Goodreads | Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West

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Abailart rated it:

09/06/08

bookshelves: fiction

Read in September, 2008

Blood Meridian

Some claim to have read this book more than 30 times. I can see why. But this is my first Cormac McCarthy novel and I need a long rest. It took me three years before I had the energy to read Moby Dick a second time. Moby Dick and Ahab, an apt comparison as both novels are densely packed, thick, startling of imagery, literary in the scope of allusions, and each contains a figure that seems at the centre: Ahab, and in the case of Blood Meridian, The Judge who is both seeker and s...more

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Robert rated it:

02/11/08

Read in July, 2000

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian: or, the Evening Redness in the West (Vintage, 1983)

The whole idea of "the great american novel" really kind of misses the point because we have taken the original meaning of it and twisted it. The "great american novel" should probably today be caleld "the quintessential american novel," because the word great, in this context, refers to the novel that will encompass what we have been, why, how we got there, and where we were going...more

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Josh rated it:

10/15/07

Read in April, 1995

recommends it for: NOT the faint of heart

Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian is unquestionably the most violent novel I’ve ever read. It’s also one of the best.

For those who would consider that a turn-off, I offer this caveat:
For the overwhelming majority of fiction that involves a lot of violence, the violence itself is an act of masturbation representing either the author’s dark impulse or, perhaps worse, pandering to the reader’s similar revenge fantasies (this might explain why the majority of Blood Meridian fa...more Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian is unquestionably the most violent novel I’ve ever read. It’s also one of the best.

For those who would consider that a turn-off, I offer this caveat:
For the overwhelming majority of fiction that involves a lot of violence, the violence itself is an act of masturbation representing either the author’s dark impulse or, perhaps worse, pandering to the reader’s similar revenge fantasies (this might explain why the majority of Blood Meridian fans I know personally are men, where as the majority of those who’ve told me they were unable to finish it are women).

Don’t get me wrong, the violence in Blood Meridian is gratuitous. It’s both mentally and emotionally exhausting, even in a day and age where television and movies have numbed us to such things. But unlike, say, the movie 300, the violence serves a purpose – in fact the gratuitousness itself serves a purpose. Like how the long, drawn out bulk of Moby Dick exists to make the reader feel the numbingly eventless life of a whaling vessel before it reaches its climactic destination (McCarthy is frequently compared to Melville, btw), Blood Meridian exists to break the reader’s spirit. Like the mercenaries the narrative follows, the nonstop onslaught of cruelty after cruelty makes us jaded. The story brings us to what we think is a peak of inhumanity that seems impossible to exceed, and just as we stop to lick our wounds, an even more perverse cruelty emerges. The bile that reaches the tip of our tongue at reading of a tree strewn with dead infants hung by their jaws at the beginning of the book (a scene often sited to me as the point many readers stop) becomes almost a casual passiveness when a character is beheaded later on. We become one of these dead-eyed cowboys riding into town covered head-to-toe in dried blood and gristle.

The story is based on My Confession, the questionably authentic autobiography of Civil War Commander Samuel Chamberlain, which recounts his youth with the notorious Glanton Gang – a group of American mercenaries hired by the Mexican government to slaughter Native Americans. Whether or not Chamberlain’s tale is true only adds to the mythic quality – exemplified by the character of Judge Holden.

Blood Meridian is really The Judge’s story. He is larger than life. Over seven feet tall, corpulent, hairless, albino, described as having an infant-like face and preternaturally intelligent. He is a murderer, child killer, pedophile and genocidal sociopath. But the question that plagues anyone who reads the book is – who is he really?

The easiest conclusion is that he is the devil, or some other demon. His joyous evil and fiddle-playing are enough clues to come to that, but more controversial (and less popular) is the idea that he is actually the wrathful God of an uncaring universe. He’s called THE Judge, after all.

He spends a great deal of time illustrating new discoveries – be it an Indian vase or petroglyph – only to destroy it when finished. It’s commented that he seems intent on “cataloging all creation”. When a fellow mercenary asks why he does it, he smiles and cryptically replies “That which exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.”

The fact that the book is rife with biblical imagery implies that he is more than a mere symbol of man’s inhumanity to man (which is not to say that the devil isn’t), but when the book ends (SPOILER ALERT) and our protagonist’s body is found shoved into a commode, the townsfolk stand staring into the darkened doorway of the latrine, eerily mirroring the apostles staring into empty crypt after the resurrection. But here, there is no ascension; no salvation offered. Only the Judge, who dances to the closing lines, “He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die."
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Bart rated it:

12/04/07

Read in December, 2007

recommends it for: Fans of westerns

In Cormac McCarthy's novel The Crossing, McCarthy proves he can write about about the travels of a wolf in a poetic and engaging way. In Blood Meridian McCarthy writes about three or four wolves, calls them humans - those characters he bothers to name at all - and shows that with enough talent and powerful prose, a writer and his work can be called "great" without having to develop a single character in 330 pages.

Among those who would be unsatisfied with the mere wor...more

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Brendan rated it:

07/30/08

Read in November, 2007

recommended to Brendan by: Dudes at work
recommends it for: Anyone

In an interview with the New York Times McCarthy was quoted as saying that he does not care for books that don't "deal with issues of life and death," placing in this category (to my horror and vehement disagreement) such writers as Proust--but I digress. Now, more to the point, I have only read McCarthy's The Road and Blood Meridian and I would argue that in these two works he only deals with the latter part of "life and death," or perhaps it would be more eff...more In an interview with the New York Times McCarthy was quoted as saying that he does not care for books that don't "deal with issues of life and death," placing in this category (to my horror and vehement disagreement) such writers as Proust--but I digress. Now, more to the point, I have only read McCarthy's The Road and Blood Meridian and I would argue that in these two works he only deals with the latter part of "life and death," or perhaps it would be more effective to simply twist the phrase a little and say that the vision in these books is "life IS death." McCarthy's world strikes me as being one where the only motivation, the only rule is to kill before you are killed--but these men don't actually LIVE for anything; life is preserved simply for the sake of preservation. I see in these books men who are already dead, or at best are simply waiting to die--pseudo-corpses somnambulating through "life." (Footnote: This idea is not quite so stark in The Road, where one finds implied, unspoken moments of tenderness; tenuous glimpses of hope and affection.)

But herein lies part of the power of this book for me: while I do not agree with McCarthy's limited idea of literature's scope, and am sometimes appalled by his grim vision of the world, ultimately, I am not turned on by an author's message, his thoughts on the human condition, the story is,
in a way, even ancillary, what stirs me in a book, what thrills my senses is STYLE. And Blood Meridian is style. While I very much appreciated The Road's beautiful exercise in minimalism, it is the richer, more vivid (sometimes brutally and alarmingly so) world of Blood Meridian where I
found the most pleasure. In Blood Meridian are still those stunningly laconic, poetic turns of phrase (at points the book is so lyrical it practically sings), but they really shine in this more thoroughly drawn, more deeply textured world. McCarthy creates a vibrant Southwestern country with powerfully unique descriptive force. A passage that I just happened upon: "...they traveled under the cape of the wild mountains upon a broad soda plain with dry thunder and rumors of light. Under a gibbous moon horse and rider spanceled to their shadows on the snowblue ground and in each flare of lightning as the storm advanced those selfsame forms rearing with a terrible redundancy behind them like some third aspect of their presence hammered out black and wild upon the naked grounds." (Footnote two: for some reason I really like unique descriptions of the moon, and while the above example is not particularly descriptive, McCarthy has some gems, a personal favorite being when he calls it a "blind cat's eye.")

And here perhaps I have in a way argued against my own original claim about McCarthy's hopelessly morbid vision: perhaps it is in these images of beauty evoked by our author that constitute the life of the novel, the vitality and the purpose exist not so much in the men themselves but in their surroundings, as well as in the imaginative process of writing and the creation of this vivid fictional world. I don't know. I do know that I like it regardless.

So much more could be said about this book (the unforgettably enigmatic and spectral character of the Judge, for instance) but doubting that anyone has cared to read this far, I will leave it there.
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Annie rated it:

07/24/07

bookshelves: getsgoodafterpage110

Read in June, 2007

I couldn't really do justice to the storyline so here's the summary from the back cover:

"An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridian brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west." Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world w...more I couldn't really do justice to the storyline so here's the summary from the back cover:

"An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridian brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west." Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving."

"For this will to deceive that is in things luminous may manifest itself likewise in retrospect and so by sleight of some fixed part of a journey already accomplished may also post men to fraudulent destinies."

McCarthy's writing is filled with shakespearean and biblical language and he seems to have as much love for punctuation as James Joyce. Until page 100 or so, all I could follow was that the protagonist, "the kid," seamingly wandered around aimlessly encountering some form of extreme violence. There is no inner dialog, no sense of purpose or character development - just random acts of animalistic violence told through the language of poetic murkiness. In hindsight, I think this was a very effect way of setting up the mental, emotional and historical context of the story.

I almost gave up reading, but really wanted to get through it. So I had a discussion with Chris to garner some encouragement. The discussion centered around the idea of pure survival and what it must have been like to be a pioneer of the vast western landscape. Recently, we took a trip out to Vegas and went for a hike in Red Rock Canyon. As we walked around, we contemplated what it must have been like to be a lone traveller walking such unforgiving terrains without food or water - frightening. And then to imagine encountering a complete stranger not knowing if friend or foe, most likley foe - horrifying.

Survival. Do I know what's it's like for that to be my sole purpose day and night? Sitting in my comfortable office with a full belly, electricity, and the only signs of moral decay being a corporate memo discouraging beach wear, it takes some digging to imagine the raw truth of the brutal western expansion. It's only by chance that I was not the kid of that time, driven to do anything by the sheer will to survive.

And this is what happened to those who tried to survive in peaceful peace rather than ruthlessness: "In the days to come the frail black rebuses of blood in those sands would crack and break and drift away so that in the circuit of few suns all trace of the destruction of these people would be erased. The desert wind would salt their ruins and there would be nothing, nor ghost nor scribe, to tell to any pilgrim in his passing how it was that people had lived in this place and in this place died."

Such a gut-wrenching contemplation of the land we currently inhabit and what became of its original owners. Every time I picked up the book I felt extremely heavy-hearted. Perhaps this is truly how we should feel when reading about our country's history? Truly eye-opening, I think this book will stay with me for a long time to come....less

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Ken rated it:

09/06/08

Read in February, 2008

This book is a ribald and trudging litany of violence stretching as long and straight as the shadows upon a bloodstained sonoran saltplain in the waning hours of day, as the desert wolves rising in packs sniff the crepuscular wind for fresh carrion... ah, sorry. Cancel that. Basically it's just pure cowboy violence-porn.

Swaddled in that though is something for the English majors to sink their teeth into, as this book is also an utter lashing condemnation across the back of the American myth...more This book is a ribald and trudging litany of violence stretching as long and straight as the shadows upon a bloodstained sonoran saltplain in the waning hours of day, as the desert wolves rising in packs sniff the crepuscular wind for fresh carrion... ah, sorry. Cancel that. Basically it's just pure cowboy violence-porn.

Swaddled in that though is something for the English majors to sink their teeth into, as this book is also an utter lashing condemnation across the back of the American mythos of frontier expansion during those ol' gold-rushin', horse-ridin', (Mexican-land-stealin', indian-genocidin', bison-exterminatin') days the whole world just can't seem to get enough of. McCarthy scrubs the vaseline off that lens with a handful of pure creosote -- and it's probably just a tribute to his literary prowess, but something about this book feels very much like how things really were (read: fucking awful) back on the old prairie. He delivers his reader into an utterly nihilistic battlefield of man against man (yeah, predictably, this book is mostly about dudes); a chaos of opportunistic greed and sadism where wealth is measured in human scalps, and power down the barrel of the bigger gun; an apocalyptic wasteland where civilization has made but the slenderest toehold; where neither life nor death are worthy of much consideration, much less celebration; where the vilest human transgressions are not only just amusements, but the only amusements. Blood Meridian is a fresh grave dug for our noble delusions of America's "manifest destiny," and the treacherous veil of hypocrisy we've woven to keep it in the history books.

McCarthy's band of debased "partisans" take on a sort of manifestation of the proto-American id. Whenever they encounter anything remotely human, their crude misdeeds seem to make a larger statement about the psychological engines of American expansionism -- and how it proceeded in an orgy of loveless torture, inebriation, rape, slaughter, and general bigotry in the service of our insatiable libido for destruction and dominion and quick lucre.

For instance, McCarthy handily sums up our country's environmental policies in one scene where our brutal American antiheroes come upon a train of hundreds of mules carrying a shipment of liquid mercury along a narrow mountain pass. Traffic jam! The solution? Run the fuckers off the cliff! Every last one of them! Blowing holes through anything that attempts to put up protest! Mules and their drivers hurtling down the cliffside and bursting across the rocks far below, as gallons and gallons of mercury splatter all over the creekbed, seeping down into the water table mingled with the gore of countless innocent lives, just so we can get down this god damn mountain a little faster. Ha ha, fuck you! It's hard to picture a better analogy.

Even without the layered subtexts, Blood Meridian can be recommended as a bitter morsel of mean-spirited historical hedonism bound to offend just about everyone who can't stop reading it. ...less

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Eric rated it:

09/17/07

bookshelves: literature

Read in September, 2007

recommends it for: people who want to believe in the inherent evil of mankind

There are two ways to evaluate a book, as far as my unlearned mind can concoct at the moment. Stylish literary flourishes sometimes cloud our judgment when it comes to evaluating the plot itself, which is, after all, the reason why the book exists.

This book is well written. If I'm a 11th grader, and I need to do a book report, I'm drooling over the blatant symbolism dripping from each page. The scene is set admirably, though the repetitive nature of our brave hero's wanderings (at least i...more There are two ways to evaluate a book, as far as my unlearned mind can concoct at the moment. Stylish literary flourishes sometimes cloud our judgment when it comes to evaluating the plot itself, which is, after all, the reason why the book exists.

This book is well written. If I'm a 11th grader, and I need to do a book report, I'm drooling over the blatant symbolism dripping from each page. The scene is set admirably, though the repetitive nature of our brave hero's wanderings (at least it's with symbolic reason) lead to a paucity in novel adjectives by the 13th desert crossing. There are only so many ways one can say that it's hot, dry and empty. And dry. Boy, that sun sure is strong. I'm there, I'm with you, all right, it sucks around here, phew, the sun's really beating down today. And there are a lot of bones. Dead things abound, OK, I get it.

Then there's the story line. Explain to me again why I'm interested in the wanton marauding of a band of depraved demons? So, we enjoy the dashing of infants into rocks because of the supposed literary merits of the work? We can bash/splatter/expose brains of whatever, happen upon crucified corpses, and ignore any modicum of human decency because the book is about something deeper? But, you say (and without quotes you say it), that's what it was like. Oh yeah? It was like that? Says who? Why do you want to believe that it was like that? As bad as humankind is, our reality is not that despicable, though our souls may be. Why do we have to play follow the leader behind our impish pied piper, pretending an enlightened understanding of some grandiose truth, while all we really do is sate our own personal blood lusts? I wonder.

By the way, if neglecting quotation marks somehow makes the book classier, why not just go all out and remove spaces between words. You better believe I won't be speed reading the repetitive descriptions of how tired everyone is if there aren't any spaces. Why stop there, periods are for two bit hacks too. You're not a real author until you slaughter a few hundred non-innocents (nay, no one is innocent) while neglecting a basic courtesy to the reader.

Who knows, I don't speak Spanish, maybe I'm just missing the point entirely. How do you say "flayed skin" in Spanish?...less

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Griffin rated it:

06/20/08

bookshelves: read---fiction

Read in September, 2007

Cormac McCarthy's 'Blood Meridian' is an examination of man's nature when the constraints of civilization have been broken.

Like McCarthy's other works, 'Blood Meridian' is set in 'The West.' Not Hollywood's 'Wild West' mind you, but a truely frightening examination of violence the way it really happened. You will find no show-downs between 'white hats' and 'black hats' at high noon here. Whether this was simply McCarthy wor...more Cormac McCarthy's 'Blood Meridian' is an examination of man's nature when the constraints of civilization have been broken.

Like McCarthy's other works, 'Blood Meridian' is set in 'The West.' Not Hollywood's 'Wild West' mind you, but a truely frightening examination of violence the way it really happened. You will find no show-downs between 'white hats' and 'black hats' at high noon here. Whether this was simply McCarthy working within his usual genre or a conscious decision, by using our national myth McCarthy drives home the idea that 'Blood Meridian' is about us.

As everyone notes, the violence starts early in the book and it never abates. Mr. McCarthy forces the reader to look, compels us not to turn away. The horrific violence is the vehicle McCarthy uses to move the novel from a story on his pages to a narrative within the reader's mind. Once we follow the characters across the border between 'civilization' and 'chaos' we find that we've left our humanity behind.

As we read, Glanton and 'The Judge' become OUR king and OUR high priest. As The Kid's humanity slowly withers, we recognize the degradable nature of our own humanity. 'The Kid' is both the reader personally and a representation of the individual standing both as part of society and opposed to society. If we are honest with ourselves we must allow Mr. McCarthy to show us that when faced with humanity's ever-present interior horrors (represented perfectly by 'The Judge') we are just as helpless as the pointedly nameless protagonist.

That is the true horror of 'Blood Meridian.' Not the blood. Not the guts. Not even the dead babies. The horror of 'Blood Meridian' is that at any time we are a one choice, one action away from the world of 'The Judge.' The constraining forces of 'civilization' are tenuous at best. And once the thread of humanity has been broken...

Mr. McCarthy's language paints a vivid picture but can be difficult to wade through. His word choice can be archaic and obscure, but no word (or sentence) in 'Blood Meridian' ever seems awkward or out of place. 'Blood Meridian' makes you work to understand what's going on. The 300 page book seemed much longer to me. Perhaps its because I occasionally found myself rereading passages. More likely it was because Mr. McCarthy can construct two or three paragraphs that give you the impression that you've seen every detail of a hundred mile journey, all within half of a page.

'Blood Meridian' is not a pretty book. It does not fit within today's 'entertainment' consumer's expectations. 'Blood Meridian' is Hieronymus Bosch, not Claude Monet. Don't let that dissuade you. Mr. McCarthy has created a novel sublime in its ability to frighten and disgust you. It's well worth the effort....less

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Meredith rated it:

07/30/07

bookshelves: moderngreats

Read in July, 2007

Wow, what a gut-wrencher.
This book is so difficult to describe. Bare? Dismal? Hopeless? no, because those words imply ineffectiveness, which McCarthy's writing most certainly does not radiate.
The characters are at the same time distant and fully formed - we never see their thoughts, yet their personalities and their intentions in life are clear. There is such a lack of emotion, even fear, in this horrific Western world... even the most violent, repugnant, terrible actions are dealt with an...more Wow, what a gut-wrencher.
This book is so difficult to describe. Bare? Dismal? Hopeless? no, because those words imply ineffectiveness, which McCarthy's writing most certainly does not radiate.
The characters are at the same time distant and fully formed - we never see their thoughts, yet their personalities and their intentions in life are clear. There is such a lack of emotion, even fear, in this horrific Western world... even the most violent, repugnant, terrible actions are dealt with and described without a blink. An old squaw gets her brains blown out and then she's scalped; two infants are picked up by their feet and swung through the air only to have their heads smashed together, like some sadistic acrobatic murder. The worst scene was the damn snake-bitten horse, suffering with an infected, bloated snout, and the idiot-soldiers won't kill it b/c they don't want it to rot. Something about that scene - of it running around the corral looking for solace or assistance or any sort of pity from the other horses, and they just run away in horror; the men making faces at it, etc; "why don't you just shoot that thing?" one says in annoyance....it's all just so emotionally disturbing, yet you get the image/feeling of the Western lifestyle so clearly and seemingly so effortlessly by McCarthy.

The ending is, in particular, vomit-inducing. I won't give it away, but let's just say that at the climactic meeting of protagonist and antagonist, McCarthy leaves all violence and brutality to the imagination (other than one repulsing comment about the judge's flesh... UGHHHHHHH), which after thinking about how graphic the rest of the book is, made my spine shiver - SPOILER WARNING!!! - ...... we're left only with the two peeing onlookers peering into the outhouse saying "great god almighty" or whatever it is they exactly say? HOLY SHIT! and then the judge dancing... evil wins... i think i lost control of my insides for a few minutes after putting the book down. you know, the whole "Meredith with her hand over her heart trying to organize her thoughts and insides' reactions to such a moving piece of literature" stance (I've struck that pose before, you know it, don't lie) The judge dancing dancing dancing, he will never die, he says he will never die

MCCARTHY, YOU'RE A GENIUS. A SCARY FUCKIN' GENIUS...less

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Jamie rated it:

08/01/08

Read in April, 2008

Since I had enjoyed The Road by Cormac McCarthy so much, I decided to pick up what is supposed to be his most impressive work, Blood Meridian or, The Evening Redness in the West. Yikes. I mean, yikes. Talk about disturbing...

On the surface, this is a Western novel in that it's got cowboys, Indians, shootouts, deserts in the Southwest, ponchos, and all that stuff. But that's just the veneer. The story mostly follows the Galton Gang, a group of marauders who hunted the scalps of Indians and Me...more Since I had enjoyed The Road by Cormac McCarthy so much, I decided to pick up what is supposed to be his most impressive work, Blood Meridian or, The Evening Redness in the West. Yikes. I mean, yikes. Talk about disturbing...

On the surface, this is a Western novel in that it's got cowboys, Indians, shootouts, deserts in the Southwest, ponchos, and all that stuff. But that's just the veneer. The story mostly follows the Galton Gang, a group of marauders who hunted the scalps of Indians and Mexicans along the US/Mexico border. The group is accompanied by the enigmatic Judge Holden, who is as violent as he is intelligent --that is, very on both counts. Imagine Marlin Brando's Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now. Except that he's not as warm and cuddly. When he's not murdering people, The Judge often delivers long, drawn out lectures on philosophy, the meaning of life, and other weighty subjects. Actually, I take that back --sometimes he does the murdering and the philosophizing at the same time.

In fact, violence and cruelty infuse the entire book. This was, in parts, a very difficult book to read because of its unflinching examination of the murder, mutilation, sadism, brutality, cruelty, torture, and other atrocities that the Galton Gang revel in as they scrape a bloody wound across the U.S/Mexico border. Really. Think of the most disturbing act of violence you can. Now double it. And that's a good starting point, but it get a lot worse. Consider yourself well adjusted that you can't picture the kind of stuff I'm talking about at this point.

But at the same time, Blood Meridian is more than a gorefest. A lot more, in fact. I can hardly claim to have absorbed it all, but I can tell you that there's plenty going on under the surface about the nature of man, obsession, man vs. nature, freedom, morality, and the like. The text is also rife with allusions and references to other literary works, as well as religious doctrines, philosophical debates, and history. There's a lot to pick through there, and if you can excuse McCarthy for his frequent and annoying eschewing of proper punctuation and grammar you can tell that the novel is masterfully crafted. Ironically, the prose is often beautiful.

But would I recommend you it? That's a tough question, but the answer is probably "No" unless you're really set on it. The book is a powerful work of literature but it's just too vile in its descriptions of violence and too nihilistic in many of its messages. It's a testament to McCarthy's prowess that Blood Meridian is both beautiful and horrible....less

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Christopher rated it:

05/16/08

Read in May, 2008

Around 1850, a group of American toughs roamed the U.S.-Mexico border., The Mexican government had contracted them to hunt down the Apaches and bring scalps back as proof, but the "Glangton gang" ended up ravishing innocent villages, robbing the inhabitants and scalping them instead. This episode forms the basis of Cormac McCarthy's 1985 novel BLOOD MERIDIAN: Or the Evening Redness in the West, which reminds the modern world that American expansion into the West was violent indeed, and...more Around 1850, a group of American toughs roamed the U.S.-Mexico border., The Mexican government had contracted them to hunt down the Apaches and bring scalps back as proof, but the "Glangton gang" ended up ravishing innocent villages, robbing the inhabitants and scalping them instead. This episode forms the basis of Cormac McCarthy's 1985 novel BLOOD MERIDIAN: Or the Evening Redness in the West, which reminds the modern world that American expansion into the West was violent indeed, and it makes the further point that this era was only one outbreak of a perennial human disposition to violence.

The protagonist of BLOOD MERIDIAN is a 14 year-old young known only as "The Kid", a runaway from Tennessee who arrives in Texas and immediately becomes familiar with senseless murder and mayhem. I've encountered few protagonists in literature like McCarthy's, for the Kid observes everything around him in great detail, including piercing insight into the hearts of the men he rides us, yet we get little idea of what the Kid himself is thinking. The novel's antagonist is the mysterious Judge Holden. In accounts of the Glanton gang, the Judge was a pale man with some education behind him, Glanton's right hand man. In McCarthy's novel, however, he becomes a demonic figure, albino and ageless, discoursing at great length about Man and his place in the world while engaging in the basest brutality, and seemingly much more in charge of things than the crazed Glanton.

Some earlier reviewers have taken exception with McCarthy's diction and punctuation. Certainly the success of his recent two novels (NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and THE ROAD), which are written in a lighter vein, have brought to BLOOD MERIDIAN many readers which are not familiar with more arty prose stylings. However, the lack of punctuation marks should pose no challenge, especially if you have read novels in other languages where dialogue is minimally marked. Some of his sentences are contorted run-ons, this was no doubt carefully calculated to give the book a folksy tone, appropriate for a book whose protagonist can't read and the culture he inhabits is still very much an oral one. Finally, I really can't understand the claim that BLOOD MERIDIAN forces one to pick up a dictionary and look up hundreds of new words. McCarthy's language is poetical, but far from obscurantist.

If you decide to get BLOOD MERIDIAN, I recommend the Modern Library edition, which is in hardback and has much better paper than the Vintage paperback. It only goes for a couple of bucks more, too. ...less

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Dustin rated it:

(review of isbn 0679641041)

01/18/08

bookshelves: to-re-read

Read in January, 2008

recommends it for: dead babies hanging from a tree

Maybe Cormac McCarthy IS smarter than me. I know he's always wanted me to think so because he uses big words and poor syntax and uses both tricks to obscure the meaning of his long sentences so you think that you're just stupid and should do what Cormac tells you to do, namely sit in awe of him.

Which is kind of what you have to do after reading Blood Meridian. It twists the mythology of the Western and of the Knightly quest into something more historically accurate yet somehow more m...more Maybe Cormac McCarthy IS smarter than me. I know he's always wanted me to think so because he uses big words and poor syntax and uses both tricks to obscure the meaning of his long sentences so you think that you're just stupid and should do what Cormac tells you to do, namely sit in awe of him.

Which is kind of what you have to do after reading Blood Meridian. It twists the mythology of the Western and of the Knightly quest into something more historically accurate yet somehow more mythic. We follow a gang of scalp-hunters in the Texas-Mexico borderlands--the unrelenting landscape a major character itself--and watch as they make possible westward expansion through depraved and unrepenting slaughter. There's no real morality in the characters or actions of this book, something that bothered me at first and that I believed a flaw in McCarthy, but I'm starting to see how this was intentional and how it functions in the overall vision of the work. Also, there is a considerable overlap in the narrative voice and that of the characters, so when there are racial epithets in the narrative voice you're not sure if that's the perspective of the character or McCarthy as narrator, which is distracting initially but doesn't come up much later in the book--which I suppose does function as a clue to the "moral" growth of the "protagonist", but its an unclear clue and requires either a second reading to trace how it works or Cormac being willing to come out and say something straight for once. I read a review of this by James Wood that said this book has no "internal borders", and that is an accurate statement, and it can be confusing for the reader; again, I would have to read this again to see if there is good justification for such blurring or if its just more substanceless razzle-dazzle from McCarthy.

Overall, though, its a pretty great book. It bothers you and hangs around in your head after you put it down. Its complex and beautiful and horrifying. I knocked it one star because I read the introduction by Harold Bloom which reveals how the book ends in the second paragraph, which is completely irritating and unacceptable. Why would you choose an introduction that spoils the entire book? I hate Harold Bloom, but I enjoyed the book despite him, though not as much, I think, as I would have if I didn't know exactly what kind of shock was coming for me on the last page. So, fuck you Harold Bloom, and congratulations Cormac: you're out of my doghouse....less

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Tedb0t rated it:

06/11/07

bookshelves: literature, modernfiction

Read in May, 2007

recommends it for: those who love true literature

Blood Meridian is an astonishing work. It was recommended to me by the same person who got me into Moby Dick, and now I believe I understand why.

There are two major aspects I'd like to touch on with this book:

1) Prose. McCarthy is one of those rare literary magicians who, like Melville, is capable of sustained and continuous flows of poetry, often jaw-dropping in their scale and scope. Blood Meridian tends to oscillate from narrative action to descriptive passage. The narrative scene...more Blood Meridian is an astonishing work. It was recommended to me by the same person who got me into Moby Dick, and now I believe I understand why.

There are two major aspects I'd like to touch on with this book:

1) Prose. McCarthy is one of those rare literary magicians who, like Melville, is capable of sustained and continuous flows of poetry, often jaw-dropping in their scale and scope. Blood Meridian tends to oscillate from narrative action to descriptive passage. The narrative scenes tend towards a blunt delivery, commensurate with the utterly brutal violence that makes up most of the book. The between-passages, however, which are almost always describing the unearthly beauty of the desert landscape they travel in, spiral out into incredible poetical and lyrical digressions that often defy any kind of conscious comprehension. And McCarthy delivers them effortlessly, in long rambling sentences that genuinely evoke a kind of incorporeal desert mystic contemplating the universe.

2) Nihilism. The above being said, the narrative world of the story is as ugly as the prose is beautiful. In Blood Meridian's 1850's Wild West, human life is absolutely without value. Scores upon scores of innocents (and a few guilties) are slaughtered in cold blood: indians, mexican peasants, old ladies, dogs, children, the cowering and the proud. The agents of these massacres are the principal characters of the book: Glanton and the Judge, two different manifestations of total and all-consuming malevolence. The Judge lives by a code that goes beyond mere "might making right"--he is a lodestone of chaos and death, while remaining seemingly invincible and perpetually calm. Some of the book's most amazing passages come from the mouth of this gnostic archon, who delivers sermons on art, nature, mankind, murder and ceaseless violence. The story's overall effect is one of total nihilism, a world in which no life or object has value, only the annihiliation thereof.

Lastly, I must remark that the breadth of McCarthy's scholarship and research for this book is astounding. I cannot fathom how he wrote this without having lived in the 1850's southwest, though I understand much of it is informed by the confessions of one of the real-life members of the story's central gang....less

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Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West

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