James Carlos Blake’s In the Rogue Blood is set in a dystopian, ultraviolent version of the American southwest. It begins in the 1840s, in Florida, and later moves to the borderlands of Mexico and Texas. There are untold murders, a gang of scalp hunters, and a writing-style that often harks back to the ornate grammatical structures of the 19th century. If this sounds a bit like Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, well, you aren’t the first person to notice the similarities. And that’s a bit unfortunate. The American southwest, especially the time period encompassing the oft-ignored Mexican-American War, is big enough to handle two novels. Moreover, aside from some obvious overlap – “blood” in the title, a dim view of mid-19th century frontier humanity, and the trafficking of human hair – the two books are as different as night and day. Which is a long-winded way of saying I actually liked Blake’s novel, whereas I don’t care for McCarthy’s. Now, before you string me up, scalp me, and sell my fast-thinning to hair to a very low-rent wigmaker, let me be clear that I don’t absolutely hate Blood Meridian. Indeed, I respect its place in American letters. It is, in its way, a classic. That said, it’s also incredibly dense – in both prose and ideas – and reeks of a self-importance marked by a lack of quotation marks, its grandiloquent paragraphs that mimic the Bible and Faulkner, and its self-conscious mythmaking. (This is purely a subjective, personal thing. I loved No Country For Old Men, which is everything that Blood Meridian is not: lean, stripped down prose; stylized dialogue; and on-the-nose themes and meanings. What can I say? I’m a literalist). At first blush, In the Rogue Blood shares a lot of Blood Meridian’s pretensions. Its first sentence – “In the summer of 1845 Edward Little was sixteen years old and restless in the blood” – aims squarely at the essential, mythologized American character, the westward-looking, frontier-pushing young man, described by D.H. Lawrence as “hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.” It also shares with McCarthy a beautiful eye for landscapes. One of the true pleasures of Blake is simply going where he takes you. It is a travelogue drenched in blood. The pinewoods fell behind and the sky widened and the country opened up and assumed a gentle roll. He rode through bunch grass and along bottoms lined with hardwoods, passed through pecan groves and stands of oak. In time he came upon the first rocky outcroppings and cedar brakes at the edge of the hill country and saw farther to the west a low line of whiterock palisades shaped like wide steps leading to the high plains. There appeared now among the hardwoods scatterings of mesquite and occasional clumps of prickly pear. The west wind carried the scent of cedar and the sunsets seemed a deeper and brighter red, as if painted in fresher blood. The clouds were quicker to shape themselves and to change direction, to dissolve to pale wisps. A hard hailstorm drove him to cover in an oak grove and frightened the Janey mare.Really, though, In the Rogue Blood is not aiming for the same place in the firmament as Blood Meridian. It is blood-soaked pulp wearing a literary three-piece suit. The story springs from that oldest of literary genres: a man goes on a journey. In this case, there are two men, Edward and John Little, who leave their home in Florida (fleeing an ex-prostitute, possibly psychotic mother, a violent, possibly psychotic father, and a sister who doesn’t complain much) and set out for the wider world. In the early going, these two brothers follow a pattern: they fight/kill someone and take that person’s stuff; later they get robbed in turn; and they are forced to fight/kill someone else to get more stuff. This is interspersed with a great deal of sex: with prostitutes, with farmer’s daughters, eventually with the sister. If this doesn’t sound entirely pleasant – well, it’s not. The protagonist of a novel does not have to be likeable. However, I’m of the opinion that you still must be able to like an unlikeable character. That is, you must be able to empathize with that person on some level. The trouble with John and Edward, at least towards the beginning, is that they both come off as sociopaths. And you can’t empathize with a person who isn’t able to conjure normal human emotions. Partway through In the Rogue Blood, though, Edward and John take separate paths. From that moment on, the novel really hits its stride. The two brothers are still fairly repellant human beings, yet they show flashes of decency and a depth of kinship that propels the story towards its conclusion. Through a series of twists and turns, Edward and John end up on opposing sides of the Mexican-American War. Here, you can see the sharpest divergence between Blake and McCarthy. The borderlands of Blood Meridian are surreal and otherworldly; it feels created. Blake’s American Southwest is just as violent and unhinged, but it is also tethered strongly to the historical record. His recounting of the movements of General Zachary Taylor and General Winfield Scott are accurate as well as blazingly cinematic. Blake’s battle descriptions, especially the battle of Chapultepec (the penultimate act of Scott’s legendary campaign from Vera Cruz to Mexico City) are revelatory. They seem to belong in a big fat novel by Tolstoy, not a slim volume that begins by following the psycho-pades of two murderous brothers. But Blake shifts easily along the literary spectrum. One moment he is describing a beautiful sunset; the next moment one of his characters is slipping it to his sister; a little later there is an epic battle with thousands of soldiers whirling in the dust and heat and blood.One of the coolest things historical fiction can do is to illuminate the footnotes. In In the Rogue Blood, Blake takes marvelous advantage of the San Patricio Battalion, a unit of the Mexican Army that was populated by European immigrants – including many Irish – who had deserted from the American Army, lured by promises of better pay and free land. Blake’s melding of historical reality to his fictional tale is seamless. Anyone writing historical fiction these days (cough Ken Follett cough) should take note. This is how it’s done. In many ways, In the Rogue Blood is not for the faint of heart. There’s the aforementioned incest, along with rape and murder, thievery and skullduggery, cursing and general bad manners, and also scalp hunting. But it’s also an enjoyable read. A crazy ride filled with gorgeous descriptions, laconic dialogue, and the simple, timeless themes of blood-ties and violent destiny.
In the Rogue Blood, by James Carlos Blake, has often been compared to Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West. Mr. Blake’s effort has been seen as a pale imitation and it seems for good reason. Both are literary works, but where McCarthy’s shines through as a work of literary genius Baker’s doesn’t reach as high or with as much elegance of purpose. Mr. Baker’s book is very good and has suffered only because of the genius of McCarthy’s work and the latter’s author place in the pantheon of American Literature. To focus on Baker’s work, it is a wonderful, if disturbing, character study; the dialogue rings true and reaches towards the poetic; the scenes are honestly written, if occasionally slipping into the pornography of violence; the resolution honest and to the point. As a study of America leading up to and following through to the end of the Mexican War In the Rogue Blood is a very interesting piece of writing and well worth the reader’s time. Though not McCarthy’s masterpiece, In the Rogue Blood remains an important piece of work. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars Recommendation: Men, more so than women, will find this work engaging if they enjoy historical novels littered with senseless violence. The violence is not dishonest, but in most cases it was not strictly necessary. Some would believe this is how the West was; others might disagree. Whichever your perspective readers should find this an enlightening read.
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What little critical attention James Carlos Blake’s In Rogue Blood has been focused on the clear influence of McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. With its setting in the south and Mexican American Border, descriptions of nature and wildlife, relentless gore, and brutal, animalistic, Hobbesian view of humanity I can’t really disagree with this. Blake has a good vocabulary, assured prose, and ability to give voice to characters but as he can’t really match McCarthy (most showing in its most derivative segment featuring a gang of scalphunters) and since the violence is unbelievably beyond even McCarthy this can get a bit relentless. The two main characters, a pair of brothers are a savage couple of unlovable brutes also make this a little hard to take. But it is at the same time more readable and works very well as historical novel. This and Tom Franklin’s Hell at the Breech makes me think that the spirit of Peckinpah is alive in literary form.
—Adam
This 344 page book started off with promise. The writing style, the authentic sounding language that harkens back to late 1800s, sounds legit, not over done, and is very compelling. However, it seemed like there were 100s of incidence of extreme violence in this novel, and every one was described in great gory detail. The repeated graphic detailed descriptions of every killing, rape, pillaging, disemboweling, burning, hanging, the lopping off of body parts, the torture, blah, blah, blah became very monotonous. From about half way through the novel each massacre sounded like the last and, with the ending fairly obvious, I started to wonder if the second half of the book really offered anything. My conclusion is that it didn't offer much.
—Jim loughborough
this here will be the 1st from blake for me...i believe i saw it listed on a page of something i read, something i wanted to read, something...so i looked at it...acquired it...a used paperback.there's several quotes to begin:why does your sword so drip with blood, edward, edward?why does your sword so drip with blood,and why so sad go ye, o?--from an anonymous scottish ballad of the middle ages.i stood upon a high place,and saw, below, many devilsrunning, leaping, and carousing in sin.one looked up, grinning, and said, "comrade! brother!"--stephen cranethe essential american character is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.--d.h. lawrencelo que no tiene remedio se tiene que aguantar.--an old mexican dichostory looks to be divided into vii sections.subtitled: the family, the brothers, john, edward, john, edward, the brothers.begins:the familyin the summer of 1845 edward little was sixteen years old and restless in his blood. he knelt beside a tree stump next to the stable and carved intently upon it in the first gray light of day. he had often sat on this stump and watched the sun lower into the trees and wondered how great the distance from where he sat to where the day was still high noon. his family fled to this blackwater wildland just east of the perdido and nearly two day's ride north of pensacola in the fall of '42 when daddyjack hied them out of the georgia uplands following a barndance fracas that left a man dead and occasioned the local constable to initiate an inquiry.yeah...okay then...onward and upward.time & placesummer of 1845, georgia/florida, heads west, alabama, missippi...perdido river, cowdevil creek, july 1845, the tensaw, the mobilecharactersdaddyjack, also known as jack little, although his real name was likely haywood boggshis children:edward little, 16 years oldjohn little, 17 years oldmargaret "maggie" little, 14-15 years oldmother is lilith, lilytom rainey, a man jack little killed w/a knifemother of lilith, a suicide after tragedy left her madklasson brothers hunting haywood boggs...end up deadgaines the childless methodtist minister reverend and his sallow dispirited wifevarious minor characters...a tinker, a grocer and his wife, a camp foreman, a dark-suited man in white muttonshops,a goateed man wearing a checkered vest, a pair of women scooping mussels, a downriver swamp rat named douglas scratchley, a brass band, an appreciative crowd, a garrulous greybeard with a pegleg, the stableman w/a white bulldog, two men in black slickers, harlan--the name of one of the stableman's friends, a family camped...the man a farmer named campbell, douglas campbell...sarah jean charles who refused to take a turn with campbell, a labor gang, nathaniel hurley's where a barndance is held, a redbeard called o'hara, jeannie walsh a girl at the dancedaddyjack's kentucky flilntlock named roselipsfoots, the name of one of the mules...not the remus mule, the other'n"joan armstrong" the alias that lilith uses to sell the mule to the stableman for $20janey, the name that edward gave the sorrel mare, won in a coin flipmore minor characters: propreitress mrs. clark local cathouse...her widowed sister, mrs. flora bannion in nacogdoches, texas...a man baptized, pilgrim families, a preacher in farmer's clothesthe whores: jolene, sue ellen, rose mary, cora, marcie, belindaupdatefinished, 2:29 p.m. e.s.t. 1 jul 12, sunday afternoon.good read. the above character list is not complete...that list would fill several pages as there are new characters throughout the telling.there is a lot of blood in this one...genital amputations--abound--violence..."here where blood was both common instument of commerce and venerated tool of art."blake makes use of dream...much dream...there's a time when i wondered if he's read stephen king...if stephen king read him...a time when a character feels like his head if full of broken glass. john coffee he of the green mile and ....the man...was it andy, or is that his daughter? in firestarter...both make use of that expression...and shortly thereafter, carrion birds (the crow/raven in king) fed "with sounds like sloppy chuckling" that brings to mind pennywise and the other strange chuckling sounds in king's stories...like the hyenas in scott's story in lisey's story...."this isn't the library, scott..." and the hyenas cackle...as if that isn't enough...tip-of-the-hat maybe...this one crew of bandits number nineteen...king readers understand.the story moves from the u.s.a. florida georgia, across the south into texas into mexico. if there be a mounted horseman that signifies the three little children, there's be two mounted horseman w/their mount, both hooves in the air...and the third would have...possibly but one hoof raised in homage. the tragedy that is life.there is more than a smidgen of spanish herein...some of it i understand...some of it no mas...oh yeah...the story extends itself over a couple years....i believe by story end we are into 1847.
—wally
