Issue #342 / November 2025
I recently read a fascinating article in Smithsonian Magazine titled “The Secret Life of Cormac McCarthy.” The article discusses his personal Library—which contained a staggering 20,000 volumes! [ ] A quote from the article— “Inside The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila, we found him [McCarthy] musing philosophically: ‘There is an intelligence to the universe (of which we are fractal) and that intelligence has a character and that character is benign. Intends well toward all things. How could it not?’” I’m curious—what are your views on this concept of an intelligence to the universe?
TROY, BOISE, USA
APOCALYPTIC HORSE BY ALBERT TUCKER, 1956
I just learned that John Hillcoat is filming an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Have you been asked to do the score yet?
MATT, WI, USA
Does pure evil exist?
ELAENA, BILBAO, BASQUE COUNTRY
Dear Troy, Matt and Elaena,
Thank you for sending me the Cormac McCarthy quote. I found it immensely encouraging, as the idea within McCarthy’s splendid marginalia echoes the essential message I have been groping towards here in The Red Hand Files – that the universe ‘intends well toward all things’.
I am inclined to believe in a form of intelligence within the universe, as I hold that consciousness or ‘intelligence’ exists throughout everything, that it goes all the way down to the fundamental atomic matter of things. This force, woven into everything – both living and non-living – is inherently good. If we choose, we could call this force God. I view this power as a kind of cosmic disposition that grows, understands, and empathises with us – suffers with us, you might say – and that humans are ‘fractal’, as Cormac so beautifully puts it, exemplars or metaphors of the melancholic nature of this God-soaked universe.
Elaena, I believe that evil exists not only within the human heart but also as an external energy separate from us, moving through the world – a nullifying, destructive potency – ‘going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down in it’. We can see it, if we choose, all around us. Yet, we can act as the remedy to this existential predicament by directing our efforts towards the world’s flourishing and away from its destruction, in whatever way we can. It is our duty to attend to the sorrow of the universe – the sorrow of God.
Matt, one of the ways I like to fulfil my spiritual duty and stay in good standing with the world is by going into the studio with my mate Warren Ellis to compose scores for film adaptations of books we genuinely admire and fundamentally understand. Of course, Blood Meridian is one of those books – who doesn’t see it as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century? And, although this Red Hand File is more than just an elaborate pitch to John Hillcoat masquerading as a metaphysical meditation, it is also a bit of that – I know that every composer and his flea-bitten dog will be banging on John’s door to land this gig, so, no, John hasn’t asked – but, you know, Mr. Hillcoat, we are available…
Love, Nick