Dark Western Duality: The Magpie Coffin & Blood Meridian

Dark Western Duality: The Magpie Coffin & Blood Meridian by Mike Baker   I read The Magpie Coffin and Blood Meridian simultaneously, though that’s not entirely accurate—I started Blood Meridian a week ago, alongside a few other books. Much like crossing the great of Texas, there’s no quick way through Blood Meridian. The Magpie Coffin, by Wile E. Young, is the first entry in Death’s Head Press’s splatter western series and, from my casual review of general opinion, is considered the best of the lot. The story follows Salem Covington, who has made a deal—likely with the Devil—for a gun that renders him unkillable by any weapon except its twin, which is lost somewhere in the world. This gun demands that Salem fill a ledger with kills, making him a sort of reaper. If he meets the gun’s quota before the twin can find him, he can enter heaven blameless. The book opens with Salem’s Comanche teacher, Dead Bear, having been murdered along with a white buffalo, Dead Bear’s familiar, by five cavalrymen. Salem decides they must be killed next for vengeance and to satisfy the gun’s demands. He brings along a young soldier named Jake, who is half hostage, half acolyte, and a whore named Ruby, or something like Ruby. Jake knows one of the soon-to-be-dead men personally and can identify him. He brings Ruby because he saved her, and Salem finds that impulse—saving a life—somewhat novel and amusing. The narrative unfolds into a series of brutal, righteous killings, and a simple narrative mechanism allows you to anticipate Salem’s fatal flaw and where the story is headed. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; while originality makes for a great book, executing a well-worn concept with flair can still result in an entertaining read. Young may not be groundbreaking, but he is certainly engaging. Meanwhile, I’m reading Blood Meridian, the heavyweight champion of dark-hearted human brutality. By comparison, The Magpie Coffin’s “darkness and horror” feel like lightweight comic book fare. I began to look forward to Magpie’s “brutality” as a way to cleanse my palate of the absolute bleakness and wretchedness of Blood Meridian. I believe the love for Magpie stems from its well-crafted writing. Young understands the elements that make an entertaining western, and it is indeed gory af. However, if you’ve read any Piccadilly Cowboy material, excluding the supernatural elements in Magpie, you may find Magpie doesn’t cover new ground, unlike The Red Station or Cruel Angel Past Sundown, which, while structurally flawed, push the genre beyond mere horror and gore. I’m not saying this to discourage you from reading Magpie—on the contrary, I believe you absolutely should. It’s a fun book. However, the splatter western series offers a treasure trove of western goodness that merits exploration beyond just Magpie.

Now, there are thousands of reviews far better than I could write about Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, so if you want to know more about the book itself, I recommend seeking those out. I’ll summarize it briefly: it’s about a runaway in the West called the Kid who joins the Glanton Gang as they venture into Mexico to collect Apache scalps for a bounty. They descend into a killing spree of epic proportions, slaughtering the innocent alongside the guilty, destroying everything they touch. The writing is poetic. You can miss a phrase and find yourself lost for pages, requiring you to double back, much like getting lost in the woods. It’s so dense that I often “discover” scenes I swear I’ve never read, even though I’ve read every word six times. Though it isn’t long, I’ve never been able to hold the entire story in my mind all at once. Like I’ve said, I’ve read it six times, but I wouldn’t call it a favorite. It’s the quintessential example of western noir. McCarthy’s view of humanity as apex predator, as monster, is utterly devoid of hope. It was entertaining the first time I read it in the ’90s—like the Bible told from the Devil’s perspective—but now it just feels like trauma. I read it last week while waiting out Hurricane Helene, and I don’t know anymore. It feels like an assault. It reminds me of Henry Miller’s words in the opening of Tropic of Cancer: “This is a libel, slander, defamation of character, a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of art, a kick in the pants to God, man, destiny, time, love, beauty…” I’m not even sure I can call it McCarthy’s best book, as it feels his least human and completely devoid of optimism or anything like optimism. However, it may very well be the best artistic rendering of the West, though it is, in fact, not a western at all, despite my earlier classification. There’s more to it than that; the book confounds definition. But for me—this time—the takeaway is this: to hell with Cormac McCarthy and his grief at being born human, or a massive restatement of the idea that hope thrives despite history’s glaring evidence to the contrary.

Check out The Magpie Coffin here at Amazon Check out The Blood Meridian here at Amazon