Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West

Where Red Turns Purple

While appreciating McCarthy's achievement, I consider the 'style' unnecessarily affected. The innovation of dropping quotation marks, apostrophes, and most hyphens should not be confused with creativity. His approach leads to confusion rather than clarity. Strunk and White would be aghast. Similes and metaphors are often incongruous. The conjunction 'and' is used ad nauseam where commas will suffice and signal where a reader can pause. Enough with the grammar lesson though. It would be interesting to hear how the author justifies the appearance of a lanneret, a harpy eagle, ringdoves, jackals, and even nectar-sipping bats that (in the US) are found only in Big Bend National Park. Repetition of 'They rode on' becomes nauseating. For what purpose are less familiar words - thrapple for windpipe, aubergines for eggplants? Spanish words are distractingly misspelled. Eventually there's a point where erudition becomes ostentation. The character Judge Holden, whose discourses would daze an Oxford professor, personifies this negative factor. However, in defense of the 'ambiguous' ending, I ask what would the reader wish? One may suppose that McCarthy painted himself into a corner, but a novel takes on life when its characters have their own say as to resolution. Leaving the matter for interpretation was a beautiful stroke.

7 out of 10 people found this review helpful.

Overrated

I feel like the only one who doesn't like it but I have to share my thoughts about it. I found it very confusing and disappointing. It started off interesting but then so many characters were thrown into the story, most of which were unimportant or killed in the next chapter. I found it annoying how much attention I had to put into reading it. McCarthy would describe the scenery or the desert for so long that I'd lose focus and then something important for the story would happen, so I'd have to go back and re-read nearly everything to the point where I didn't care about anything the book had to say anymore. I didn't like any of the characters, I stopped caring towards the end of the book how crazy or evil any of them were. For the last 1/4 of the book, I was so confused that I didn't know who was killing who, where anybody was, who was alive or dead, so I found myself reading as fast as I could because I wanted to finish it as quick as I could just to end it. And to top all of that, it was unnecessarily violent, I personally like violent books and movies, but this was so ridiculous to the point where it was really annoying.

6 out of 11 people found this review helpful.

The sun, an hour above the horizon, was poised like a bloody egg on the thunderheads.

This was my first McCarthy. I suspect that like others I came to it at the recommendation of Harold Bloom, of whom I am a sort of disciple. (For the record, Bloom does not say that this is the 'best American novel in 50 years¿', instead he says that BM is the 'greatest aesthetic achievement of any American novelist in 50 years.' Bloom, as usual, has chosen his words carefully.) And despite Bloom's valid enthusiasm, McCarthy is a true if still only slightly inferior inheritor of Joyce and Conrad via Faulkner, as well as of Hemmingway, Melville, Twain and perhaps Whitman. Upon first glance at the text, one is reminded of Faulkner at his most desperately purple and Joycean. Deeper one sees Hemingway's mechanics and structure and use of Spanish dialog, as well as Whitman¿s¿ and Stevens' taste for a wide and unusual vocabulary. (Judge Holden in the preacher's camp, falsely exposing the preacher as a phony is pure Poldy in Nighttown.) 'Phantasmagoric', found in the text, is an appropriate adjective for BM. Set in the 1850s in Texas and Mexico, it follows the hypergrotesque (I'm still not sure that word is strong enough) odyssey of the the Kid, an orphan who enlists with the Glanton gang, a pack of wretched mercenaries hunting Apache scalps for bounty. As such BM is 350 pages of nightmare bloodletting, all written by an author whose powers of naturalistic description are fearless and masterful and apparently bottomless. It all takes quite a toll, since it leaves few places for the reader to rest. McCarthy evinces none of the anxiety that propels his precursors, like Melville, to let some light slip out and betray hope-- and that, all moralizing aside, may be the novel's only real flaw. Howevermuch the first few pages of BM might resemble the first few of Moby Dick with its invitations to 'See' and then proceed to lead us sleepily into a mad and bloody epic, BM will not suffer an Ishmael to tell his dreamy tale. When we do get to rest from the decapitations and disembowelings in BM, it's in a space of Kafkan absurdity, a Beckett-like vacuum of absence of meaning, or thankfully (!) in the anti-Dostoevskian philosophizings of Judge Holden, who is the true center, anti-center, of the novel, something more than superficially like Moby Dick's white whale. That the reader is placed in such a desperate space, however, and that we must sit by the fire and somehow be glad for (and rightfully terrified of) Holden is clearly the novel's greatest strength. Holden, perhaps the Devil himself, whose real interest among the Glanton gang is in the Kid, in whom he sees something redeeming that he cannot let be, is a charming and gentlemanly renaissance man who also happens to be an abyss of negation and destruction, an albino giant Old Scratch whose principle of being/non-being is that 'War is God'. The novel is emotionally taxing and frustrating, and it has its major aesthetic flaws (also inherited from Faulkner and Twain: Faulkner when the rhetoric unintentionally mocks itself-- but that is rare since the writing is so controlled and taut--, and on a large scale like Twain in Huck Finn, when BM seems to go off the rails about 3/4 of the way through), but it is a must for any serious reader of American novels.

6 out of 6 people found this review helpful.

Beautifully savage

First, be warned, this story is not for the faint of heart. That aside, it is probably one of the most beautiful and monstrous books I've come across in recent memory. The juxstaposition of considerably luscious descriptives for an austere backdrop alongside stomach turning violence with an equally existential/fatalistic twist to the characters is such an exciting dichotomy. The book is one that stays with you. It can evoke some serious reactions- that's not only rare in my opinion, but prized. Cormac McCarthy is one of my favorites and of his work this is, in my opinion, his epitome.

4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

Disturbing

There is not one redeeming character in the book. I cannot remember ever before reading a book that did not have have one character that projected some semblance of nobility. No doubt the book does accurately portray a level of humanity that existed in the "wild west" but thank God it did not win out. Like many (all?) of McCarthy's books it explores the dark side of human behavior in greater depth than many people may be able to tolerate, but his style of writing, with minimal attention to grammatical correctness, while still managing to produce captivating tales, is astonishing.

4 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

McCarthy's hyperviolent Moby-Dick

"In that sleep and in sleeps to follow the judge did visit. Who would come other? A great shambling mutant, silent and serene. Whatever his antecedents he was something wholly other than their sum, nor was there a system by which to divide him back into his origins for he would not go. Whoever would seek out his history through what unraveling of loins and ledgerbooks must stand at last darkened and dumb at the shore of a void without terminus or origin and whatever science he might bring to bear upon the dusty primal matter blowing down out of the millennia will discover no trace of any ultimate atavistic egg by which to reckon his commencing."<BR/><BR/>If you didn't like reading that, you won't like reading Blood Meridian, as that passage is from the novel. I pity you if you don't like it.<BR/><BR/>Judge Holden is the most evil character that I've ever read. <BR/><BR/>McCarthy's writing is aesthetic genius. <BR/><BR/>That's really all I have to say. It's a masterpiece.

4 out of 8 people found this review helpful.

cannot recommend

I am sloshing through this mess. I will finish the book only because I refuse to throw money away. There's no real story or plot here; no flushing out of characters. Main character has no name at all. Sorry, Cormac, this is a total loss of writing talent.

3 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

McCarthy's Masterpiece

The darkest and most disturbing book ever put to paper. McCarthy's vision of the American West is apocalyptic in scope and steeped in depravity; a haunting tome and the only book that ever gave me nightmares.

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

More Insight into this book

I have known about this book for over 15 years and have looked for other resources related to this book to help deepen my appreciation for the genius of Cormac McCarthy. I recently stumbled across a new tool on John Sepich's website - a complete concordance of 'Blood Meridian'. The breakdown of McCarthy's word choices and variety will blow your mind. After spending some time on the site, I am going to go back and re-read this book. I am sure that it is going to be even more intriguing now than previous reads.

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

brutal truthiness about the' wild west'

The author has an uncanny way with vivid but often times terse description. His characters are alive and morally grey. The reader follows the 'kid' as he journeys through hell on earth around the boarders of Texas and Mexico.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Masterpiece

A great book. once it gets to you i am sure it will become a page turner.
A definitive modern masterpiece, at the same level of faulkener, guimaraes rosa or conrad. must read.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Bloodshed~

I was eager to read "Blood Meridian", like most I heard it was a classic and profound read full of violence and gore. It was, but I found the reading in the 1st 100 pages tedious and slow going.

I really enjoyed the book as a whole, but found many of the descriptions long winded!

The violence and outright lunacy of the scalp hunters is what kept me reading. The main character is "The Kid", who for 14 years old is a tough one. Several other great characters in the book, "The Judge", wow, McCarthy could write a book just about him.

This was only my 2nd McCarthy book, the other being "The Road", which blew me away. If you like McCarthy, you'll probably enjoy "Blood Meridian", but the blood and violence level is very, very high if your not comfortable with it.

Personally I'm looking forward to reading "Outer Dark" next, hoping to get back to the McCarthy I adored after reading "The Road"!

When you finish this book, if you feel like you have some unanswered questions, look up "Blood Meridian" on Wikipedia.com and you'll find a long analysis about the characters and the ending! I know I did.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Tireless Evil

A Classic in the Faulkner-ian sense. It is enormous in its scope and ambition on par with Melville and it's Milton-esque Biblical connotations of good vs. evil. It is a land of evil and barren of hope. The characters are drawn from an actual journal from the US Mexican War. It is devastating and nightmarish. This book will haunt you with its vivid account of no-holds-barred gurrilla warfare where no one is safe not even the dogs. It's as frightning a depiction of blood thirsty evil in the world as has ever been written.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

May change the way you read.... Forever.

Not many contemporary works of fiction have inspired as much purely critical analysis as this book. Give the man his due - after all McCarthy is thought by many scholars to be a modern day Faulkner. It seems that a siginificant portion of people who have read this piece either love it or hate it - a smaller portion of people can't figure out what the hell they should think about what they just read. In any event, the book will worm (that's right, worm) its way into your mind and soul and nest there. You'll find yourself looking at things a bit differently, just knowing that in our own past, not so long ago, men such as this walked among the humans. Makes you feel small and fragile - but at the same time wise and slick, like you know a filthy little secret to which the rest of them aren't privy. Catching your breath every now and then as you move through the pages and every so often flashing the book a nervous smirk so as not to piss off any of the characters. Worth the read? Absolutely.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West

This is by far the greatest book of all time!!!This is my third book by Cormac McCarthy and I found this one to be his best one. This is a pretty difficult read since you have to be 100 % in the book and the fact that it's like the most violent book ever. I thought Anton Chigurh was a bad dude but Judge Holden is even more evil. The prose in this book is so beautiful. I wouldn't recommend this book to everyone unless they don't mind a story about a bunch of scalphunters.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

A Pilgrim's Regress

McCarthy has one of the most distinctive voices in American fiction today. In my view, he is our finest Western writer--though not in the traditional sense. With its long, sinuous sentences, vaulting and maddening philosophical musings, and lurid passages of the grotesque, BLOOD MERIDIAN is a literary descendant of Faulkner's novels. Yet it offers us a much darker vision: America's Westward Expansion is merely a regression into a bloodlust as old as humanity itself. Occasionally the prose is overblown, and the writing would have benefited from some judicious condensing. My main reason for withholding a star is that I'm not sure what is at stake in this story. Should we see the kid as presented with a choice between embracing the demonic violence embodied by the judge and repudiating such violence? Yet the kid remains as knee-deep in the mayhem as everyone else, and his fate left me unmoved. At one point, the kid wanders out of the mountains into a clearing where a tree has been struck by lightning. Animals of all kinds--mountain lions, birds, tarantulas, scorpions--have gathered around the fiery tree. It is a mystical, wonderful image, one I wish had been developed. It suggests that peaceful community can be as primal as violence. If only the kid had followed this path!

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

A masterpiece of violence!

This is the most grotesque novel ever written in modern literature. Cormac McCarthy should have earned the Pulitzer Prize for a novel so splashed with blood and massacre, it outranks all the horrific books published by Stephen King or Jews who have written about their concentration camp experiences during World War II. To read this book is like memorizing detailed instructions on how to butcher a cow in a meat plant. The novel could easily take the place of Caulfield¿s Catcher in the Rye as the number one book the FBI would find in a serial killer¿s home. The story is not about murder, although one see¿s it in each gripping chapter of Indian massacres, merciless bar fights, child killings, and simple I don¿t like seeing your face, so I¿m going to chop your head off scenarios. Instead, the story gives us an understanding that world peace can never be obtained in a society ruled by competition and war-making genes flourishing in all of us. The novel is brilliantly executed and keeps the reader ¿with a strong stomach¿ reading until the climatic end. Cormac writes with a poetic style, distorting descriptions with brilliant metaphors, so one receives an exciting view of the landscape like only Melville and Faulkner can do. The highlight of the book is its haunting albino character, Judge Holden, a Moby Dick or Satan in human form who exploits the shortfalls of humanity. One could imagine Marlon Brando of Apocalypse Now in the character Judge Holden, but with white skin and a vocabulary as prolific as a Harvard graduate. The Judge kills with relish and gives creditable excuses for all his murders. If you have read Stephen King¿s The Stand, you will find many similarities between Holden and Randall Flagg, they are the same demonic entity, but the Judge is more brilliantly done up. In the end, the Judge is neither evil nor sympathetic to the human cause, but is a reminder to our mortality and how useless self-gain, entertainment, and love means in the end when all that invites us is death.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

I Loved It Masochistically

An amazing book that made this aparently low-level reader's head ache. Written in a style that becomes difficult to follow at times(with a lack of quoations marks and labels of whose speaking). While it contains many thick sections that must be trudged through, and Faustian references that could easily be missed(a 14 year lapse in time between pro- & antagonists, twice that found in Faust) McCarthy's superb and gut renching descriptions of gore and death flow effortlessly into the Judge's rants on religion and agency. An excellent read, if you can get through it! I just wish I had a peer to discuss it with.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

This Book is Awesome

Okay. I'm serious. This book is awesome. It's weird, over the top, violent and yet wonderfully beautiful, epic, written in a style that will either leave you cold or suck you in completely. I mean it. I don't know that everyone will love this book, but for those who do the experience is really wonderful. McCarthy is a crazy wordsmith. He weaves a spell and takes you on a journey across fantastic landscapes and across the dark territory of men's souls. Good stuff. Wish there was more like it.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Rhapsody. This seems to be the only word that adequately describ

Rhapsody.
This seems to be the only word that adequately describes Blood Meridian.  It must be said that the book is difficult. Long passages of cowboys traipsing from desert to desert appear a tad too often for my taste. These periods of boredom are might light by the almost inhuman descriptions of landscape. I've never read such beautiful treatment of flora and fauna as McCarthy's in Blood. Slots of boredom are broken up by page-long sentences describing absolute horror and menace in the form of Indian attacks or flashbacks. The novel is also difficult because of its graphic nature. Truly, this book is not for the faint of heart. Perhaps most troubling is McCarthy's mixture of aesthetic tone with the more disturbing passages. I must admit, no one else could make me marvel at the image of a tree of dead infants.
McCarthy is definitely playing into a bigger tradition. The character of the Judge serves as our Moby Dick, our Iago, and our Satan - from Paradise Lost. Each are characters we wish we saw more of. The same is true with the judge. Whenever he speaks, an air of solemnity falls on the page. I found myself rereading his passages four or five times to make sure I appreciated them fully.  If you are not haunted by the character of the Judge, then I suggest you hospitalize yourself. He is enthralling, his devilry engaging.
Some attribute this as McCarthy's masterpiece. I understand why this would be so if only aesthetics were concerned. Yet the periods of wandering through the desert bump this down just a hair below All The Pretty Horses and Child of God in my book.
This is a must read. Any serious student of Southern Literature should examine this book closely. It shall blow your mind.