Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West in Overdue Podcast

Oct 29, 2019 Jason rated it liked it

Shelves: own

Western-style Inferno, but while Dante had Virgil for a guide, 'the kid' has only a demon (imo) with a severe case of alopecia, referred to as 'the judge', that shadows him (possibly herding him) through each nightmarish encounter and progression. This tour is more participatory and less guided than that of Dante. There's a touch of Naked Lunch about it. Perhaps thinking of this as a sort of hell is just easier than thinking of it as an epic telling of some piece of historical reality, and perha Western-style Inferno, but while Dante had Virgil for a guide, 'the kid' has only a demon (imo) with a severe case of alopecia, referred to as 'the judge', that shadows him (possibly herding him) through each nightmarish encounter and progression. This tour is more participatory and less guided than that of Dante. There's a touch of Naked Lunch about it. Perhaps thinking of this as a sort of hell is just easier than thinking of it as an epic telling of some piece of historical reality, and perhaps the interpretation that a demon is at play helps alleviate the responsibility from the simple human depravity of it all. This is a book of violence, beautifully and horribly told.

“All other trades are contained in that of war.

Is that why war endures?

No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not.

That's your notion.

The judge smiled. Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all.”

McCarthy can write, there is no doubt about it, his style is magnificent; I just can't like the material.

“The flames sawed in the wind and the embers paled and deepened and paled and deepened like the bloodbeat of some living thing eviscerated upon the ground before them and they watched the fire which does contain within it something of men themselves inasmuch as they are less without it and are divided from their origins and are exiles. For each fire is all fires, and the first fire and the last ever to be.”

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Jul 28, 2014 Gav G rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, historical-fiction, novels, westerns

Until he died in 2023 McCarthy was the closest in literature to a genuine American modernist in the vein of the classic authors of the early 20th century. His style sits between Hemingway's method and Faulkner's complex yet readable prose.

Blood Meridian is an anti-western out to deconstruct the myth of the Wild West. It could be mistaken for a series of violent, misogynistic escapades and, on the surface at least, you’d be right.

It’s not for the faint of heart. There are no heroes, and its prim ...more

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Jan 11, 2014 Hannah rated it it was ok

I did not enjoy this book. Cormac McCarthy has a distinctive style of no quotation marks and lots of description. I would find my attention wandering while I read and I would have to go back to try and figure out what exactly happened. I didn't relate to any of the characters and didn't much care what happened to them. ...more

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