. . . by Cormac McCarthy. Has anyone else read this? I just finished it and I'm not sure what to think. The book is extremely violent and the violence is conveyed in what I can only call a casual manner. Typical of the author, but so far beyond what I've seen in his other work. There is basically a 2 page run-on sentence that just fires off horrific descriptions of depravity like bullets from a machine gun and attaches zero significance to any of it. There is often no build up to the violence at all and if you skim a paragraph carelessly, you could miss the slaughter of an entire village or something. Anyway, there are definitely some underlying themes in this book but I'm not 100% sure that I'm getting it all. Would love to hear someone else's thoughts on this (paging Paladin!).
I'm thinking of reading it. I've read some shocking stuff before - American Psycho comes to mind - so it'll be interesting to see where this ranks.
Sounds interesting, but his style of writing (lack of punctuation, etc) disturbs my reading wa. I may have to wait for the movie on this one.
I just saw that there is supposedly a movie coming out next year. I can't even imagine what that is going to be like. They will have to be very clever about portraying some of the violence without actually showing it. The other thing I wonder about is how they plan to convey such violence visually in the same casual manner that McCarthy portrays it with the written word. The director will have to be a true master to get the same "tone" of those scenes.
The story sort of follows a character called "the kid" in a journey to Texas where he eventually meets up with the historical Glanton Gang. The Glanton Gang was a ruthless gang of indian hunters who turned to general murder and mayhem throughout Mexico and the Southwest. The kid is only vaguely a protagonist and the story is not told from his point of view. For most of the book, his purpose is simply to guide the story through the kid's own movements. There are a lot of historical elements to the story that are either based in truth or entirely lifted from the pages of history. There are some religious and philosophical elements that explore the nature of man and the nature of morality. If you disliked the endings to The Road or No Country For Old Men, then you will absolutely hate the ending to Blood Meridian.
I have indeed read Blood Meridian. The prominent literature critic Harold Bloom considers it one of the greatest novels of the 20th Century, and I'm not sure I'd argue. It reads like a western. I think it actually belongs in the horror genre. If you don't read much literature, you may be familiar with two very good recent movies drawn from novels by the same author (Cormac McCarthy): The Road and No Country for Old Men. They're violent and brutal, though they don't quite measure up to Blood Meridian which has some of the most egregious violence you will encounter in serious literature. McCarthy seems to believe that it is simply human nature to descend into savage, senseless violence when left to our own devices, and that genuine humanity is in short supply. Blood Meridian also seems to embody the idea that "the wages of sin is death." Just about everyone who sins in the novel is a profound sinner, and is dead by the novel's end. Everyone, that is, except for the Judge. The Judge is one of the most awesome evil characters ever created. Is the Judge really Death? Satan? The destructive side of man's desire to control? Or just a grade-A bastard? Whatever the truth, he's one of the most terrifying villains ever created: not immoral, just completely amoral. Ash summarizes the plot above, so I won't regurgitate that. I will say that this book seems to symbolize SOME idea, but unlike The Road (the importance of preserving virtue in a fallen world) or No Country for Old Men (modern violence is senseless, sudden, indiscriminate, and beyond reason), it's harder to say what. Since, in a sense, it's a frontier novel, does it ask if the cost of "civilization" is the barbarity to establish it? Is it a critique of westward expansion? I'm not sure. There is a stark contrast in the book: the delicate, beautiful descriptions of the landscape and the sudden, ugly violence. I cannot help but think this is meaningful. It says to me that we ugly human beings employ savage means to control the world, but ultimately, death is our only reward. And, yes, the ending is somewhat ambivalent, though I maintain that what happened is exactly what appears to have happened: even the most "moral" member of the Glanton gang got what was coming to him. The Judge says (in German) "You must sleep, but I must dance." This seems to say: yep, these sinners are dead; the sinning will go on. Fascinating novel. Glad to hear you've read it, Ash.
