Mark Ambinter on his final blog post

“Blogging,” he writes, “is an ego-intensive process. Even in straight news stories, the format always requires you to put yourself into narrative.” All that ego can be exhausting, he says, forcing every story to be in some way about the worldview of its author. One thing the blogger craves—or at least this blogger—is the heavy hand of an editor. Someone “who tells you when something sucks.”

Blood Meridian by Cormac MacCarthy

Synopsis

Set in the 1850's amid the westward expansion, a gang of cowboys tear through the US-Mexico border in search of scalps, which can bring them fame and fortune. But thats just the surface. Its literary gymnastics (hard to read), taking you through the real grotesqueness (both physically and humanely) of what really happened as the white man pushed his way west and south across the American West.

The story follows 'the kid', who takes up with a gang led by a man named Glanton. They're hired by a provincial governor in Mexico to bring back as many Apache scalps as they can. This leads them all across Mexico, through deserts and over mountains, through feast and famine, at times both the hunter and the hunted. Along they way they lose men, both to death and desertion, and pick up replacements where they can. Its in this manner the gang comes to be deputized by 'the judge', whom they run across sitting on a rock in the middle of the desert.

Suffice it to say that the judge becomes the most dynamic character of the story. He's ever present for every plot, usually the most brutal and cunning of the bunch as well as the most educated and outspoken. Through his philosophical views it becomes apparent that he is almost pure evil, and comes to represent all that is bad in man.

The story peaks and valleys over a long trail of death and destruction. There is almost nothing redeeming that happens along the way. The story doesn't climax until the last dozen pages, where the true seedy underbelly of the entire tale is revealed.

Highlights

This book was a very hard read, both in its length and MacCarthy's writing style. And the subject matter becomes tired and old somewhere in the middle of the book. I know this is the highlights section, but i'm getting there: the climax of the book, nay the last few pages, really delivers a punch that drives home much of what the rest of the novel is about. The judge and the kid, in their final act, really give you something to think about as you put the book down.

Lowlights

As I've said before, this was a really hard book to read. Some praise MacCarthy for his literary pose in this novel but I found it to be quite hard to read. His vocabulary consists of words with rare historical definitions mixing with the far reaches of the dictionary, with a pinch of raw spanish dashed in. This is on top of his familiar lack of grammatical punctuation. And I swear at times he's just making words up.

Summary

A hard novel, both in its content and in its read. You get dangled for most of the book, but the payoff makes it well worth your time.

RSL tidbits

Deseret News Article

All three topics in this article make me realize what an amazing coach we have at RSL.

He is a great X's and O's guy, has them playing great right now, on the verge of setting a club record of wins in a row, and yet he sees the defensive deficiencies and is addressing them accordingly.

And I love to see Kries publicly challenge Alexandre. I was critical of his performance the other day, but would love nothing more that to see him rise to the challenge and improve his output.

And on top of all that, Kries still has the drive and physical ability to step on the field and mix it up.

Go RSL!