Worth the hype. This is truly one of the great novels.

books:


	• Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West Cormac McCarthy Vintage, 1992 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 293 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Worth the hype. This is truly one of the great novels.

This is probably the most violent book I have ever read. However, this book is about more that just violence. This book has some of the best prose I have ever read, with numerous scenes, and even entire chapters, that I will remember for a long time.

Chapter 10: Tobin's story of finding the judge is worth the price of the book alone.

Recommended for:
Readers who are looking for a great novel that is truly a classic.

Not recommended for:
Well obviously people who cannot handle massive, and I mean massive, amounts of violence in a book.

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Brilliant, Gruesome, Weird

My book jacket says BLOOD MERIDIAN "...chronicles the extraordinary violence of the Glanton Gang, a murderous cadre on an official mission to scalp Indians." Wikipedia adds that John Glanton "led a gang of scalp hunters. Nominally a mercenary operation hired by Mexican authorities to track down and kill dangerous bands of Apaches, the gang began murdering and scalping non-Apaches and massacring citizens..." and were eventually "declared outlaws."

McCarthy's entry to the Glanton gang comes through two characters. The first is the Kid, who joins up in his mid-teens and participates in its gruesome crimes. The second is Judge Holden, who dominates the gang and has a philosophical view of its random violence.

In McCarthy's hands, the story of the Glanton gang is like a psychopathic road novel, which is held together with genius-quality poetic writing. Read BM and be captured by McCarthy's immense talent as the gang traverses the Southwest and northern Mexico. I open BM at random (the start of Chapter 14) and find:

"All to the north the rain had dragged black tendrils down from the thunderclouds like tracings of lampblack fallen in a beaker and in the night they could hear the drum of rain miles away on the prairie. They ascended through a rocky pass and lightning shaped out the distant shivering mountains and lightning rang the stones about and tufts of blue fire clung to the horses like incandescent elementals that would not be driven off. Soft smelterlights advanced upon the metal of the harness, lights ran blue and liquid on the barrels of the guns. Mad jackhares started and checked in the blue glare and high among those clanging crags jokin roehawks crouched in their feathers or cracked a yellow eye at the thunder underfoot."

The writing is truly amazing.

At the same time, McCarthy uses the Judge to move his narrative beyond gruesome and episodic adventure. Here, the Judge seems to create and sustain a mission of violence for the gang. And when a character temporarily operates outside the gang and the Judge's influence? Then society quickly challenges and usually contains him. (In fact, only the kid is able to avoid self-destruction outside the gang, which provokes a final act of viciousness by the judge.)

Anyway, BM makes terrible (not just aesthetic) sense after the Judge emerges as a force that makes greater violence possible. And in the final chapter, McCarthy's treatment of the slaughter of the American buffalo reminds us that the violence of the Glanton gang and its willingness to massacre lurks in the nature of many men, simply awaiting sanction and leadership.

Two quick final points:

First, I encourage readers who enjoyed BM to try Pynchon's Against the Day. This shares a character (Sloat) and also has traverse motion in the Southwest and Mexico, albeit in family form. But in AtD, the violence is personal and capitalistic, not epic, while the narrative, in its Western thread, is sweet and magical parody.

Second: Have your dictionary ready. McCarthy is the master of the short and obscure word. Heading my long list: affray, swale, sprent, sutler, farrier, vadose, kivas, spalls...

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One of my favorite books...this book is REAL!

One of my favorite books, having read this over 12 years ago, I still reflect on parts of it. One of the few books I consider X-rated, and graffic. Be warned, reading this book is like pealing over your skin and peering at the gobbelty-gook inside. Horrific.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, page 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

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