“Blood Meridian: Or, the Evening Redness in the West (Picador Books)” (Cormac McCarthy)

It’s a tough book to read, because it is unflinchingly violent. It is violence that still manages to disturb, despite my healthy diet of violent images in the mainstream media – from Quentin Tarrintino to the Dark Knight. It is – in a strange way – refreshing to recognize that violence can still jar, still shock, still offend. I think that is one of Cormac’s gifts as a writer – that he makes violence so visceral, so demanding. He paints a world I don’t want to be a part of….

….and he also manages to force me to realize that I am a product of that same world I find so distasteful. That is what is so powerful about his work I think – that it disturbs and fascinates with its violence – but it also connects us to it, holds us responsible through some distant chain of fate in reverse. I want to wash my hands of the blood.

As I thought about Gaza, and Blood Meridian I realized that violence is always designed to seem distant, remote. Wars are fought on distant shores, where the bloody mess and the dusty rubble can be ignored by those who find it easy to turn away from it all. Israel refuses to let the media in to Gaza – I suspect because they know the benefit of keeping us all distant from the reality of violence. Hamas, for their part, shows little of their missile launches, and paints a picture for us to gain our sympathies. Both sides know how removed we are from violence – even violence of our own making.

I don’t pretend to know what Cormac thinks about anything. But I do read in his books a somewhat desperate effort to make us face the bloody, destructive facts of our history and our present. Maybe if we looked at it in all its horror, we’d be less inclined to participate in it.