Suicide Blonde Review

Here’s his review/defense.

By Kyle:

Suicide Blonde was the first official Extreme Book Club selection, and those of you familiar with my literary predilections may be confused by it. Let me explain: Aaron and I had just formulated the idea of an extreme book club and were hunting for a first official book in the store. After several minutes of futile searching, I did what I do best—I gave up. Moments later, I laid down supine near the Ss, looked to my right, and casually slid a paperback volume off the shelf. On the cover was a picture of an (ahem) interesting young woman lighting what appeared to be a post-coital cigarette. Then the title—Suicide Blonde—seemed extreme enough, and as so, was chosen.

I deeply disliked this book. The depressed characters stumble from one less-than-subtle sexual escapade to the next in search of some sort of magical validation that would miraculously extract them from the dharma wheel, but since all of them are so self-absorbed, the only reprieve they can find occurs in those moments when they are doin’ it.

The entire novel is a bunch of overtly sexed-up heroine-chic hip-posturing that goes nowhere. It could, I suppose, be of some sociological use to those interested in critical women’s studies. Well….. No… Actually, it just blows.

Blood Meridian Review

Apparently Kyle thinks he gets this book, so he sent in a review.

By Kyle:

This book takes on large themes-Empire, economy, death, and man’s dominion over nature and meaning–without blinking. As McCarthy follows a gang of scalp hunters through the southwestern borderlands, he both crumbles and strengthens the American meta-narrative, never stopping to mourn what has been lost.

The novel, perhaps one of the most violent books ever written, is at least partially based on the exploits of the Glanton gang, a group of mostly American mercenaries led by John Glanton under contract with the Mexican government to hunt and kill bands of Apaches in what is now the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico. The gang was paid per scalp, but soon started scalping non-Apaches and everything in their path before finally running afoul of the authorities.

The most menacing character in the novel, however, isn’t Glanton, but Judge Holden, another character loosely based on a shadowy figure mentioned as being a member of the gang in Samuel Chamberlain’s My Confession. The Judge speaks a number of languages, is a virtuoso on the violin, and seems to have extensive knowledge regarding just about everything. He is also described as a hairless man of great size who may or may not be a murderous child molester. One of the Judge’s hobbies involves sketching and classifying what he sees during the gang’s journeys. He has a notebook full of drawings of animal life, Indian rock drawings, and other phenomena. This is where the novel takes a critical turn. After the Judge has recorded the objects in question into his notebook, he destroys them, giving his representations of those objects primacy over the articles themselves.

Then, there is McCarthy’s prose–stark and evocative of the old testament-like beauty of the landscape he describes. Despite being historically accurate, the language also feels foreign to the reader in much the same way McCarthy’s version of the conquering of the west may seem foreign to those raised on Hollywood westerns. The total effect is an encounter with a sort of radical otherness that McCarthy might characterize as “the very life of the darkness.”