![]() It’s just one long slog of barren landscapes, horses, guns, and depraved acts. Nothing is gained, felt, or learned. No one takes joy and no one feels guilt. Yet no one has a thought or reaction to this. Nothing comes of anything in this book-no, that’s not right: Violence comes of violence, again and again. At times, even this falls away and not even indefensible racism is held as a reason. them” when there’s no reason given for the “vs.” other than nationality/race. Maybe this wasn’t the best time to read a book that is all “us vs. It’s not anything that I want to read again. At the end of the day, Blood Meridian isn’t anything that most people will want to read. It’s more difficult than I thought to say this book reaches greatness on behalf of some fancy phrasing. Oh, the landscape is covered in blood now.” Which is rubbish, of course, but not the way McCarthy writes it. The judge isn’t the best character he’s the only character. As far as everyone else is concerned, this is the book: “Oh, the landscape look at the sun’s position. It’s also hard to distinguish between the characters because they all have the same voice (except the judge) and they don’t care where they’re going so long as they get to shoot and scalp people along the way and half of them don’t have an opinion on the shooting and scalping. The downside is that many of the best sentences cover recurring elements-the landscape, pseudo-philosophical babble-and they run together in their repetition. BLOOD MERIDIAN FULLI know I mocked this in my review of The Little Stranger, but Blood Meridian is chock full o’ beautiful sentences. There’s no character development, no commentary, and the only breaks from routine are little revelations about the judge’s character: He’s a linguist, a philosopher, a chemist, and a frequent nudist who doesn’t seem to age. Judge Holden re-enters the story and becomes more mythic, grandiose, and violent with each sequence. Though the gang’s official goal is to kill and scalp Apaches, they branch out to kill most everyone they meet. After word gets out about what he did to a barman, he’s recruited for Captain White’s army “to whip up on the Mexicans.” (29) This army is short-lived and the kid later falls in with Glanton’s gang (which has historical roots). There, he meets Judge Holden and gets in a number of fights before leaving town. The kid, an unnamed runaway, rides into Nacogdoches in 1849. While Blood Meridian may be held as a high point in American lit it’s the weakest McCarthy I’ve read. It’s taken me a decade to get through The Road, No Country for Old Men, Outer Dark, and Blood Meridian. His stories are stomach-churning and frequently depressing since they aim to capture the worst inevitabilities of human nature. Violence is McCarthy’s preferred subject and he writes it with lyrical language that’s often described as biblical. ![]() Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian is on enough “best of” lists that I’ve been curious about it for years. ![]()
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