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You're listening to the Partial Exam in Life. This is part two of episode three

of our five blood meridian. We were talking about the relative aptness of the term gratuitous

to describe the violence in blood meridian and wanted to make sure that we got to

talking about judge holdens characterizing of the meaning of life.

Okay. July set us up for a little bit of that.

Before you do, let me just throw in that thing. So there's a notion out there on the internet

anyway that this book is unfilmable. It can't be made into a movie. And I think it's exactly

those two topics, namely the violence in combination with kind of the philosophic

positions and representations by judge holden that are commonly used as justifications for why

it might not be possible to turn this into a movie. If it was done right, it would make an

incredible movie. Did you guys see the new all quiet on the western front by the way of the German?

No, it's incredible and explicitly violent, but it's a masterpiece.

I have to watch that. And that book was a famous anti-war book. I think when we were in high school,

I think we all had to read it, right? And then early academy award-winning film was based on it.

So it's an anti-war movie, but I mean, anti-war book and anti-war movie that it can only communicate

that through the explicit violence. I didn't read a ton about the movie question. I read a little

bit, but really Scott, it was an example of a director that apparently worked on for a long time,

trying to make it into a movie. And he is not a director who has shied away from having violence

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