“The fulfilled renown of Moby-Dick and of As I Lay Dying is augmented by Blood Meridian, since Cormac McCarthy is the worthy disciple both of Melville and Faulkner,” writes esteemed literary scholar Harold Bloom in his Introduction to the Modern Library edition. “I venture that no other living American novelist, not even Pynchon, has given us a book as strong and memorable.”Cormac McCarthy’s … McCarthy’s masterwork, Blood Meridian, chronicles the brutal world of the Texas-Mexico borderlands in the mid-nineteenth century. Its wounded hero, the teenage Kid, must confront the extraordinary violence of the Glanton gang, a murderous cadre on an official mission to scalp Indians and sell those scalps. Loosely based on fact, the novel represents a genius vision of the historical West, one so fiercely realized that since its initial publication in 1985 the canon of American literature has welcomed Blood Meridian to its shelf.
“A classic American novel of regeneration through violence,” declares Michael Herr. “McCarthy can only be compared to our greatest writers.”
more
This is the quintessential book about the early American Southwest by the author of “No Country For Old Men.” From beginning to end, it will hold your attention with some of the finest American writing in the second half of the twentieth century. No one has ever written a book quite like this one, and I doubt if anyone ever will again. Cormac McCarthy is an absolute master!
Although McCarthy’s The Road deservedly won him the Pulitzer Prize, Blood Meridian ranks as his most important book. Similar to The Road, which depicts a father and son traversing a modern post-apocalyptic wasteland, Blood Meridian captures the stark violence and endless depravity that stretched across the broad landscape of the barren southwest in the 1850s. Both books are similar in that a central character is a young boy surviving under the protection of an indomitable male figure. In Blood Meridian, the “kid” is without a family. Coming from Tennessee and traveling alone, he latches onto a cruelly violent group of mercenaries who have been contracted to take the scalps of Indian renegades who are terrorizing towns near the border states, ranging from Texas to California. The kid’s experiences are an understatement of baptism by violence. The ruthless lifestyle of the ragtag group of cowboy militia includes many memorable characters, such as Glanton, Toadvine, and the inimitable monster of a man, Judge Holden, simply called “the judge.” McCarthy’s literary style and his lyrical language are unparalleled in American literature. As he did to perfection in The Road, passages in Blood Meridian reach profound levels of grandeur and beauty, even as McCarthy envisions unspeakable acts of barbarity. Whereas The Road serves as a premonition of a dismal future, Blood Meridian reflects upon history’s atrocities and the madness carried forward from an infinite past. This novel is McCarthy’s masterpiece, but in many ways it seems to serve as a more lengthy and precursory meditation to The Road. Both novels solidify McCarthy’s lifelong vision of examining the terrifying presence of violence through his signature use of breathtaking prose.
Early Cormac McCarthy, s sprawling tale of darkness in the American West. And, fair warning, it gets very dark as the tale draws to a conclusion.
Not only is this perhaps my favorite Cormac McCarthy novel, it is one of my favorite novels of all time. The prose is poetic and masterful, despite the setting and plot being violent and dark. Based on true events, the characters feel as real as they might have been, and delightfully vicious. Highly recommended. The prose alone is worth the read, full displaying McCarthy’s skilled ability to use little to no punctuation.
This is a terrifically rendered work of art. McCarthy’s command of language allows him to communicate with feeling and nuance. Exquisite, confident narrative expresses the characters’ emotion far and away more eloquently than those characters are capable of doing themselves.
Though the violence is visceral, vivid, the clarity of McCarthy’s message, through his simple and beautiful prose, softens the blow.
Gritty, raw and elegant all at once: no author more so than McCarthy inspires me to lift up my pen(okay, well, to get before my keyboard).
Masterpiece might be an understatement. Lovely.
Best novel ever!!!
Brilliant book by a genius storyteller. I return to “Blood Meridian” to feel inspired again, reading passages of it out loud, savoring the narration and the language. No other writer can transplant the reader into the landscape of his story the way McCarthy can. It’s not an easy or pleasant place to be, but if you stay with it, you will come away a changed person–and writer. “Blood Meridian” can be violent and disturbing, but it isn’t gratuitous; it’s an apocalyptic odyssey about man’s proclivity for violence and civilizational breakdown that can feel mystical and religious, like you’re in the presence of an oracle transcribing words passed down by a higher power. A rare kind of reading experience.
This book is humbling in its greatness.
The power of McCarthy’s prose…the control he has over language, gibbous moons, and men with strange affinities leaves me stunned every time I read it. This book makes you pause often to consider the weight of its language and themes and characters both mighty and loathsome.
The book deals with unspeakable horrors with a single sentence because it is so commonplace. Your confusion forces you to reread the sentence again to make sure it was read correctly….did that just happen…yes it did. And you shake your head and wonder what you’ve got yourself into. And into the trepidation rides the Judge. The white whale and Ahab all rolled into one. A perfect character. A physical manifestation of something other. And through the Judge, Cormac McCarthy speaks of life and death and war and trust and faith and fear. And because the Judge speaks of things beyond our knowing, it is with great comfort that we cannot we relate to him, yet still rescue away some wisdom.
Great literature
Have read many times before but listening to it on Audible during my commute. Love it. McCarthy’s a master!
The best book I’ve ever read.
This book is an American classic by one of, if not the, greatest American novelist of the 20th and 21st century. However, I am not going to say that this book is for everyone. Some of the scenes may actually make a reader sick and ashamed to be a human, especially knowing that some of this horror actually happened in some manner or the other. Judge Holden is one of the great, enigmatic characters of American Literature. If you claim to be a literature person and you have not read this book, your claim is invalid. It is essential as Moby Dick and The Catcher in the Rye–and better than both.
A lot of people know McCarthy’s books that have ended up as films (The Road, No Country for Old Men), but this is my favourite. The writing is absolutely stunning, with some brutally violent scenes. The sort of book that makes your jaw drop open it’s so good.
This is one of the most disturbing books I have ever read. Definitely not a typical, trope-filled western, McCarthy’s brilliant prose makes this sordid epic come alive in unsettling ways.
If Ernest Hemingway had an LCD induced nightmare and he told Quinten Tarantino about it, we’d have the plot for Blood Meridian.
It’s a gruesome story about a runaway boy who falls in with scalp hunters. The poetic narrative rivals any writer that’s alive today and the characters stay with you long after the novel is finished, especially the Judge.
I’ll note that they are huge parts of the text that made little sense. Don’t get discouraged, read through it. The ending is worth it.
Raw and exceptionally well written
This is more than a gut punch, it’s more like a knife or shotgun blast to the gut. One of the most powerful novels about America’s history, Blood Meridian is brilliant in the way it resets the view of violence in America, old and new. I would not recommend this novel to the squeamish as it really made me squirm with revulsion, but it’s revulsion directed at the right targets and thick with existential dread. The novel is the American nightmare that needs to be positioned beside the American dream. Great writing all through.
Blood Meridian is bleak in it’s depiction of America’s original sins (the genocide of indigenous people, chattel slavery, and the attempts to tame an inhospitable land). That bleakness has this book more closely resemble an evil occult tome than a western. It’s hard to recommend something like this. There isn’t any salvation to be found inside but it has still managed to crawl inside me and never leave.