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Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West
by Cormac McCarthy
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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
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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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
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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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
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
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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
Among those who would be unsatisfied with the mere wor...more
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Read in November, 2007
recommended to Brendan by:
Dudes at workrecommends 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
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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
"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
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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
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
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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
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
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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
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
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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
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
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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
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
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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
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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
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
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4 comments
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
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
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