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	• Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West Cormac McCarthy Vintage, 1992 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 309 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A great novel, better than The Road

Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" has won the Pulitzer prize -- deservedly so; it's a great novel. But "Blood Meridian" is better. It is one of the most harrowing reads I have come across. Based loosely on a real gang in northern Mexico and the southwestern US (to be, since they weren't yet states), "Blood Meridian" revolves about two characters -- "the kid" and "the Judge" -- much as "The Road" revolves about the boy and his father ("the kid" and "the guardian"?)

The West portrayed by McCarthy has not one hint of the romance or glamor or guts of any John Ford or Zane Grey western. It is brutal. It is not a post-apocalyptic world. We the readers are not insulated by imaginary time. It is not at all difficult to believe that something like the events described did occur.

McCarthy's writing is extraordinary, capturing moments of sublime beauty and awful depravity (like the films of Terrence Mallick or David Lynch).

This edition is also very nice with a very interesting introduction by Harold Bloom. Whatever your take his general thinking, his essay is good.

My one gripe about the Modern Library editions in general is that the trim size is small and the paper is of too light a stock. All-in-all the books could have a greater heft. I have the impression that the publishers, though using archival papers, are largely stuck in a book design of decades past.

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Spur Posse

What a kick. It is easy to be intimated by greatness, so when I read that Harold Bloom, the venerable literary scholar, had named this one of the greats, I assumed I'd have trouble getting through it. Low and behold, this thing is a good read, like novels by Stephen King and Mario Puzo. It's a page-turner. What distinguishes it from the pop fiction school of entertainment is the use of language which is dead-on accurate to its period, circa 1860, and poetic. All the westerns you've watched since childhood play through your mind as you read, testing the accuracy of the marvelous dialog spun by McCarthy. He is a word smith, like Philip Roth, and a few others, but this is a very small elite group. Sustained over 300 pages, this 19th century western lingo functions like music, alternatively lulling and stimulating the reader, taking the reader into harrowing pitched battles between lunatic whites and cruel, savage natives. AS with his more accessible and gentler novel "All the Pretty Horses," the author sends a young man on a trip into adulthood, where he learns the cruelty of the adult world. It is a macho, desperately violent world but one ruled finally by the voice of the author whose descriptions have a gentle, feminine ring. The subtleties are worthy of the attentions of Jane Austen but the subject matter is pure Sam Peckinpaw. "Blood Meridian" is a little masterpiece of controlled fury observed by a man with an eye for beauty.

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A Truly Bloody Meridian

Blood Meridian offers a stark, piercing, and brutal account of U.S. western expansionism. It is a not a novel for the faint hearted or one for those with a sentimental "old west" view - the clear "good guy/bad guy" mentality. Characters are complex, gritty, and fuzzy. Despite the bloody pages, however, there is something beautiful in the writing - death never looked so poetic. Hard to follow at times, the novel demands attention. It forces you to look at what you'd rather not acknowledge.

If I had to offer a criticism, however, it is in the final pages. After following The Kid the entire novel, drawn into his cold, pale world, his fate is not quite settled. Almost, but not quite.

Ulitmately, Blood Meridian offers unforgettable characters, honest violence, and a definition of "the west" not found in the black and white westerns we so love to believe.

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if there were more stars in your ratings....

mccarthy's astounding writing set my love and appreciation for the language on fire. his unique usages called up images of my father's writing, and set me to thinking about getting his nytimes best seller,'give us this valley', reissued.
who but mccarthy could turn a beheading into poetry?

Blood in the desert

McCarthy has written one of the most compelling fictional tale with "Blood Meridian", which left me as a reader like I had been torn apart, much like what happens to some people in the novel. The prose and structure are a cut above anything else I have ever read regarding the subject matter or fiction in general. Perhaps it is the rather dismal, doomsday style approach that makes you realize this macabre Western Frontier as McCarthy views it.

The novel follows the journey of several people, but the main one is a teenager who is traveling west. The country is literally smoking from Civil War, and the landscape is full of outlaws, lawmen who might as well be outlaws, scoundrels, bandits, Indians and rogue soldiers. The description of the boy and his journey is a sickening one, filled with a realism of sorts that a reader could perhaps identify.

This WAS the old "Wild West" in many ways, and McCarthy gathers up every terrible thing he can think of and plops it all into this novel. Scenes of Fire, stampedes and gunfights abound, but are told in a somber and matter of fact way that for some reason makes them all the more realistic. McCarthy is able to bring out a strong visual while heavily using the plot as a vehicle for the evils of mankind in a yet untamed land. Characters like "The Judge" as well as the "kid" are but a couple of an entire handful of interesting people that make this ghastly story one to remember.

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reviews: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, page 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20

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