Pick Up My Confession: Recollections Of A Rogue Developed By Samuel E. Chamberlain Available In EPub

may have come to Samuel Chamberlains My Confession for its Blood Meridian connection, but I stayed for the magisterial storytelling.
Its an antidote to the stupor brought on by the banality of historical texts, History itself is full of vivid color, but when reported through the lens of retrospection it can sometimes be painted in black and white.
Theres an austere nature to this approach, which can turn many people off, But thats where Chamberlain comes in,

His firsthand account of life as a soldier on the TexasMexico border fighting for his country etched his name in the annals ofth century folklore.
Even more so now because people like me seek it out upon learning of its influence on Cormac McCarthy, As significant as that connection may have been, the characters that form McCarthys work are relegated to footnote status here, occupying only the last few dozen pages.
So, dont come to this work expecting a revelatory analysis of the Glanton gang, But you'll still find what McCarthy unearthed on his way to forming his own literary nightmare,

Conversely, My Confession shows a romanticized wild west in a country growing too large and too fast for its flabby muscles to keep up with the load.
And Manifest Destiny was just an excuse to rip through the land and conquer it at whatever the cost, But hey, God was on their side, Chamberlain was too young to get caught up in the politics, He was just a boy of sixteen from Boston looking for a fresh new doll each night to waltz with, arm in arm.
He was quite the playboy and hes made sure we wont forget it, But hes also made sure we wont forget about his harrowing exploits, defying death in every battle, And there were a helluva lot of them, It all seems too farfetched to pass the smell test, Afterall, the winners are the ones who write the history books, But those who beat the odds and make it out alive, scars and all, have their say too,

As much as he may stylize a tale that glorifies his adventures and bolsters his American hero repute, he never shies away from an honest indictment of this life on the frontier.
When speaking of a fellow mans death on the battlefield, Chamberlain asserts: “This was considered accidental, but believed otherwise, as battles often decide private grievances, as well as those of nations.
” To think that once you step on that soil you were prone to fire from all sides, including that of your own.
Better not drop your guard on the enemy or slight the wrong man or you might find yourself within more than just the crosshairs of your countrys enemy.
Perhaps the west tamed man as much as the other way around,
Chamberlain's memoir of his Mexican war service as an enlisted Dragoon, A few chapters at the end deal with his escapades with the Glanton gang, which formed the basis of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian.
After reading this account of the atrocities committed by the Glanton gang, and by both sides in the Mexican War, nothing in Blood Meridian should come as a surprise.




I read this out of interest in Blood Meridian which this book was said to be source material for.
Indeed it surely is, or at least the last several chapters are, Its a pretty good read overall and there's more of Chamberlain's adventures that could be novelized, but I enjoyed seeing the seed of McCarthy's story the most.
Unfortunately this baby is out of print and it cost me, But that's how obsessed I am with Blood Meridian, I should have held out though the hardback is available foron Amazon right now, Samuel Chamberlain left his safe New England home inat the age ofto seek his fortune in Illinois, or so he intended.
Instead, he wound up in the Army fighting in the Mexican War and, if only half of his memoir is true, surviving more hairraising and lifethreatening situations than most people ever experience not to mention liaisons too numerous to count.
His memoir, with his own sketches for illustration, covers the period of his ramblings fromand, Experts, finding much contemporaneous support, believe his tale is substantially correct, with the normal allowances for exaggeration and occasional invention, It certainly makes for exciting reading,
One section of particular interest to me occurs at the end of the book when Chamberlain joins the murderous gang run by John Glanton and Judge Holden, rampaging through Mexico.
This gang and its brutal deeds form the basis of Cormac McCarthy's amazing Blood Meridian and undoubtedly Chamberlain's memoir was one of his sources in fact, several of the incidents Chamberlain recounts in his story actually appear in BM.


Really cool historical document and literary memoir documenting Samuel Chanberlain's experiences during the MexicanAmerican war, This is full of romantic melodrama, and is expertly styled as a swashbuckling misadventure, Chamberlain at once is intimately involved in the atrocities he describes and at the same time a moralizing observer of the ravages of war and expanding American capitalism.
There's some bullshit mixed in his fight with a ghost, but overall this is an amazing primary document for an account of that conflict.
The editors make the bizarre choice to include some obvious fabrications, but excise other pages for being false, It's an inconsistent approach and annoys me as a reader wanting the full text, Spellbinding story, as exciting as Blood Meridian, without being as poetic, This is a very wellresearched and heavily annotated version of Chamberlain's "Confession" that provides a stunning and at times overwhelming amount of factual detail to accompany the talltales that Chamberlain weaves together.
Chamberlain truly has a gift for storytelling, and it even has many moments of levity that made me laugh out loud.
Although many most of his stories strain credibility at times, they still paint a vivid and believable portrait of the life a vagabond soldier in the MexicanAmerican War.
The fullcolor vivid reproductions of his paintings and many full pages of his manuscript do wonders to illuminate this fantastical world he inhabited, and although some of them seem quite amateurish, he does have a gift and at times his attention to detail speaks a strong testament to the validity of his stories.


It's no wonder that McCarthy took so much inspiration from this book, and he felt little need to dress up the stories that had already been laid by Chamberlain.
In fact, Meridian is even less fantastical at times, especially in terms of Chamberlain's many detailed romantic exploits which are often the most unbelievable elements of the entire workvirtually every beautiful woman he encounters immediately falls in love and gives herself to him at every turn I believe he promises marriage at leasttimes, yet he continues on and leaves then onebyone for the next.
His undoubtedly exaggerated prowess as a ladies man perhaps overshadows his exaggerations of his ability as a fighting man and allows the reader to misdirect his doubt about Sam's countless heroic actions as a fighter and gunman.
Sam rarely admits to losing a fight, and when he does he inevitably attains revenge at a later moment,

Highly recommended to anyone who is a McCarthy fan or simply a fan of American history, I feel this chapter of American history is sadly overlooked by typical public school education.
In my personal experience I felt that I had become an expert on the Civil War which happened only shortly after this conflict by the time I graduated high school, but knew almost nothing about this important conflict that had much to do with shaping our country.
Spoilers for this book and Blood Meridian follow,

Let's be honest, The only reason you'll read this book is if you're obsessed with Cormac McCarthy's masterful sitelinkBlood Meridian, as I am.
Otherwise I would not have sought out this obscure book that sells for no less than a hundred bucks, But it has the unique distinction of being the primary inspiration for one of the best novels by a living writer, and so I sought and so I read.


Blood Meridian is a bleak and violent fictional account of the historical Glanton gang, a band of scalphunters hired by the Mexican government to kill Comanche warriors.
Long story short, the gang gets greedy, starts killing everyone, and comes to a bad end, The main character in the book is known only as "the kid", short on biography and personality, mostly just a witness to everything that happens, and the main antagonist pretty much everyone is an antagonist, actually is Judge Holden.


Now, to say Chamberlain's book is McCarthy's primary inspiration is a bit misleading, Blood Meridian's inspiration can't really be confined to a single book, as it draws from Dante, the Bible, Moby Dick, Paradise Lost, protoChristian gnostic texts, ampc.
But Chamberlain is the primary historical source for the novel's nonfictional characters and events, Chamberlain is the kid Glanton is Glanton Tobin appears, as do several other characters, But most importantly, this is the only historical reference to Judge Holden, who seems nearly as terrifying in the historical account as in McCarthy's novel.


The first threequarters of the book were of little interest to me, through no fault of its own, It is a gripping bildungsromantic memoir about Chamberlain's military experience during the MexicanAmerican war, But my mind was so singly tracked that it wasn't until he deserted and joined up with the Glanton gang of scalphunters that my attention was really piqued.
Out ofpages, here is the main payoff:

The second in command, now left in charge of the camp, was a man of gigantic size called 'Judge' Holden of Texas.
Who or what he was no one knew but a cooler blooded villain never went unhung he stood six feet six in his moccasins, had a large fleshy frame, a dull tallow colored face destitute of hair and all expression.
His desires was blood and women, and terrible stories were circulated in camp of horrid crimes committed by him when bearing another name, in the Cherokee nation and Texas and before we left Frontreras a little girl of ten years was found in the chapperal, foully violated and murdered.
The mark of a huge hand on her little throat pointed him out as the ravisher as no other man had such a hand, but though all suspected, no one charged him with the crime.


Holden was by far the best educated man in northern Mexico he conversed with all in their own language, spoke in several Indian lingos, at a fandango would take the Harp or Guitar from the hands of the musicians and charm all with his wonderful performance, and outwaltz any poblana of the ball.
He was 'plum centre' with rifle or revolver, a daring horseman, acquainted with the nature of all the strange

plants and their botanical names, great in Geology and Mineralogy, in short another Admirable Crichton, and with all an arrant coward.
Not but that he possessed enough courage to fight Indians and Mexicans or anyone where he had the advantage in strength, skill and weapons, but where the combat would be equal, he would avoid it if possible.
I hated him at first sight, and he knew it, yet nothing could be more gentle and kind than his deportment towards me he would often seek conversation with me and speak of Massachusetts and to my astonishment I found he knew more about Boston than I did.




Judge Holden mounted a rock for a rostrum and gave us a scientific lecture on Geology, The Scalp Hunters, grouped in easy attitudes, listened to the "Literati" with marked attention, The whole formed an assemblage worthy of the pencil of Salvator Rosa, Holden's lecture no doubt was very learned, but hardly true, for one statement he made was "that million of years had witnessed the operation producing the result around us," which Glanton with recollections of the Bible teaching his young mind had undergone said "was a dd lie.
"

The judge of Chamberlain's account has more in common with McCarthy's than I expected, The fictional judge's description was lifted straight from history: huge and hairless, with an aptitude for music, dance, and violence, and a mind for science and arcane trivia.
The only difference is a significant one, however: the historical judge was only a man, a "villain" McCarthy made him a straight up demon.


If you can get a hold of this book and you're a fan of McCarthy, it is well worth your time to read the last forty pages, to witness the historical characters and events for yourself.
You'll get to see several scalpings, Glanton's end at the Colorado River ferry crossing, and a tense showdown in the desert between the judge and Sam Chamberlain.
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