“An unfenced West is an inconceivably violent place — but it’s also a zone of extraordinary freedom…”
— Blood Meridian: The Night Does Not End
Judge Holden is about the last person you want to venture down a sidetrail with. Nevertheless, the Almighty Algorithm put me on the track, and I could not help myself.
The Judge is the terrifying center of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian — or, The Evening Redness In The West. He was famously derived from Samuel L. Chamberlain’s My Confession: Recollections of a Rogue. Questions as to what the Judge is in Blood Meridian and who he was historically have vexed and delighted literary folk and historians since 1985.
Chamberlain’s description of Judge Holden as a member of John Joel Glanton’s borderland scalphunting gang would trip any writer’s trigger:
The second in command, now left in charge of the camp, was a man of gigantic size who rejoiced in the name of Holden, 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. But when a quarrel took place and blood shed, his hog-like eyes would gleam with a sullen ferocity worthy of the countenance of a fiend. 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.
Is McCarthy’s Holden a gnostic archon — or the Devil Himself? Who was the “real” Judge Holden? Dig in, Frontier Partisans… and beware the nightmares.
This brand-new podcast serves up some solid historical background for Blood Meridian. Diction’s not always spot on, but I like the delivery. And I also like the way he skewers the insufferable literary critic Harold Bloom for missing the point of the epilogue simply because he’s clearly never wielded a post-hole digger.
Matthew says
The Judge is a great literary character. He may be the best embodiment of evil in fiction. I always like that he was so erudite, because a lot of people tend to mistake intelligence and education for being a good person. (I’ve known people with eighth grade educations who were saintlike, and I think though he was highly intelligent Marx died the twentieth century in blood.)
I was always of two minds of Harold Bloom. For every time he was generally he was genuinely insightful (like praising Blood Meridian) he was also obtuse. The temper tantrum he had when Stephen King won the National Book Award was snobbish and frustrating. King may not have been the best writer alive at the time but he is a writer that meant a lot to a lot of people and who was a hell of a lot better than most bestsellers. Then there’s Bloom’s dismissal of Poe who was a major writer. (I think HB might have a blind spot for horror fiction, but then Blood Meridian could be considered horror fiction.)
John M Roberts says
McCarthy’s language has often been termed “Melvillian.” Quite consciously so, right from the very first line. What is the most famous opening like in American literature? “Call me Ishmael.” The opening line of “Moby Dick.” It’s a three-word, imperative sentence. What is the opening line of “Blood Meridian”? “See the child,” a three-word, imperative sentence. Can’t get more Melvillian than that.
Travis Slusser says
I remember listening to a sermon once, and the pastor said that just about everything in the bible has, at once, a literal, an allegorical, and a spiritual meaning. I think the same could be said of Judge Holden. Whatever he is, he’s always just around the corner, and we’ll never be rid of him, nor of “the dance”. I recently listened to a good podcast series on the Philippine-American war, which has been a bit of a blind-spot for me (like most Americans, and no accident). I caught myself thinking that the Glanton gang would not have been out of place in that conflict… or virtually any other that’s happened far from the flagpole. He never sleeps, the Judge…
JimC says
Yep. No one who knows Gnadenhutten could be shocked at My Lao.
Brian H. says
Maybe McCarthy was revisiting the Judge when he came up with Anton Chigurh.
Matthew says
They are similar in a lot of ways. I find the Judge more frightening than Chigurh which is really saying something since Chigurh is frightening.
Brian H. says
I think one of the similarities is the “flip the coin”, hand of fate stuff. They both struck some Faustian bargain.
Quixotic Mainer says
As Horace Bell would say; “the only one worse than he, was the hangman who failed to hang his father before he could beget such progeny”!
The Samuel Chamberlain book has been on my to read list a while. Mayhap I will let it cut in line a mite.
J.F. Bell says
Probably the judge is chief among reasons that Blood Meridian has proven un-filmable. Chigurh made the jump effectively enough, but on the merits Chigurh is a something of a much simpler animal. Like the killer shark in JAWS, he’s the way he is because he could arguably be little else. He operates with a singular purpose, almost inhuman save the inhereit frailties of the breed. What sets Holden apart and makes him terrifying is that while he seems altogether divorced from mankind as a species he nonetheless holds a masterful understanding and gift for the humanities. He is both of us and not and the key to any such paradox lies beyond our reach.
Whether or not Holden was the devil is open to debate, I think. Where Chigurh was an agent of fate Holden might well BE fate, immune to the world as he bends it around himself at whim. I can’t speak for anybody else…but I’d be hardpressed to see the judge laid low by anything so inconsequential as a car accident.
On the balance, he’s also one of the best demonstrations that the frontier is a place where men arrive long ahead of the angels – and enforce their wills accordingly.
JimC says
I think there is a distinction between the natures of the Judge and Chigurh. Chigurh is a manifestation of Death, but he is clearly a mortal. The Judge …. not so clear at all. We don’t know; can’t know — but…
It’s important that HE says that he will never die — it’s an unproven assertion that leaves his nature ambiguous. I lean toward the sense that he is not entirely of this earth, but that’s my reaction to the text and not definitive. McCarthy crafted it this way, to be forever elusive.
This sums it up perfectly:
Ugly Hombre says
Great thread- Cormac and the Judge are both immortal giants.
I ran up on “Blood Meridian ” late my English Professor pard Ox had read him in college directed to do so by his mentor who said ” will change you”. Told me to read it found it true- could only read it very few pages at a time much like “Unrepentant Sinner”(which is selling at 100 bucks a copy now) who woulda thunk that?
I knew two martial arts teachers one from the so called internal side one from the Tibetan side that were clear dead ringers of the Judge at least in shape.
The first hit me so hard in fun that my ears rang for a couple of days. lol
Not sure if they are still around.
Hope they never try to make a movie of the Judge. But if they have to- maybe they should hire Takashi Miike to direct it.