But dont draw me, said Webster. For I dont want in your book. My book or some other book said the judge. It would be a false book and a false book is no book at all. But the judge still destroys the referent, leaving him only the residue of signification in his books.
Books lie and a false book is no book at all.
While Judge Holden builds his world by constructing an economy of signs, another economy of signs operates in Blood Meridian , one whose referents, like the judge s, are rarely verifiable. This economy, though still semiotic in nature, drives the characters of Blood Meridian to their horrid deeds and places them within a commerce in human life based on the collecting of human scalps. The scalps brought in by Glanton and his gang represent victory in a genocidal war against the Apache and Comanche. Human blood, or at least what passes as proof of the extinction of a human life, operates as the medium of exchange in Trias s war. For Glanton and his crew, scalps are specie, bloody human specie.