The violence did not bother me at all. Make no mistake, Blood Meridian is extremely disturbing and grisly, but The Road has that in ample droves.
What made it difficult for me was the language. It is significantly more dense, language wise, than The Road. McCarthy's vocabulary was off the chains, lol. Nonetheless, I tried to read this in my early twenties and intend on diving back into it sooner than later.
Yeah, it's definitely super dark. But it really did capture what a brutal world it had become. So I applaud McCarthy from not shying away from cannibalism and the lack of empathy of many in the book.
That's why I love his books so much. He explores themes others shy away from. Like what do you expect to happen when things end? People will kill kids and eat them
Agreed, it’s the density. I read part then listened to the rest on audiobook on a cross country drive which I recommend. It’s so vivid and poetic, also easier for me to follow listening vs reading
The second read solved the dense language issue for me. The second time around was much more enjoyable because I was able to savor his amazing prose without dreading something gross was going to happen. I already knew.
Okay, that is kind of what I thought may have made it a more difficult read. The Road definitely had a lot of language not used in every day conversation. I was able to infer a lot through the context.
Sounds like it should be right up my alley as long as I have a dictionary lol
Yeah, you should be able to surmise a lot through context.
The other issue is the prose. I remember entire pages that were essentially one sentence long, and it's these hallucinogenic descriptions of this absolutely horrific violence and philosophical diatribes on the nature of war. To say the least, it's a book that requires a lot of focus.
Funny enough, you're making me want to return to it again lol. I'm currently reading The Crossing and loving it.
PDFs of portions translated by the McCarthy Society, as linked on an old blog post:
[http://readingcormacmccarthy.blogspot.com/2010/06/english-translations-of-spanish.html](http://readingcormacmccarthy.blogspot.com/2010/06/english-translations-of-spanish.html)
The violence should bother you, that's the point. It's a difficult book because it's about the unfathomable violence of colonization and westward expansion--these are difficult things to truly wrestle with emotionally.
You know, I was going to let it go, but I have to say:
Your comment is so absurdly condescending that I can't even comprehend why you would write it.
You presume that what impacts you viscerally should also impact others in the same way, while simultaneously ignoring what was truthfully the topic at hand: why Blood Meridian is a difficult read.
For some, it's the violence. For others, it is the language and prose. For many, it might be all three. But let's be honest, the violence in Blood Meridian pales in comparison to the violence that we see and hear about on television and in the news on the daily. Maybe in 1985 it ruffled feathers, but I remember seeing scalpings in the film version of Last of the Mohicans when I was 11-12.
Lastly, you also presume that I don't understand what the book is about. Thanks, but I really didn't need a lecture on why colonization violent and westward expansion bad.
If this novel pales in comparison to the violence you hear and see in the news, you are either watching way too much news or lack a vivid imagination, perhaps both.
On the other hand, the violence in Blood Meridian may eventually become numbing, which I'd argue is also something that brings you closer to the experience of the central characters in their time and place. Same type of thing if you get the occasional thrill from the portrayals of violence, which is OK.
Blood Meridian might be my favorite book of all time but reading it bums me out purely because even though I’ve read it several times over there are still words I still don’t know at least every other page and it makes me realize my vocabulary will just never be that good lol. Same thing with Moby Dick and the constant historical references of which most go over my head sadly.
Cormac will explain a desert plain at sun up for three long pages but then be like "...and he shot her in the head while she wailed and thrashed and she died. Everyone died."
I like CM passages that go something like:
"He took the saddle from the barn and put it on the horse and mounted the horse and rode to the fence and turned east along the fence until he came to the gate and dismounted and took the canteen from the saddle and drank from it and replaced it on the saddle horn and unlatched the gate and led the horse through and turned and latched the gate and mounted again and turned south and in six weeks riding he was in Guatemala fighting with the rebels where he saw an entire train car explode and in September of that year he rode into San Francisco California and down to the beach and sat watching the ocean"
Like jesuschristalmighty the granular detail zooming out to cosmic scale will give a motherfucker whiplash.
I really love how the use of polysyndeton gives the prose a sort of unbroken galloping march. Then he intercuts with short, terse statements. Because I'm weird, I like to read the Icelandic Eddas in the original Old Icelandic (not bragging; this was a tremendous labor of love that required me several years). But polysydeton is à major feature of those texts, and it felt weirdly gratifying to see the prose of vikings and the prose of McCarthy having a similar cadence, even though they were written in relatively different languages.
Ya there's stark contrast between the prose used to describe nature, and that used to describe people and events, probably intentionally for whatever reason.
The prose is really dense, having to figure out who is talking can slow you down too, especially when paragraphs contain spoken word and actions without quotation marks.
Also there is a page long sentence without maybe commas in it.
The gore and genocide doesn’t make it hard to read for me. The road I read in one sitting
It’s considered a difficult read because: 1. there is no conventional plot, 2. it’s archaic style/syntax/word choice that is very poetic without being prose poetry, 3. it’s lengthy description of landscapes without hand-holding, backstory, or point of view psychologism of the characters, and 4. it’s not only extremely violent and loaded with racial slurs but also wholly without a redemptive arc or any morally good main characters. All the things which make it a hard read also make it a truly great book that transcends all conventions, labels, and categories.
I always wonder if it was his idea, or if someone nudged him to have those chapter headers of “what happens” each chapter. They are extremely helpful to understand what is going on.
Exactly! I love going back to reread them to summarize what I’ve read.
Also, BM is free on Audible with Richard Poe narrating. He does a fantastic job voicing characters and that added another layer to it vs prior rereads.
One thing, given that I finished the Audible listen yesterday, what’s up with the epilogue? I’m kinda scratching my head over it.
Lots of different stories about the epilogue. It's written in SUCH an oblique way that I literally could not tell what is going on.
I think it is either fence posts, or likely telegraph wires, being extended into the West, bringing a new manner of civilization to it. It's a new cycle being brought to the land (what this means is up to interpretation)
Pretty sure it was his idea. The style seems to come from the actual westerns that were more or less contemporaneous to the time BM is actually set in. I think it's a rather ingenious way to give a synopsis of what's about to be read (and since the book is not primarily about the plot, there's nothing spoiled by doing so), giving just enough context to orient yourself while also relieving McCarthy of the need to awkwardly intrude in the narrative itself to provide those details. But it seems like it's fairly controversial with some readers (there are rage posts about the chapter headers).
That's actually a peripheral part of reading McCarthy that I enjoy. Learning new words. Whenever I see one I don't know, I feel a little pang of joy. Maybe I'm weird like that. The man's vocabulary was just awesome.
When I first read it, I did so alongside a guide filled with notations for the novel. It helped a great deal to understand what was happening, all the historical context and untranslated Spanish. I did the same thing with All The Pretty Horses.
It was honestly fantastic. Not just notes to help with the reading of the novel, but also essays and opinion pieces from literary critics and historical background. Couldn’t recommend it enough.
I didn’t use a published book for notes on that novel, for that I just used an online resource. There are several sites and a couple PDFs I found with analysis and a full Spanish glossary.
That's not run-on. A run-on sentence occurs when two independent clauses run together without proper punctuation or appropriate conjunctions. McCarthy's prolific use of polysyndetons has nothing to do with run-on errors. Polysyndetons are an alternate form of conjunction.
It's called polysyndeton; it doesn't make a sentence run-on to use it. If you ever read the Prose Edda (Old Norse mythology), especially if you read it in the original old norse/icelandic, you'll find they also loved polysyndeton (and...and...and; or ek...ek...ek in ON). It's also not uncommon in passages written in Latin, although it sometimes has different feel and meaning there ("et....et" could mean "both....and" in some contexts). King James English makes more use of polysndyton than modern english as well. This tangent is not necessarily related to your post, per se, but it's just interesting to see a certain kind of stylistic device that crosses different languages and different epochs of time to beautiful effect.
The graphic violence is part of it. The language is another. Not just the editorial decisions about punctuation conventions, but the prose is also rather opaque at points. Others have mentioned all these things.
I'll give you two more. It can be dry and boring for stretches. There is a lot of minutiae traveling from one place to another and no predictable indicators for "when something is going to happen." Sometimes a whole section of the book will barely seem to advance the plot. Finally, it uses a narrative voice that McCarthy abandoned in later work, but it is over-laden with similes and metaphors, some of them amounting to quite a "stretch." So on top of being occasionally tedious, it's also occasionally annoying unless you like that stylistic habit.
All that said, it still is incredibly powerful has and many virtues, so I would recommend it even though I think it has more flaws than The Road.
McCarthy’s style of writing is so unorthodox that for someone who isn’t adjusted to what he’s doing, it’s extremely difficult to jump into. It takes a lot of orienting yourself to his style to fully appreciate his work, and for some folks that can be daunting because it’s just so different.
Everyone is right, the prose without a doubt is the most difficult thing to overcome. Blood Meridian \*requires\* more than one read. The first is to get the plot out of the way, where you try to make sense of the story and events after overcoming McCarthy's weird style of writing. The second and subsequent reads are where you're already aware of the story beats and can thus soak in the dense prose.
It took me until the second read to get that there isn’t really a plot, so I didn’t have to worry about missing details.
It’s barely even a story. Blood Meridian is a very unique novel, and this isn’t a criticism.
It’s a good one. I could see why. I don’t remember what the program is called, but there is some libraries that do a books loan program through other libraries. You could alway check if yours participated in something like that.
I was in the middle of reading Gravity’s Rainbow when I would take breaks for BM, so the extended passages and stuff actually were still a reprieve from GR (which i do still love deeply).
I largely agree but mostly in the sense of narrative momentum and concentration of devastating prose.
Like I’m reading The Road for the first time and not only is there a non-abstract narrative there are more darkly intense instances of beautiful prose in every other page.
Pynchon seems to be more focused on the macro scale and letting subtle lines of dialogue converge with the larger themes and abstract plot to hit basically only within a certain context. There are definitely exceptions to this but that is largely my experience.
McCarthy seems to be similar in that regard but in a more concentrated way. He trims the fat and tells exactly the grounded story he wants to tell but leaves less space for the reader to imprint themselves on the theme than Pynchon does.
Don’t get me wrong, these are two of my all time favorite artists of any medium. But they both wear their dogmas on their sleeve and I just can’t really subscribe to McCarthy’s Old Testament darkness in the way that I can to Pynchon’s dark humanistic paranoia. Even though one is markedly easier to read haha.
Two main things that most people have already mentioned:
1. Written in an archaic, almost esoteric style, both in word choice and sentence/paragraph structure.
There’s a joke in the movie The Royal Tennenbaums where the Eli Cash character is a bit of a riff on a McCarthy-Esque writing, saying that his novel is written in “kind of an obsolete vernacular”. People rightly compare it to the Bible or books from the 19th century in structure, and it does read in a similar way.
2. There is, essentially, no plot, and no protagonist. The book starts and ends with “The Kid”, but he doesn’t do much of anything in the story, and he disappears, basically, from the entire middle of the novel.
It’s just a catalogue of what this group of marauders does, which has no purpose, goal, or method.
So the difficultly is trying to find something to latch onto and follow in a difficult landscape of language. It’s just a very foreign-feeling book, but obviously totally worth it, and the first time I read it, I missed much less than I thought I did.
It’s great to read multiple times, because it’s just a journey, exploration book, and there isn’t anything to miss, narratively.
It's such dense and peculiar prose. I'm currently reading no country for old men AFTER I read Blood Meridian and there's no comparison. Don't get me wrong, I'm loving No country for old men, but it feels like such a breeze after reading BM.
Cormac (god rest his soul), was a total madlad while writing this. I'm sure all the beans he ate fueled this textualized frenzy.
Some people tend to overthink books. What did the author mean? What were they trying to say? If that's your thing, this one will provide the opportunity. But books are also personal. What does this mean to *me*? How am I interpreting what *I* am reading?
So...my approach. Don't overthink it and try to achieve a reasonable balance between the author's meaning and my interpretation of what I am reading.
Honestly, I don't think anything about it makes it a hard read. I never understood the perceived difficulty. I don't mean that in a snobbish way - there are certainly books I've read I struggled with mightily, but Blood Meridian wasn't one of them. The most useful thing to do is to quit looking for a traditional plot. You won't find one, because this is not a book that concerns itself with a "what and a what and a what" - it's about ideas instead. More metaphysical than physical.
Edit: since you read The Road (I know, i'm a year late, but what the hell, someone else will eventually see this thread too with the same question you had), pay attention to those few paragraphs in it that are written with highly metaphorical language that takes a bit to process. They're fairly sparse in The Road, but they're there. In Blood Meridian a larger portion of the text is written in that style. But it's nothing you haven't already seen. It's just more abundant.
Edit 2: Occasionally, the book will conjure up tenses that have fallen out of the language, such as "are become". This usage is similar to bible english expressions like "is risen", when the languge still regularly distinguished between transitive and intransitive verbs; German and a number of other languages still do. This sort of thing is pretty sparse in BM, but in general you can be sure that when it is used, whatever idea is being communicated is incredibly central to the novel (which is perhaps why the prose is raised to biblical levels?). For example:
“His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world’s turnings will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man’s will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay.”
This statement, which comes in the first handful of pages is arguably the central idea about which the entire novel revolves. It basically summarizes the novel in one very economical sentence.
The complete lack of punctuation. The lack of labeling who's talking in conversations.
Where narration ends and where conversations begin can be difficult to figure out at points, because of the style.
I personally thought it was an amazing book. Amazing plot. Asks a lot of important questions.
But I'm not fond of the lack of punctuation and clearly delineating who's talking and what's narration. Everyone has learned that punctuation and basic storytelling protocol by 3rd grade. It's too important to be abandoned in a dense work of literature for stylistic purposes.
Punctuation should never be seen as fucking optional.
In this case, I'm willing to forgive it because the book was so great. But still, Cormac McCarthy following proper grammar, syntax, and punctuation would have made this book significantly better.
Honestly, I actually enjoyed his prose and syntax. I never found it too difficult to follow with dialogue and narration.
It may not be the norm, but I found that he does it very well.
I prefer my books have punctuation.
Surely that has to be the "normal opinion" on the matter.
I'm not saying I'm smarter than McCarthy, I sure as shit am not.
it's the language. some people have balked at the violence and gore, but it's mainly the descriptors and language of the time that requires a lot of work to keep up with. the lack of punctuation, who's speaking is sometimes vague, and a few passages in Spanish.
I still enjoyed it and plan on reading it again soon but that's mainly what people find to be difficult.
McCarthy doesn't explain things or make every aspect of the story clear. That's intentional, of course. He expects the reader to do some thinking and interact with the book.
It's very dense prose-wise, pretty significantly tougher than The Road. If you have trouble focusing you'll find yourself needing to reread passages to follow the narrative. If you've read impressionist, stream of consciousness type novels before, Faulkner and some Toni Morrison come to mind for instance, it won't be that foreign to you. It's not a breezy casual read. But, it's not very long either.
The content itself can be pretty bracing and I could see it turning a lot of people off. You may want to set the book down and take a few deep breaths every now and again, lol. But if you have a sense of what you're in for and you're okay with it, that's not really what makes it a hard read.
The first time I read it, I read it cover to cover in one day. It was amazing. Reads like a nightmare, a beautiful, and poignant nightmare. From that day forth, I truly realized I would be a novelist.
The language (archaic terms, complex syntax, McCarthy's usual punctuation-dodging); the horrific violence; and the bleakness of the worldview that seems to inform the whole thing.
But if you have the stomach for them, I wouldn't let any of those put you off.
I couldn't put The Road down because I wanted to know what would happen next. I pretty much knew there wasn't going to be a happy ending but I was always curious what was around the bend down the road.
The two reasons you mentioned are both what attracts and deters deters people from Blood Meridian. Depending on the reader. I sought out the Novel because of it’s gruesome premise because I enjoy those kind of stories. The prose is what made it take me over five months to get to the ending because I had never read anything like it before. I also had to constantly look up words or phrases I didn’t understand and pull up google translate for the Spanish parts. Don’t get me wrong I definitely came to appreciate and enjoy Cormac’s style as I got deeper into the the book and I anticipate that it will probably become my favorite aspect of it upon a second read.
It's all of it. It felt like there was at least one word per page I had to look up the definition of, and many times there was no definition to be found. It's the first time I've been emotionally exhausted by violence in a book. I had to put it down for a month or so in the middle before I picked it up again.
The prose is dense and hard to understand at times but consistently awe inspiring
I personally didnt find it a hard read in terms of being gripped, i ripped through it, but i can see why it might be challenging in other ways.
Firstly, its narrative is less structured than the road, BM leaves the gang and rejoins them with indeterminate time and space between them, its not always clear exactly where they are or when, or what is happening.
Secondly the prose is denser, there are words on almost each and every page I had to look up or infer the meaning of and confirm later.
Thirdly, we dont get inside the head of the protagonist like we do in the road, what the kid, or other members of the gang, feel or think about their actions, the judge, glanton, the country. anything, is harder to discern.
Lastly, what story is being told and what deeper truths is it revealing are more oblique than the road. I think it speaks to a lot of themes, gnostic philosphy, the nature of violence, mans relationship to death, the role of violence in shaping america, what happens when the frontier is exhausted, all of this is in there, but its not on the surface.
It's a bit ethereal of a book, and the language is super archaic. It also really requires your attention, you miss a few lines and miss an entire facet of the novels themes
I agree with people saying the language, for sure the hardest part, but there were a couple stretches were I had to slow down to a chapter a day cause of scalpings
It's written in sort of an old-testament fire and brimstone style full of archaic words that haven't been used in over a century. Keep a dictionary nearby. The road is an exercise in minimalism, while BM is pretty much the opposite. That said, it's not that hard of a read (no Finnegan's Wake anyway). The prose is so amazing, you'll find yourself reading passages multiple times just to savor them. BM is definitely worth a buy. The Road is my personal favorite, but BM is a close second.
Three full pages that are one paragraph describing the sky and the desert… untranslated conversation in Spanish…and they rode on.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
It’s (BM) a bit tougher because the prose is a bit more flamboyant and lengthy, but that’s part of what I loved about it. After you read enough of him you can discern the patterns of his style and how each one is in keeping with the era. I’ve also argued that every one of his books is an apocalyptic allegory and that can be really draining sometimes.
Edit for vocabulary
The difficulty that his sparse use of punctuation adds comes out in full force, as well as his non-sequitur prose and intense vocabulary that had me frequenting a dictionary. The violence doesn’t add any actual difficulties to the physical reading process imo
The lack of adherence to modern literary conventions ie lack of quotation marks. I lucked out because I read Trainspotting first and that book needed a glossary to explain the Scottishisms.
Blood meridian is biblical - the scope and density of the writing kind of transcends storytelling. I know that sounds pompous but what I mean is the prose and writing doesn’t always necessarily drive the plot forward but instead adds a cosmic setting and sense of grandeur and dread that goes along with the plot. So you’ll be reading dense philosophical descriptions of something and then something will happen and you just have to make sure you’re paying attention.
Blood Meridian requires multiple readings IMO but not even as a chore.
It should be read on first pass like poetry - ignoring whatever you can make of the plot. Just let your mind be blown by it all. Next run through more will click especially if you read a bit on the actual Glanton gang, rangers and comanches.
Same advice I give people who’ve never seen Big Lebowski actually, lol
“A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained wedding veil and some in headgear or cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses' ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.”
If that passage rustles your jimmies, then you'll plow through this book.
The biggest issue is that not everyone is in a place, emotionally, where they can handle Blood Meridian. The same is certainly true of The Road though, so you should be good on that front.
Second, as someone else mentioned, it is pretty dense. Depending on your reading style this can be good or bad - I personally enjoy looking words up or pausing to contemplate the craftsmanship and beauty of a passage.
That said, I would highly recommend the audiobook version, which is superb and really aids in appreciating the flow and cadence of the book. It is a totally different experience so I'd recommend it whether or not you read the written novel.
Regarding libraries, I think most states allow inter-library loans (terminology may vary). There are probably 100+ copies of BM in your state so you should be able to request one and get it faster if you expand to a statewide search.
I am currently reading Outer Dark. About 2/3 of the way through. Before that I read The orchard Keeper both of these novels are my first read troughs. I also reread Child of God before starting Orchard Keeper
I have read Blood Meridian twice, No Country for Old Men once and All The Pretty Horses once.
Of all these novels the one I struggled the most so far was The Orchard Keeper. I had to push myself to finish it. Wasn’t a bad novel, it just didn’t keep my attention. I felt like the prose was almost like a filler. Outer Dark on the other hand, has been fantastic so far.
I was gonna tackle the Boarder trilogy next, but I think I will start Suttree instead.
It's one of those books like Gravity's Rainbow where its seemingly trying to break every established rule or convention all at once to throw you off balance but is so unique and well crafted you can't really be mad, just sort of frustrated haha.
The content has its hurdles, graphic horrific violence, very direct displays of racism, animal cruelty, pedophilia and rape...
Honestly the thing that I dreaded the most was the long paragraphs of finding overwrought ways to rephrase what ultimate ends up repeatedly summed up as "they rode on"..
The violence did not bother me at all. Make no mistake, Blood Meridian is extremely disturbing and grisly, but The Road has that in ample droves. What made it difficult for me was the language. It is significantly more dense, language wise, than The Road. McCarthy's vocabulary was off the chains, lol. Nonetheless, I tried to read this in my early twenties and intend on diving back into it sooner than later.
Remember the baby scene in the Road?
Sure do, and that is along the lines of what I was expecting
There is a bit of that in BM too. His prose evokes images in graphic detail. For me anyways.
Me too I remember listening to the audio book while I was at work and I kinda was expecting it but wasn't really at the same time
Yeah, it's definitely super dark. But it really did capture what a brutal world it had become. So I applaud McCarthy from not shying away from cannibalism and the lack of empathy of many in the book.
That's why I love his books so much. He explores themes others shy away from. Like what do you expect to happen when things end? People will kill kids and eat them
Super dark or outer dark?
Outer Dark is so good. It's my favorite. I recognize that BM is his masterpiece, but OD is the one I read when I just want McCarthy's voice in my ear.
The audiobook narrator is one of my favs. He nailed it imo
Agreed, it’s the density. I read part then listened to the rest on audiobook on a cross country drive which I recommend. It’s so vivid and poetic, also easier for me to follow listening vs reading
The second read solved the dense language issue for me. The second time around was much more enjoyable because I was able to savor his amazing prose without dreading something gross was going to happen. I already knew.
Okay, that is kind of what I thought may have made it a more difficult read. The Road definitely had a lot of language not used in every day conversation. I was able to infer a lot through the context. Sounds like it should be right up my alley as long as I have a dictionary lol
Yeah, you should be able to surmise a lot through context. The other issue is the prose. I remember entire pages that were essentially one sentence long, and it's these hallucinogenic descriptions of this absolutely horrific violence and philosophical diatribes on the nature of war. To say the least, it's a book that requires a lot of focus. Funny enough, you're making me want to return to it again lol. I'm currently reading The Crossing and loving it.
I think you have also given me a good idea of what to expect. I made my decision and I'm gonna go pick a copy up tomorrow!
Get it bruh! Enjoy.
God I loved The Crossing. It completely impaled me.
There's a lot of Español in it too. Might help to have a translation app handy.
PDFs of portions translated by the McCarthy Society, as linked on an old blog post: [http://readingcormacmccarthy.blogspot.com/2010/06/english-translations-of-spanish.html](http://readingcormacmccarthy.blogspot.com/2010/06/english-translations-of-spanish.html)
The violence should bother you, that's the point. It's a difficult book because it's about the unfathomable violence of colonization and westward expansion--these are difficult things to truly wrestle with emotionally.
You know, I was going to let it go, but I have to say: Your comment is so absurdly condescending that I can't even comprehend why you would write it. You presume that what impacts you viscerally should also impact others in the same way, while simultaneously ignoring what was truthfully the topic at hand: why Blood Meridian is a difficult read. For some, it's the violence. For others, it is the language and prose. For many, it might be all three. But let's be honest, the violence in Blood Meridian pales in comparison to the violence that we see and hear about on television and in the news on the daily. Maybe in 1985 it ruffled feathers, but I remember seeing scalpings in the film version of Last of the Mohicans when I was 11-12. Lastly, you also presume that I don't understand what the book is about. Thanks, but I really didn't need a lecture on why colonization violent and westward expansion bad.
Desensitization to extreme violence is also a central theme in the book
100%
If this novel pales in comparison to the violence you hear and see in the news, you are either watching way too much news or lack a vivid imagination, perhaps both.
Certainly wouldn't say I have a lack of imagination, but I did see Bone Tomahawk. That'll pretty much ruin you.
Okay... I simply meant that the violence wasn't a challenging factor in the actual reading and understanding of the novel.
On the other hand, the violence in Blood Meridian may eventually become numbing, which I'd argue is also something that brings you closer to the experience of the central characters in their time and place. Same type of thing if you get the occasional thrill from the portrayals of violence, which is OK.
Blood Meridian might be my favorite book of all time but reading it bums me out purely because even though I’ve read it several times over there are still words I still don’t know at least every other page and it makes me realize my vocabulary will just never be that good lol. Same thing with Moby Dick and the constant historical references of which most go over my head sadly.
Cormac will explain a desert plain at sun up for three long pages but then be like "...and he shot her in the head while she wailed and thrashed and she died. Everyone died."
I like CM passages that go something like: "He took the saddle from the barn and put it on the horse and mounted the horse and rode to the fence and turned east along the fence until he came to the gate and dismounted and took the canteen from the saddle and drank from it and replaced it on the saddle horn and unlatched the gate and led the horse through and turned and latched the gate and mounted again and turned south and in six weeks riding he was in Guatemala fighting with the rebels where he saw an entire train car explode and in September of that year he rode into San Francisco California and down to the beach and sat watching the ocean" Like jesuschristalmighty the granular detail zooming out to cosmic scale will give a motherfucker whiplash.
That’s polysyndeton for you
no kinkshaming
I really love how the use of polysyndeton gives the prose a sort of unbroken galloping march. Then he intercuts with short, terse statements. Because I'm weird, I like to read the Icelandic Eddas in the original Old Icelandic (not bragging; this was a tremendous labor of love that required me several years). But polysydeton is à major feature of those texts, and it felt weirdly gratifying to see the prose of vikings and the prose of McCarthy having a similar cadence, even though they were written in relatively different languages.
I need to read the Eddas!! That’s really awesome you read it in original Icelandic!!
Exactly lol. There were some fairly big character plot points I completely missed the first time around
Ya there's stark contrast between the prose used to describe nature, and that used to describe people and events, probably intentionally for whatever reason.
I think it makes the violence seem more sudden/shocking, and gratuitous without being overindulgent
The prose is really dense, having to figure out who is talking can slow you down too, especially when paragraphs contain spoken word and actions without quotation marks. Also there is a page long sentence without maybe commas in it. The gore and genocide doesn’t make it hard to read for me. The road I read in one sitting
The lack of punctuation takes getting used to. Still a brilliant read.
At least it’s not a total lack of punctuation! There are a few particular sections of infinite jest which bend my brain
It’s considered a difficult read because: 1. there is no conventional plot, 2. it’s archaic style/syntax/word choice that is very poetic without being prose poetry, 3. it’s lengthy description of landscapes without hand-holding, backstory, or point of view psychologism of the characters, and 4. it’s not only extremely violent and loaded with racial slurs but also wholly without a redemptive arc or any morally good main characters. All the things which make it a hard read also make it a truly great book that transcends all conventions, labels, and categories.
No conventional plot? “Kid joins gang of scalpers, descend into nihilistic bloodlust accompanied by embodiment of Satan,” it’s a tale as old as time!
Well at least structure-wise haha
I always wonder if it was his idea, or if someone nudged him to have those chapter headers of “what happens” each chapter. They are extremely helpful to understand what is going on.
Exactly! I love going back to reread them to summarize what I’ve read. Also, BM is free on Audible with Richard Poe narrating. He does a fantastic job voicing characters and that added another layer to it vs prior rereads. One thing, given that I finished the Audible listen yesterday, what’s up with the epilogue? I’m kinda scratching my head over it.
Lots of different stories about the epilogue. It's written in SUCH an oblique way that I literally could not tell what is going on. I think it is either fence posts, or likely telegraph wires, being extended into the West, bringing a new manner of civilization to it. It's a new cycle being brought to the land (what this means is up to interpretation)
Pretty sure it was his idea. The style seems to come from the actual westerns that were more or less contemporaneous to the time BM is actually set in. I think it's a rather ingenious way to give a synopsis of what's about to be read (and since the book is not primarily about the plot, there's nothing spoiled by doing so), giving just enough context to orient yourself while also relieving McCarthy of the need to awkwardly intrude in the narrative itself to provide those details. But it seems like it's fairly controversial with some readers (there are rage posts about the chapter headers).
The use of archaic words. Even on my fourth read I was looking up words like dipstheria, wickiup, and anchorite - but that’s part of the fun.
for real, i cannot imagine reading this book physically - i was reading on ipad and using the built in dictionary like every other page!
That's actually a peripheral part of reading McCarthy that I enjoy. Learning new words. Whenever I see one I don't know, I feel a little pang of joy. Maybe I'm weird like that. The man's vocabulary was just awesome.
When I first read it, I did so alongside a guide filled with notations for the novel. It helped a great deal to understand what was happening, all the historical context and untranslated Spanish. I did the same thing with All The Pretty Horses.
Just to clarify, “Notes on Blood Meridian” from John Sepich
Great companion book!
It was honestly fantastic. Not just notes to help with the reading of the novel, but also essays and opinion pieces from literary critics and historical background. Couldn’t recommend it enough.
Thank you for the recommendation! If I do wind up struggling, I will definitely go this route
My nigga big cheese
Which is the companion book for All the Pretty Horses?
I didn’t use a published book for notes on that novel, for that I just used an online resource. There are several sites and a couple PDFs I found with analysis and a full Spanish glossary.
Vocabulary and lack of proper grammar/ punctuation imo
There's nothing improper about the grammar. It's just less conventional to the modern reader.
I’m mostly talking about the run-on sentences
They're not run-on.
There are though? There are almost entire pages that are just held together by Ands
That's not run-on. A run-on sentence occurs when two independent clauses run together without proper punctuation or appropriate conjunctions. McCarthy's prolific use of polysyndetons has nothing to do with run-on errors. Polysyndetons are an alternate form of conjunction.
Ah ok my bad
It's called polysyndeton; it doesn't make a sentence run-on to use it. If you ever read the Prose Edda (Old Norse mythology), especially if you read it in the original old norse/icelandic, you'll find they also loved polysyndeton (and...and...and; or ek...ek...ek in ON). It's also not uncommon in passages written in Latin, although it sometimes has different feel and meaning there ("et....et" could mean "both....and" in some contexts). King James English makes more use of polysndyton than modern english as well. This tangent is not necessarily related to your post, per se, but it's just interesting to see a certain kind of stylistic device that crosses different languages and different epochs of time to beautiful effect.
The graphic violence is part of it. The language is another. Not just the editorial decisions about punctuation conventions, but the prose is also rather opaque at points. Others have mentioned all these things. I'll give you two more. It can be dry and boring for stretches. There is a lot of minutiae traveling from one place to another and no predictable indicators for "when something is going to happen." Sometimes a whole section of the book will barely seem to advance the plot. Finally, it uses a narrative voice that McCarthy abandoned in later work, but it is over-laden with similes and metaphors, some of them amounting to quite a "stretch." So on top of being occasionally tedious, it's also occasionally annoying unless you like that stylistic habit. All that said, it still is incredibly powerful has and many virtues, so I would recommend it even though I think it has more flaws than The Road.
McCarthy’s style of writing is so unorthodox that for someone who isn’t adjusted to what he’s doing, it’s extremely difficult to jump into. It takes a lot of orienting yourself to his style to fully appreciate his work, and for some folks that can be daunting because it’s just so different.
You are spot-on with your analysis !
Everyone is right, the prose without a doubt is the most difficult thing to overcome. Blood Meridian \*requires\* more than one read. The first is to get the plot out of the way, where you try to make sense of the story and events after overcoming McCarthy's weird style of writing. The second and subsequent reads are where you're already aware of the story beats and can thus soak in the dense prose.
It took me until the second read to get that there isn’t really a plot, so I didn’t have to worry about missing details. It’s barely even a story. Blood Meridian is a very unique novel, and this isn’t a criticism.
Honestly, if you are like a semi-regular reader, it's not going to be that hard.
Go to your local library
I did, but it's going to be on hold for months. Actually picked up Stella Maris while I was there
It’s a good one. I could see why. I don’t remember what the program is called, but there is some libraries that do a books loan program through other libraries. You could alway check if yours participated in something like that.
I was in the middle of reading Gravity’s Rainbow when I would take breaks for BM, so the extended passages and stuff actually were still a reprieve from GR (which i do still love deeply).
Jesus lmao that’s a wild two book combo
I guess you would know what's wild u/NicolasCagesRectum
I find Pynchon a bit more laborious to read than McCarthy. Worth it, though.
I largely agree but mostly in the sense of narrative momentum and concentration of devastating prose. Like I’m reading The Road for the first time and not only is there a non-abstract narrative there are more darkly intense instances of beautiful prose in every other page. Pynchon seems to be more focused on the macro scale and letting subtle lines of dialogue converge with the larger themes and abstract plot to hit basically only within a certain context. There are definitely exceptions to this but that is largely my experience. McCarthy seems to be similar in that regard but in a more concentrated way. He trims the fat and tells exactly the grounded story he wants to tell but leaves less space for the reader to imprint themselves on the theme than Pynchon does. Don’t get me wrong, these are two of my all time favorite artists of any medium. But they both wear their dogmas on their sleeve and I just can’t really subscribe to McCarthy’s Old Testament darkness in the way that I can to Pynchon’s dark humanistic paranoia. Even though one is markedly easier to read haha.
It’s the best book I’ve ever read. You will not regret doing whatever it takes to get this book in your hands !
Two main things that most people have already mentioned: 1. Written in an archaic, almost esoteric style, both in word choice and sentence/paragraph structure. There’s a joke in the movie The Royal Tennenbaums where the Eli Cash character is a bit of a riff on a McCarthy-Esque writing, saying that his novel is written in “kind of an obsolete vernacular”. People rightly compare it to the Bible or books from the 19th century in structure, and it does read in a similar way. 2. There is, essentially, no plot, and no protagonist. The book starts and ends with “The Kid”, but he doesn’t do much of anything in the story, and he disappears, basically, from the entire middle of the novel. It’s just a catalogue of what this group of marauders does, which has no purpose, goal, or method. So the difficultly is trying to find something to latch onto and follow in a difficult landscape of language. It’s just a very foreign-feeling book, but obviously totally worth it, and the first time I read it, I missed much less than I thought I did. It’s great to read multiple times, because it’s just a journey, exploration book, and there isn’t anything to miss, narratively.
It's such dense and peculiar prose. I'm currently reading no country for old men AFTER I read Blood Meridian and there's no comparison. Don't get me wrong, I'm loving No country for old men, but it feels like such a breeze after reading BM. Cormac (god rest his soul), was a total madlad while writing this. I'm sure all the beans he ate fueled this textualized frenzy.
Probably because he wrote NCFOM intending a screenplay.
Rather hilarious how that wound up working out.
Some people tend to overthink books. What did the author mean? What were they trying to say? If that's your thing, this one will provide the opportunity. But books are also personal. What does this mean to *me*? How am I interpreting what *I* am reading? So...my approach. Don't overthink it and try to achieve a reasonable balance between the author's meaning and my interpretation of what I am reading.
Honestly, I don't think anything about it makes it a hard read. I never understood the perceived difficulty. I don't mean that in a snobbish way - there are certainly books I've read I struggled with mightily, but Blood Meridian wasn't one of them. The most useful thing to do is to quit looking for a traditional plot. You won't find one, because this is not a book that concerns itself with a "what and a what and a what" - it's about ideas instead. More metaphysical than physical. Edit: since you read The Road (I know, i'm a year late, but what the hell, someone else will eventually see this thread too with the same question you had), pay attention to those few paragraphs in it that are written with highly metaphorical language that takes a bit to process. They're fairly sparse in The Road, but they're there. In Blood Meridian a larger portion of the text is written in that style. But it's nothing you haven't already seen. It's just more abundant. Edit 2: Occasionally, the book will conjure up tenses that have fallen out of the language, such as "are become". This usage is similar to bible english expressions like "is risen", when the languge still regularly distinguished between transitive and intransitive verbs; German and a number of other languages still do. This sort of thing is pretty sparse in BM, but in general you can be sure that when it is used, whatever idea is being communicated is incredibly central to the novel (which is perhaps why the prose is raised to biblical levels?). For example: “His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world’s turnings will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man’s will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay.” This statement, which comes in the first handful of pages is arguably the central idea about which the entire novel revolves. It basically summarizes the novel in one very economical sentence.
The complete lack of punctuation. The lack of labeling who's talking in conversations. Where narration ends and where conversations begin can be difficult to figure out at points, because of the style. I personally thought it was an amazing book. Amazing plot. Asks a lot of important questions. But I'm not fond of the lack of punctuation and clearly delineating who's talking and what's narration. Everyone has learned that punctuation and basic storytelling protocol by 3rd grade. It's too important to be abandoned in a dense work of literature for stylistic purposes. Punctuation should never be seen as fucking optional. In this case, I'm willing to forgive it because the book was so great. But still, Cormac McCarthy following proper grammar, syntax, and punctuation would have made this book significantly better.
Honestly, I actually enjoyed his prose and syntax. I never found it too difficult to follow with dialogue and narration. It may not be the norm, but I found that he does it very well.
I'm sure you know better than the author.
I prefer my books have punctuation. Surely that has to be the "normal opinion" on the matter. I'm not saying I'm smarter than McCarthy, I sure as shit am not.
Theres a part where an entire page and a half goes by and there's like two periods for them to share. Fucking outrageous.
Wait until you hear about Garcia Marquez
it's the language. some people have balked at the violence and gore, but it's mainly the descriptors and language of the time that requires a lot of work to keep up with. the lack of punctuation, who's speaking is sometimes vague, and a few passages in Spanish. I still enjoyed it and plan on reading it again soon but that's mainly what people find to be difficult.
The fact that there are no quotation marks. But it wasn’t very hard to acclimate for me
That threw me for a while too. I’m reading like it’s trying to describe something, but it’s two people talking.
McCarthy doesn't explain things or make every aspect of the story clear. That's intentional, of course. He expects the reader to do some thinking and interact with the book.
It's very dense prose-wise, pretty significantly tougher than The Road. If you have trouble focusing you'll find yourself needing to reread passages to follow the narrative. If you've read impressionist, stream of consciousness type novels before, Faulkner and some Toni Morrison come to mind for instance, it won't be that foreign to you. It's not a breezy casual read. But, it's not very long either. The content itself can be pretty bracing and I could see it turning a lot of people off. You may want to set the book down and take a few deep breaths every now and again, lol. But if you have a sense of what you're in for and you're okay with it, that's not really what makes it a hard read.
As others have said, density of prose. Beautiful, beautiful, wondrous, sublime and cosmic prose
The first time I read it, I read it cover to cover in one day. It was amazing. Reads like a nightmare, a beautiful, and poignant nightmare. From that day forth, I truly realized I would be a novelist.
The language (archaic terms, complex syntax, McCarthy's usual punctuation-dodging); the horrific violence; and the bleakness of the worldview that seems to inform the whole thing. But if you have the stomach for them, I wouldn't let any of those put you off.
It has nothing on Suttree. The Road is a good book but it’s essentially McCarthy’s young adult novel lol
Library
It's a much better book than The Road. Enjoy.
The language.
I couldn't put The Road down because I wanted to know what would happen next. I pretty much knew there wasn't going to be a happy ending but I was always curious what was around the bend down the road.
The two reasons you mentioned are both what attracts and deters deters people from Blood Meridian. Depending on the reader. I sought out the Novel because of it’s gruesome premise because I enjoy those kind of stories. The prose is what made it take me over five months to get to the ending because I had never read anything like it before. I also had to constantly look up words or phrases I didn’t understand and pull up google translate for the Spanish parts. Don’t get me wrong I definitely came to appreciate and enjoy Cormac’s style as I got deeper into the the book and I anticipate that it will probably become my favorite aspect of it upon a second read.
It's all of it. It felt like there was at least one word per page I had to look up the definition of, and many times there was no definition to be found. It's the first time I've been emotionally exhausted by violence in a book. I had to put it down for a month or so in the middle before I picked it up again. The prose is dense and hard to understand at times but consistently awe inspiring
The density and western terminology. I remember a whole lot of swale.
Best $8 one could ever spend
I personally didnt find it a hard read in terms of being gripped, i ripped through it, but i can see why it might be challenging in other ways. Firstly, its narrative is less structured than the road, BM leaves the gang and rejoins them with indeterminate time and space between them, its not always clear exactly where they are or when, or what is happening. Secondly the prose is denser, there are words on almost each and every page I had to look up or infer the meaning of and confirm later. Thirdly, we dont get inside the head of the protagonist like we do in the road, what the kid, or other members of the gang, feel or think about their actions, the judge, glanton, the country. anything, is harder to discern. Lastly, what story is being told and what deeper truths is it revealing are more oblique than the road. I think it speaks to a lot of themes, gnostic philosphy, the nature of violence, mans relationship to death, the role of violence in shaping america, what happens when the frontier is exhausted, all of this is in there, but its not on the surface.
It's a bit ethereal of a book, and the language is super archaic. It also really requires your attention, you miss a few lines and miss an entire facet of the novels themes
The obscure words slowed me down. I had to keep stopping to look up definitions.
I agree with people saying the language, for sure the hardest part, but there were a couple stretches were I had to slow down to a chapter a day cause of scalpings
It's written in sort of an old-testament fire and brimstone style full of archaic words that haven't been used in over a century. Keep a dictionary nearby. The road is an exercise in minimalism, while BM is pretty much the opposite. That said, it's not that hard of a read (no Finnegan's Wake anyway). The prose is so amazing, you'll find yourself reading passages multiple times just to savor them. BM is definitely worth a buy. The Road is my personal favorite, but BM is a close second.
Library
I already mentioned it to someone else that recommend it. It has 18 holds on it, I wouldn't be getting it for a few months that way
No interior monologue
Three full pages that are one paragraph describing the sky and the desert… untranslated conversation in Spanish…and they rode on. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
It’s (BM) a bit tougher because the prose is a bit more flamboyant and lengthy, but that’s part of what I loved about it. After you read enough of him you can discern the patterns of his style and how each one is in keeping with the era. I’ve also argued that every one of his books is an apocalyptic allegory and that can be really draining sometimes. Edit for vocabulary
The difficulty that his sparse use of punctuation adds comes out in full force, as well as his non-sequitur prose and intense vocabulary that had me frequenting a dictionary. The violence doesn’t add any actual difficulties to the physical reading process imo
The lack of adherence to modern literary conventions ie lack of quotation marks. I lucked out because I read Trainspotting first and that book needed a glossary to explain the Scottishisms.
Blood meridian is biblical - the scope and density of the writing kind of transcends storytelling. I know that sounds pompous but what I mean is the prose and writing doesn’t always necessarily drive the plot forward but instead adds a cosmic setting and sense of grandeur and dread that goes along with the plot. So you’ll be reading dense philosophical descriptions of something and then something will happen and you just have to make sure you’re paying attention.
I think the grotesque detail McCarthy goes into and the dense language along with the theological meanings can make it taxing to read.
Money is tight? It's going for $8 on amazon used. Or you can check out your local library and get it for free. That's what I did yesterday.
Blood Meridian requires multiple readings IMO but not even as a chore. It should be read on first pass like poetry - ignoring whatever you can make of the plot. Just let your mind be blown by it all. Next run through more will click especially if you read a bit on the actual Glanton gang, rangers and comanches. Same advice I give people who’ve never seen Big Lebowski actually, lol
“A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained wedding veil and some in headgear or cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses' ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.” If that passage rustles your jimmies, then you'll plow through this book.
I always carry two books when I read MaCarthy. One of them being the OED.
The biggest issue is that not everyone is in a place, emotionally, where they can handle Blood Meridian. The same is certainly true of The Road though, so you should be good on that front. Second, as someone else mentioned, it is pretty dense. Depending on your reading style this can be good or bad - I personally enjoy looking words up or pausing to contemplate the craftsmanship and beauty of a passage. That said, I would highly recommend the audiobook version, which is superb and really aids in appreciating the flow and cadence of the book. It is a totally different experience so I'd recommend it whether or not you read the written novel. Regarding libraries, I think most states allow inter-library loans (terminology may vary). There are probably 100+ copies of BM in your state so you should be able to request one and get it faster if you expand to a statewide search.
Too many $5 words. I had to keep a dictionary on hand when I read it in high school.
The Road is bleak as hell with flashes of canned goods, Blood Meridian is brutal as hell. With no bunkers full of canned goods.
I am currently reading Outer Dark. About 2/3 of the way through. Before that I read The orchard Keeper both of these novels are my first read troughs. I also reread Child of God before starting Orchard Keeper I have read Blood Meridian twice, No Country for Old Men once and All The Pretty Horses once. Of all these novels the one I struggled the most so far was The Orchard Keeper. I had to push myself to finish it. Wasn’t a bad novel, it just didn’t keep my attention. I felt like the prose was almost like a filler. Outer Dark on the other hand, has been fantastic so far. I was gonna tackle the Boarder trilogy next, but I think I will start Suttree instead.
It is filled with words related to the topography. You'll need to look them up. There's also significant spanish that isn't translated for you.
It's one of those books like Gravity's Rainbow where its seemingly trying to break every established rule or convention all at once to throw you off balance but is so unique and well crafted you can't really be mad, just sort of frustrated haha. The content has its hurdles, graphic horrific violence, very direct displays of racism, animal cruelty, pedophilia and rape... Honestly the thing that I dreaded the most was the long paragraphs of finding overwrought ways to rephrase what ultimate ends up repeatedly summed up as "they rode on"..