senta Klaws (George Herriman), “Merry Christmas” (Moby-Dick), The Dark Knight Returns (His Presents), “Before the ice is in the pools” — Emily Dickinson, A Very Finnegans Wake Christmas, “Happy Christmas, Lovely!” — A Christmas Card from Ralph Steadman, Mark Twain Disses Santa Claus, American Christmas Devil: Celebration Bowels, Fat Man Face, Poison Gift Liver, and Stomach Prince, George Orwell’s Recipes for Plum Cake and Christmas Pudding, among many others.

posted by chavenet (7 comments total)

Thank you, chavenet.
posted by doctornemo at 8:11 AM on December 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

That's very nice. I just read "Blood Meridian" a few weeks ago, and am still recovering.
posted by acrasis at 8:14 AM on December 25, 2023 [6 favorites]

wow, that's a fabulous observation. I think that by that point in the book I was too traumatized to pick up any traces of beauty or subtlety, so, thank you, chavenet.

also, acrasis: it's been almost 20 years, I gave away the book shortly after reading, and I'm still not fully recovered. and don't get me thinking of The Road. oops.
posted by martin q blank at 10:26 AM on December 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Well, pummel me to death, bury me, dig me up and run over me with a steamroller already. What a linkavanche.
posted by y2karl at 11:26 AM on December 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Thank you for this, chavenet.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 1:16 PM on December 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

I very much like the recognition of moments of peace in the otherwise brutal novel. That scene where all sorts of creatures who would normally be enemies gather in a quiet truce to warm themselves by a fire is one I think about still after many years
posted by treepour at 3:23 AM on December 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

I just found my copy, read over a decade ago, in a box while cleaning out my mom's house on Christmas Eve (she died two years ago and we're getting ready to sell it, which is hard in too many ways). It felt like touching magic. It took me a moment to remember how devastated I was by the book. My initial reaction to finding it was pure joy; I immediately wanted to read it again. Now why the hell would I feel that way? I thought about it, because to be honest it was a nicer thing to think about than what else I was doing in this house. And what I came to understand was that even though the book is sad, it's not cynical; like Phil Tippett's brilliant Mad God, the book conveys such a passion for the experience of life, as participant and even just as witness, that you're left not with a sense of the inherent misery of the world, but with a sense that it is a deep tragedy that the world should be miserable, ever, when it's so essentially amazing. It feels a little trite to say it like that, and I don't think McCarthy would stoop to such corny talk, but I hope he wouldn't be offended.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:11 AM on December 26, 2023 [5 favorites]