Off the top of my head, I think Clancy Brown would be a good voice for an animated Judge. Also, I always pictured Captain White as having the voice of John Vernon, the dean from Animal House. Also you should stick Alan Tudyk in there somewhere, perhaps as Toadvine. Glanton remains difficult for me to pin down. Woody Harrelson perhaps?

Fantastic video. I think you are right on this. My beef is with Harold Bloom, who as you said has a lack of knowledge on farm hand knowledge is so very true. The real problem is that I always believed Harold Bloom was not as a smart as he appeared to be, as his elitism I think held him back.

I have been enjoying all of your Cormac McCarthy lectures! Such great discussions. I hope you will continue to educate us all!

Is The Judge really Manifest Destiny made flesh?

Bro put the coke down the sniffing is ridiculous

this is a blessing, i personally found a lot of value in the dialogue between the lecturer and the students. thanks to you all

the Scythians were alleged to be the masters of all things equestrian.

This is so good man. Thank you thank you!

Thank you for this. Reading a lot more in my adulthood and listening to these lectures almost made me want to turn back time and pursue literature instead of politics 😂. I also have this crazy idea of bridging the two stories together telling the origins of the Judge through the aftermaths of the Pequod's Sinking. Ahab's will was so strong it forced itself to fuse with the force of nature that is Moby Dick, amalgamating into the wretched, vile, colorless, and unstoppable creature that is the Judge. The timeline would actually make sense a bit, too, being that the story is based on the sinking of the Essex in the 1820s.

Not that it matters to anyone but me, but I 100% agree with this. It makes the most sense to me, of the hours I’ve spent read😅jug and listening to Blood meridian and Blood Meridian paraphernalia. Especially being birthed in No Man’s Land, the town of Beaver Oklahoma and growing up mostly along the length of the panhandle, from Woodward Boise City, Black Mesa to Perryton Texas and liberal Kansas. I definitely understood the epilogue to mean “The End” of that wild freedom. And blood meridian as a whole, is a description of one last hoorah, if you will, for the people of the so called “Wild West” Cormac McCarthy cannot simply say “the end” ❤(at least in this work) As a fellow Okie I applaud all of your work on Cormac. I’ve been on a bender today which was sparked by one of his unique words. “Archatron.” Anyways. Good work sir. Thank you.!

Those last 2 paragraphs about the judge. He never sleeps he says he’ll never die etc. makes it seem like he could be Satan or something supernatural. But you’re saying he’s just the judge of representation of that time period in the wests history?

Regarding Suttree’s refusal to play the game, it reminds me of The Kid’s refusal to play “the game”. Or to Dance or Not Dance.

I just finished Blood Meridian and can’t stop thinking about it. Thanks for posting all of these. I really appreciate your insights and the other historical information you discuss.

dirty white boys ?

Examining Blood Meridian, I have believed that, amongst many other intentions, McCarthy was critiquing the American obsession with guns. Most of this episode was an in depth analysis of weaponry, proving Cormac’s point?

Just a thought that maybe the jidge saw the kid as a potential "ultimate practitioner of the trade".(That trade being war) The kid was born of vioelnce and death (his mum dies in childbirth) and has been pursuing violence for his 15 years. He's an amazing shot and despite his youth managea to always survive. The kid's rejection of full bloodthirst and the judge himself offends the judge because he sees the kid as having so much potential. P319 "hear me , man. I spoke in thr desert for you and you only and you turned a dead ear to me.".

I want 12 hour film adaptation in the style of "Hard to Be a God."

I am thoroughly enjoying the lectures and gaining a great deal of insight from them. One thing I would like to add though is the definition of "Divination" also has a biblical meaning, which is a means to communicate with the supernatural. You could argue that if God, Angels or even the forces of luck and fortune have a will at all, settling the contest of a life and death encounter between two people is the ultimate way to communicate with that force, what could be a greater indicator of divine right than giving you life and granting your enemy death. "If God is with us, who could be against us?"

kzbin.info/www/bejne/boSbgYeZbZWWg9U

The idea that war was waiting before man existed reminds me of Genesis and Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. Before they were created, there was God and the Devil. Therefore, there was the conflict between good and evil. The devil was waiting for man in the garden, waiting to seduce him to use the free will God gave him to choose evil. The conflict between good and evil is the original, primordial war, it is eternal, and existed before man and will endure long after man is gone.

If you’re able to organize these into KZbin playlists, that would be very helpful!

Thanks!

Why are you using a narrator voice when you're just giving analysis? 😊

Tldr: Blood Meridian is essentially what happens if the antagonist wins instead of the protagonist. If the bad guy "didn't finish last" so to speak.

Awesome, thank you for this

Thanks for sharing this!

Men have always been bred for games look at ancient man. All they did was follow The animal of choice, hunted and gathered that’s totally a game

Thank you.

I just finished reading Blood Meridian for the first time and found these lectures. The Judge's note keeping reminds of Madame Defarge's knitting in A Tale of Two Cities. Her knitting was a way of recording and planning the extermination of the upper class. The female psychopath seeks revenge because it is her nature, the male psychopath is simply violent because it is his nature. Just some thoughts that went through my mind while I was out walking today.

Do we ever see the judg participate in the atrocities outside of when he saved the Glanton Gang? Before and after he shows up, but I dont remember him ever being part of the raids, out side of the volcano.

Is this glantons gang book or fanfiction or fanfiction of the fanfiction of glantons gang book?

I thought the same thing first time I read it, now I think it’s worse the judge hugged him in a loving embrace because the kid finally committed to violence and war and raped the missing girl to death that is what is found in the outhouse.

The line that indicates the Judge grabbing the Kid/Man and holding him in his arms while naked, and slams the door shut... Its reminiscent to when Leatherface slams the metal door shut in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre after killing that guy. Not only did Holden sodomized the kid but he also broke his neck with his bare hands. He broke his neck as he was climaxing. That's how I envision it. And when a man opened the door he saw a body with a bloody hole, and a head completely detached from the neck from internal decapitation. Like in a hanging. Sorry, I have morbid thoughts.

The chapter that features Hueco Tanks has especially stuck with me since im from El paso and have been there a few times.

Great stuff

Haven’t started watching this completely yet, so I’m gonna edit my comment as time goes along hopefully. First little tangent, I really love the cover art for this specifically it very much reminds me of dawn of the dead I really love the notion of the kid being born a killer, even though he has a free agent as stated by Tobin and the choices he makes definitely rejects the judges, overall philosophy that he tries to impart on him. I think his birth very much falls in line with a chosen one aspect nearly. I think this, especially coincides with the ending of the book when the judge does what he does with the man at the end because it’s a pyrrhic victory. The kid could’ve been the perfect dancer or warrior or what have you but since he rejected the judge, he decided to get that Pyrrhic victory When it comes to the first impressions of the judge and his overall appearance, of course, he is seen as devolution trickster he like he said, and how others have compared them to paradise, lost in other scenes within the book but I think he is almost a parody of Homo sapiens, and if anything. I don’t think he’s a demon or the devil, but he’s almost like if a demon or a devil created a man this is the kind of man they would create. If man really is of antic clay, then the judge was sculpted out of the hands of a demon at least

Breathe bud. You sound nervous. & remember the Comanche weren’t a Texas problem. Texans arrived 500 years after the mesoamericans. Don’t be racist towards Americans domestic policy towards its indigenous people!

You are a wonderful lecturer. That end of Blood Meridian always gives me goosebumps.

Long live Larry Christie

So good!!

Really want to take your class(es)

I do ponder why Suttree was so bitter to the Ragpicker after his death, as I thought he liked the man. Was it his grief at losing him combined with being offended by the Ragpicker forgetting the gasoline and thereby him in a way? Does it have to do with his father issues, him being a father figure to Suttree and rejecting this new father now? In a way, it kind of reads how Suttree’s father would react to his current path in life. Or am I missing something? I’d love for thoughts on this

Huh I just finnished the book and thought the kid now the man was crazy and turned into the judge and attacked the little girl in the jakes and was the man reliving himself out side latter when the two men came down

I heard Aaron on the art of darkness podcast (thoroughly recommend it) and had not read any McCarthy. His passion and enthusiasm for the works lead me to thus far read 6 of Cormac’s oeuvre. Thank Aaron, I’m forever indebted to you

Wonderful series!

42:00 really didn't expect a mini-etymology on Based in a Structuralism lecture, but AFAIK, it at least comes from Brandon McCartney aka Lil B aka Based God for y'know the counter-cultural tough gang banger persona > which then got co-opted where else by 4chan used tongue-in-cheek about pretty off-color takes (typically Sexist or Racist) as Based before working into the larger forum culture of just "anything cool is Based" before eventually being co-opted by right-wing personalities for again, non-PC takes, but done completely non-ironically and outside the 4chan niche

"Once upon a time, Texas had a serious Comanche problem. Alright? This was before Texas was in the hands of the Anglo, and Texas was a part of Mexico." ive got to thank you for putting the white supremacist, settler-colonial perspective out front so i dont have to waste time with the rest of your lecture. another, more accurate way of beginning, might have been: once upon a time, texas had a settler-colonial problem...

Lots of people going hard on you for being "woke" or whatever, but to be fair, you are taking a book about the universal and omnipresent nature of human evil and turning it in to a one-sided howard zinn beach-read. I do like your videos though thanks for posting.

Shitting on the white man are we lol?

We've all got the capability for violence