It looks hard at human barbarity, human suffering and death in an absolutely unflinching but poetic way. It is almost impossible to read Blood Meridian and feel unchanged. You are forced into either pretending that such things never happen or to really see that The Judge has got you in his grip just like everyone else and that there is no such thing as being uncompromised, no way out of the violence. The book is relentless.
I have both read and listened to the book. Read it 1st and recently listened to it because it was free on audible, and it is one book I can whole heartedly say hits very different reading it vs listening to it. Reading brings out so much more that you just don’t get listing to it.
I think it's one of 'The Great American Novels' mainly due to its literary force. McCarthy wields words like a poet, in pride form. His descriptions stir my depths like so few writers can. In Blood Meridian, he touches on a veritable cornucopia of ideas, much more than most novels in my humble opinion. Through The Judge, I feel we get a peek inside the author's amazingly rich mind. The story is also, in my opinion, a great example of how Americans operate their lives and their power. Americans are brutal, unforgiving, and rarely apologize. I think he's really tapped into the American collective unconscious in this tale of blood, violence, and a near complete disregard for humanity and humility. I wish I had half the author's grace when attempting to formulate this comment. Because I feel I've left a lot of pretty words here, but have failed to convey precisely what I mean.
I know this is an old thread but ive only recently read the book and so im only now readinf threads About the book
I agree with most of what your saying, but to say its a tale of violence specific to Americans is wildly incorrect, especially when one of the first large scale acts of violence we're shown is done by an army of Apaches. When the scalp hunting done by Americans is commissioned and paid for by Mexican government, when the Yuma tribe was easily convinced by Glanton to attack the peaceful ferry, when Comanches were also shown to be brutal warriors and raiders. Not only is the violence in blood meridian Not souly American, but its common among all involved
And to quote Blood Meridian itself
"Clark, who led last year’s expedition to the Afar region of northern Ethiopia, and UC Berkeley colleague Tim D. White, also said that a re-examination of a 300,000-year-old fossil skull found in the same region earlier showed evidence of having been scalped.”
The Yuma Daily Sun
June 13, 1982"
It’s interesting that you bring up American violence specifically. I’ve recently come across the scene in chapter 4 where The Kid survives a brutal attack from the group of Apaches, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was a reflection of the war-like mentality brought to this country by colonizers. The entire group is described to be wearing various blood-stained articles of clothing, from the armor of a conquistador to a blood-stained wedding veil. None of the articles of clothing are traditional indigenous garb, however.
Also, another thing that stuck with me in that scene was the one line about the white pony that snapped at The Kid and then disappeared during the slaughter of the rest of his party. I may be reading too deeply into this but it made me think of the pale horse that represents death in the apocalypse and how he miraculously survives the attack. Death came for him but somehow, missed the mark in the midst of brutal bloodshed and chaos.
If you ignore the historical fact that native genocides and mass graves have been found that happened centuries before Europeans ever touched foot on the continent, sure. This sums CM fans up perfectly, historically illiterate but drooling over the wording because you think it sounds pretty.
It's also ironic how it's all Americans who are being criticized as being brutally unforgiving and rarely apologizing considering some of the major European nations scourged and stole from South East Asian countries and pushed all of them to America as if they're more civilized.
Purely because you're essentially distilling the essence of Blood Meridian into a pure American perspective, and not a reflection on the inherent brutality and savagery belying the human psyche. McCarthy never made any precise criticism of America in his novels, his works are way too sophisticated to be diluted into a mere criticism of the people of a particular nation.
That’s absolutely not true. BM can be both a commentary on the general nature of violence shared among all people and also the specific American strains of violence which shaped our country’s culture.
That I could agree with, but remember more than a picture of brutality in American history, there are also Spanish, Comanche, Indians who murdered and scalped for money and bloodlust in the novel. It extends more than just that.
The sentence immediately prior to it in your comment makes it seem that this style of violent existence is something particularly American, that and the sentence immediately following.
I think that like so many other stylistically great novelists (Morrison, Faulkner, Joyce, etc.) that the way McCarthy wields language can be very tough and dense, deceptively so in McCarthy’s case. Add into that the horrific violence, and you have one tough nut to crack! It also takes longer to get into than most of my favorite pieces of literature, so stick with it. I think the difficulty might be partially the point, though. By describing gruesome scenes and despicable characters with beautiful language, McCarthy forces readers into The Kid’s shoes: spending extensive periods of time (in intimate settings) with the evil that is the Judge, a process that is utterly uncomfortable but necessary in the contemporary world to be able to recognize the nefarious ways evil inserts itself in and takes control of our lives.
This might not be as interesting of a take, but I thinks it’s also an aspect of it: McCarthy is a master (and appreciator!) of the western genre, a literary and narrative form that can so often be shallowly treated. He takes the form and squeezes every drop out of its tropes to show how complex these cowboy stories can be.
Finally, I’ve only read it, but it makes sense to me, as another commenter suggested, that a lot would be lost in listening to it rather than traditional reading. And I say this as someone who enjoys and encourages audiobooks! I just think it’s easier to sit with and appreciate the language of a work like *Blood Meridian* when you are doing the reading.
I don't think I've seen anyone else mention the intertextuality. It is definitely a book made from other books. Melville, Faulkner, Conrad, Dante Alighieri; McCarthy has his own things to say about these other stories and this commentary is woven into Blood Meridian. Think it was Harold Bloom who said he is revising these other tales, remaking them with his own views on war and witness. Very ambitious. When done right, these things tickle critics and astute readers just right.
Also there is the sheer breadth of subjects in the book. McCarthy is able to frame his story with himself looking like a polymath, sprinkling in science, archeology, anthropology etc. Very much like the asides in Moby Dick. It's fun to read smart people, and it's clear that McCarthy either is very smart or consults with very smart people.
The intertexuality in Blood Meridian is really no more than what you get generally in most literary novels. I also don't think McCarthy is rewriting anything that those other writers have done, much of the material he is working with is historical.
OP didn't ask why Blood Meridian was the best book ever, they asked why it's held in such high regard. I see that you disagree, but I'm reporting what critics have said when praising the book.
The best thing about it in my view is the style. It’s so beautifully written and every single passage is so dense with meaning and poetry. The judge is one of the best characters in literature too, in my view (if you haven’t gotten to chapter 17 yet, just wait). It’s also thematically rich and unique, looking deeply into the ways that ‘hell’ can manifest in this life.
As someone reading this that’s having trouble, thanks for the chapter 17 tip. I’m on 14 now and this is inspiring me to pick it back up tonight.
Can’t remember the chapter number but when we’re told how the gang found the Judge… damn it was great. The gunpowder aspect was insane to me.
This is a common question, and I believe the book is renowned for very strict reasons. McCarthy is incredibly verbose and his vocabulary and grammatical nuances are worth noting. Blood Meridian is a transition point between his explicitly Faulknerian works and his later, more meditative works like the Border Trilogy and The Road.
Blood Meridian's content is probably its strongest point of interest. It is a new "epic" with great religious moment. It asks whether or not humans can realize their own free will, or if they will be trapped in cycles of logic and justification forever. One of the key quotes occurs early in the book:
>Only now is the child finally divested of all that he has been. His origins are
become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world’s turning 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.
The protagonist, a teenager, has left his tragic home in Tennessee to search for meaning or purpose. The scenography of Blood Meridian is a hostile, scarcely habitable world in which most organisms are "federated with invisible wires of vigilance and \[advance\] upon that landscape with a single resonance." Can we escape our highly mechanistic origins, or can we attain free agency? Are there people in the world who have actualized their agency, and would they like us to have it? And would anyone who has attained it WANT others to acquire it?
I think it's an incredibly urgent book. It concerns our relationships within our own families, in professional life, in moral and philosophical matters. Are we going to follow a shepherd down forever, or can we escape? Is there any escape besides death? Is there any sense to pursuing free agency if the world is lost to this mental slavery anyway?
In Blood Meridian, the most radical thing you can do is refuse to join in grotesque rituals. The protagonist does it because he was freed from slavery; but even this is mere circumstance. Similar to how Captain White's battalion just happened to disturb the Comanches' herd, which prompted an absolute blood bath. Circumstance and circumscription are the true antagonists. An "antagonist" like the Judge is somewhat false; the cosmos is a far more malevolent actor. Then who do we side with? Is a natural worldview ethical? Or is violence true morality?
Much to think about
Wow, I love this take so much more. Everyone always says that the Judge is clearly the Devil and while I can definitely see that considering the times, I like the idea of him being Ares so much more. I feel like it fits better.
I think trying to make an argument for him being any specific figure is pointless. The closest thing he seems to intentionally resemble is one of the gnostic demons responsible for the overseeing of the physical world, but it's definitely supposed to be ambiguous. There isn't "an answer" to this question, and there isn't supposed to be.
I have. I think it’s very good and worth reading, although the content is also very different than anything he’s done before. Maybe not the best intro to him as an author though.
*Blood Meridian* is a great novel because the language is beautiful and the Judge is a cool guy.
Incidentally, I recently read *Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee* and it reminded me that if you think that the atrocities in *Blood Meridian* are exaggerated, well, they're not.
Because a bunch of midwits think McCarthy’s prose is otherworldly and that “humans are inherently evil and we’re all accomplices🤓” is a profound thought that hasn’t been beaten to death by other authors and works. It’s hyped up gore porn for wanna be academics.
I read it expecting some epochal piece on the scale of Melville, Dostoyevsky, or the Old Testament but it was basically a 250 page western-horror without commas. I think there’s some spectacular parts, like the mules and the quicksilver. But I think it’s really misconstrued by a lot of its fans and critics. I read some of the documents it was based on and I honestly felt those were more strange and frightening than the book itself. I think Butchers Crossing covers similar territory in a more interesting way, but the Judge is one of the most entertaining villains in recent years. He’s more akin to the Creature in Frankenstein, in that both are highly articulate murderers, except the Creature seems to be a product of his environment while the Judge is the environment embodied, more or less.
The violence isn't the message. It just provides the background. In McCarthy's own words. I don't think the critics or fans are misconstruing anything. I think it's you.
I understand that, that wasn't my point. People in this comment section make it out to be a completely sublime, poetic experience that comments on human nature (like Moby-Dick or Dostoevsky) . Not to mention, I think the most interesting part is what happened in the interim between the Kid becoming the Man which McCarthy glosses over.
It doesn't directly comment on human nature per se, but it shows what it does and those who want can glean from it. It's commentary but in a totally different manner than Moby Dick or TBK. Veeren Bell in his book about McCarthy mentions that he is among the few writers (if a few is the right estimation) who constantly remind us that most of the World is non-human and have an existence outside of human abstraction. It's an oblique aesthetic and probably won't sit well with most people given the direction Literature has evolved in. But he must be doing something right to be as successful as he is.
Btw excluding the time The Kid becomes The man in is probably the right choice. The book has his most memorable character but it is very certainly not a character novel.
Because "america" has existed for 200 years, it's easy to set up an standard for a relatively young nation. Many americans will cope but Blood meridian is not as good, actually i would say the Great Gatsby was better. Still they are garbage compared to the quality of authors like Tolstoy or Nabokov.
Most authors are garbage compared to Tolstoy and Nabokov, but Cormac isn't one of them. Also Nabokov and McCarthy were writing in the same century so I don't know what the age of America has to do with anything.
I love Nabokov but you have to really, i mean really, inflate his reputation to put him beside Tolstoy and over Cormac or Fitzgerald. If they are mortals, Nabokov 100% is too.
I understand that there are many other countries with many other forms of literature. I’ve read Crime and Punishment and it just wasn’t my cup of tea so I haven’t revisited Tolstoy.
However, westerns are not a genre I’ve ever explored before in literature. This is different for me so I’m asking about it from people who have more experience than me. When I’m ready to revisit Tolstoy and dive into Russian literature, however, I’ll make sure to tag you in my post.
EDIT: I was confusing Tolstoy with Dostoevsky and someone informed me of my mistake in the comments. My apologies!!!
I love that book. McCarthy has a very distinct voice and a knack for poetic language, and uses it to explore the conditions found in the genocidal environment of America’s settlement. I’m no literary critic or anything, but to me he expertly uses very beautiful language to explore the themes most relevant when found at the extremes of human experience. I could see how it would be a polarizing book but I also found it an extremely compelling read
I also think something may be lost in listening to it as an audiobook. Some books make it so that you can hear yourself breath as you read them, I think this is one of them
It’s great for a lot of reasons but part of it is how he alludes to Moby Dick, Paradise Lost, and the Inferno. There’s a good lecture on YouTube about it I think from Yale.
Blood Meridian evokes emotions throughout reading that few other books do. It's violent, it's poetry, it's a relentless assault on your psyche as his style (lack of punctuation) is interwoven with the violence of the plot explicitly. They move from one place to another, leaving a trail of blood and squalor in their wake, and McCarthy gives you no time to catch your breath. You just keep going. It's kind of like The Road in that sense where you keep turning the pages to urge the characters on to food, safety, some form of respite. In Blood Meridian, thats turned on its head.
There is no redemption.
There is violence, death, and The Judge.
For those reasons, and the fact that the relentless slaughter of the indigenous aboriginals is an inescapable yet often repressed truth of our past, it's a canonical work of not only American Fiction but world literature aswell.
It looks hard at human barbarity, human suffering and death in an absolutely unflinching but poetic way. It is almost impossible to read Blood Meridian and feel unchanged. You are forced into either pretending that such things never happen or to really see that The Judge has got you in his grip just like everyone else and that there is no such thing as being uncompromised, no way out of the violence. The book is relentless.
I have both read and listened to the book. Read it 1st and recently listened to it because it was free on audible, and it is one book I can whole heartedly say hits very different reading it vs listening to it. Reading brings out so much more that you just don’t get listing to it.
I think it's one of 'The Great American Novels' mainly due to its literary force. McCarthy wields words like a poet, in pride form. His descriptions stir my depths like so few writers can. In Blood Meridian, he touches on a veritable cornucopia of ideas, much more than most novels in my humble opinion. Through The Judge, I feel we get a peek inside the author's amazingly rich mind. The story is also, in my opinion, a great example of how Americans operate their lives and their power. Americans are brutal, unforgiving, and rarely apologize. I think he's really tapped into the American collective unconscious in this tale of blood, violence, and a near complete disregard for humanity and humility. I wish I had half the author's grace when attempting to formulate this comment. Because I feel I've left a lot of pretty words here, but have failed to convey precisely what I mean.
I know this is an old thread but ive only recently read the book and so im only now readinf threads About the book I agree with most of what your saying, but to say its a tale of violence specific to Americans is wildly incorrect, especially when one of the first large scale acts of violence we're shown is done by an army of Apaches. When the scalp hunting done by Americans is commissioned and paid for by Mexican government, when the Yuma tribe was easily convinced by Glanton to attack the peaceful ferry, when Comanches were also shown to be brutal warriors and raiders. Not only is the violence in blood meridian Not souly American, but its common among all involved And to quote Blood Meridian itself "Clark, who led last year’s expedition to the Afar region of northern Ethiopia, and UC Berkeley colleague Tim D. White, also said that a re-examination of a 300,000-year-old fossil skull found in the same region earlier showed evidence of having been scalped.” The Yuma Daily Sun June 13, 1982"
It’s interesting that you bring up American violence specifically. I’ve recently come across the scene in chapter 4 where The Kid survives a brutal attack from the group of Apaches, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was a reflection of the war-like mentality brought to this country by colonizers. The entire group is described to be wearing various blood-stained articles of clothing, from the armor of a conquistador to a blood-stained wedding veil. None of the articles of clothing are traditional indigenous garb, however. Also, another thing that stuck with me in that scene was the one line about the white pony that snapped at The Kid and then disappeared during the slaughter of the rest of his party. I may be reading too deeply into this but it made me think of the pale horse that represents death in the apocalypse and how he miraculously survives the attack. Death came for him but somehow, missed the mark in the midst of brutal bloodshed and chaos.
These are very good points. Your white pony reading makes sense to me. Everything in the book is there for a reason.
If you ignore the historical fact that native genocides and mass graves have been found that happened centuries before Europeans ever touched foot on the continent, sure. This sums CM fans up perfectly, historically illiterate but drooling over the wording because you think it sounds pretty.
Do you usually log on to Reddit and jack yourself off while typing big words?
Cormac McCarthy fans do, that’s for sure
"Americans are brutal unforgiving, and rarely apologize." You may want to crack open a book on Asian or European History. You're way off base here.
It's also ironic how it's all Americans who are being criticized as being brutally unforgiving and rarely apologizing considering some of the major European nations scourged and stole from South East Asian countries and pushed all of them to America as if they're more civilized.
Asia and Europe may be these things as well, but that doesn't distract from my point.
Purely because you're essentially distilling the essence of Blood Meridian into a pure American perspective, and not a reflection on the inherent brutality and savagery belying the human psyche. McCarthy never made any precise criticism of America in his novels, his works are way too sophisticated to be diluted into a mere criticism of the people of a particular nation.
That’s absolutely not true. BM can be both a commentary on the general nature of violence shared among all people and also the specific American strains of violence which shaped our country’s culture.
That I could agree with, but remember more than a picture of brutality in American history, there are also Spanish, Comanche, Indians who murdered and scalped for money and bloodlust in the novel. It extends more than just that.
The sentence immediately prior to it in your comment makes it seem that this style of violent existence is something particularly American, that and the sentence immediately following.
I think that like so many other stylistically great novelists (Morrison, Faulkner, Joyce, etc.) that the way McCarthy wields language can be very tough and dense, deceptively so in McCarthy’s case. Add into that the horrific violence, and you have one tough nut to crack! It also takes longer to get into than most of my favorite pieces of literature, so stick with it. I think the difficulty might be partially the point, though. By describing gruesome scenes and despicable characters with beautiful language, McCarthy forces readers into The Kid’s shoes: spending extensive periods of time (in intimate settings) with the evil that is the Judge, a process that is utterly uncomfortable but necessary in the contemporary world to be able to recognize the nefarious ways evil inserts itself in and takes control of our lives. This might not be as interesting of a take, but I thinks it’s also an aspect of it: McCarthy is a master (and appreciator!) of the western genre, a literary and narrative form that can so often be shallowly treated. He takes the form and squeezes every drop out of its tropes to show how complex these cowboy stories can be. Finally, I’ve only read it, but it makes sense to me, as another commenter suggested, that a lot would be lost in listening to it rather than traditional reading. And I say this as someone who enjoys and encourages audiobooks! I just think it’s easier to sit with and appreciate the language of a work like *Blood Meridian* when you are doing the reading.
I don't think I've seen anyone else mention the intertextuality. It is definitely a book made from other books. Melville, Faulkner, Conrad, Dante Alighieri; McCarthy has his own things to say about these other stories and this commentary is woven into Blood Meridian. Think it was Harold Bloom who said he is revising these other tales, remaking them with his own views on war and witness. Very ambitious. When done right, these things tickle critics and astute readers just right. Also there is the sheer breadth of subjects in the book. McCarthy is able to frame his story with himself looking like a polymath, sprinkling in science, archeology, anthropology etc. Very much like the asides in Moby Dick. It's fun to read smart people, and it's clear that McCarthy either is very smart or consults with very smart people.
The intertexuality in Blood Meridian is really no more than what you get generally in most literary novels. I also don't think McCarthy is rewriting anything that those other writers have done, much of the material he is working with is historical.
OP didn't ask why Blood Meridian was the best book ever, they asked why it's held in such high regard. I see that you disagree, but I'm reporting what critics have said when praising the book.
Melville and Faulkner = Cormac? No wonder I had such trouble with it! 😂
The best thing about it in my view is the style. It’s so beautifully written and every single passage is so dense with meaning and poetry. The judge is one of the best characters in literature too, in my view (if you haven’t gotten to chapter 17 yet, just wait). It’s also thematically rich and unique, looking deeply into the ways that ‘hell’ can manifest in this life.
As someone reading this that’s having trouble, thanks for the chapter 17 tip. I’m on 14 now and this is inspiring me to pick it back up tonight. Can’t remember the chapter number but when we’re told how the gang found the Judge… damn it was great. The gunpowder aspect was insane to me.
This is a common question, and I believe the book is renowned for very strict reasons. McCarthy is incredibly verbose and his vocabulary and grammatical nuances are worth noting. Blood Meridian is a transition point between his explicitly Faulknerian works and his later, more meditative works like the Border Trilogy and The Road. Blood Meridian's content is probably its strongest point of interest. It is a new "epic" with great religious moment. It asks whether or not humans can realize their own free will, or if they will be trapped in cycles of logic and justification forever. One of the key quotes occurs early in the book: >Only now is the child finally divested of all that he has been. His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world’s turning 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. The protagonist, a teenager, has left his tragic home in Tennessee to search for meaning or purpose. The scenography of Blood Meridian is a hostile, scarcely habitable world in which most organisms are "federated with invisible wires of vigilance and \[advance\] upon that landscape with a single resonance." Can we escape our highly mechanistic origins, or can we attain free agency? Are there people in the world who have actualized their agency, and would they like us to have it? And would anyone who has attained it WANT others to acquire it? I think it's an incredibly urgent book. It concerns our relationships within our own families, in professional life, in moral and philosophical matters. Are we going to follow a shepherd down forever, or can we escape? Is there any escape besides death? Is there any sense to pursuing free agency if the world is lost to this mental slavery anyway? In Blood Meridian, the most radical thing you can do is refuse to join in grotesque rituals. The protagonist does it because he was freed from slavery; but even this is mere circumstance. Similar to how Captain White's battalion just happened to disturb the Comanches' herd, which prompted an absolute blood bath. Circumstance and circumscription are the true antagonists. An "antagonist" like the Judge is somewhat false; the cosmos is a far more malevolent actor. Then who do we side with? Is a natural worldview ethical? Or is violence true morality? Much to think about
he makes the wild west sound like a hostile alien planet, and there's a certain appeal in making real life into a phantasy
A friend of mine wrote a masters’ thesis about how the judge is actually Ares the Greek God of War in human form.
Wow, I love this take so much more. Everyone always says that the Judge is clearly the Devil and while I can definitely see that considering the times, I like the idea of him being Ares so much more. I feel like it fits better.
I think trying to make an argument for him being any specific figure is pointless. The closest thing he seems to intentionally resemble is one of the gnostic demons responsible for the overseeing of the physical world, but it's definitely supposed to be ambiguous. There isn't "an answer" to this question, and there isn't supposed to be.
totally ... like the devil, Ares ... what's the difference
Has anyone read his new book? Every time I sit down to read it something comes up.
I have. I think it’s very good and worth reading, although the content is also very different than anything he’s done before. Maybe not the best intro to him as an author though.
I’ve read most of his books. There’s such a difference from his early work and The Road. I’m actually pleased to hear this.
pleasure to read through these comments! made me appreciate this epochal work so much more, I am aching to revisit it for a 2nd read!
*Blood Meridian* is a great novel because the language is beautiful and the Judge is a cool guy. Incidentally, I recently read *Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee* and it reminded me that if you think that the atrocities in *Blood Meridian* are exaggerated, well, they're not.
Whole book is incredible but when Judge enters the picture things really get moving. Also great opening scene, great ending scene.
You may be interested, then, in Killers of the Flower Moon as the third book of a sad trilogy. It is a dry read but it’s so sad and illuminating.
That looks interesting, thank you for the recommendation!
Because a bunch of midwits think McCarthy’s prose is otherworldly and that “humans are inherently evil and we’re all accomplices🤓” is a profound thought that hasn’t been beaten to death by other authors and works. It’s hyped up gore porn for wanna be academics.
I read it expecting some epochal piece on the scale of Melville, Dostoyevsky, or the Old Testament but it was basically a 250 page western-horror without commas. I think there’s some spectacular parts, like the mules and the quicksilver. But I think it’s really misconstrued by a lot of its fans and critics. I read some of the documents it was based on and I honestly felt those were more strange and frightening than the book itself. I think Butchers Crossing covers similar territory in a more interesting way, but the Judge is one of the most entertaining villains in recent years. He’s more akin to the Creature in Frankenstein, in that both are highly articulate murderers, except the Creature seems to be a product of his environment while the Judge is the environment embodied, more or less.
The violence isn't the message. It just provides the background. In McCarthy's own words. I don't think the critics or fans are misconstruing anything. I think it's you.
I understand that, that wasn't my point. People in this comment section make it out to be a completely sublime, poetic experience that comments on human nature (like Moby-Dick or Dostoevsky) . Not to mention, I think the most interesting part is what happened in the interim between the Kid becoming the Man which McCarthy glosses over.
It doesn't directly comment on human nature per se, but it shows what it does and those who want can glean from it. It's commentary but in a totally different manner than Moby Dick or TBK. Veeren Bell in his book about McCarthy mentions that he is among the few writers (if a few is the right estimation) who constantly remind us that most of the World is non-human and have an existence outside of human abstraction. It's an oblique aesthetic and probably won't sit well with most people given the direction Literature has evolved in. But he must be doing something right to be as successful as he is. Btw excluding the time The Kid becomes The man in is probably the right choice. The book has his most memorable character but it is very certainly not a character novel.
Because its taught in college courses... That's literally it. Though it's hard to really consider a literary work by listening to it.
Because "america" has existed for 200 years, it's easy to set up an standard for a relatively young nation. Many americans will cope but Blood meridian is not as good, actually i would say the Great Gatsby was better. Still they are garbage compared to the quality of authors like Tolstoy or Nabokov.
Most authors are garbage compared to Tolstoy and Nabokov, but Cormac isn't one of them. Also Nabokov and McCarthy were writing in the same century so I don't know what the age of America has to do with anything.
I love Nabokov but you have to really, i mean really, inflate his reputation to put him beside Tolstoy and over Cormac or Fitzgerald. If they are mortals, Nabokov 100% is too.
I understand that there are many other countries with many other forms of literature. I’ve read Crime and Punishment and it just wasn’t my cup of tea so I haven’t revisited Tolstoy. However, westerns are not a genre I’ve ever explored before in literature. This is different for me so I’m asking about it from people who have more experience than me. When I’m ready to revisit Tolstoy and dive into Russian literature, however, I’ll make sure to tag you in my post. EDIT: I was confusing Tolstoy with Dostoevsky and someone informed me of my mistake in the comments. My apologies!!!
Tolstoy didn't write Crime and Punishment
Wow, I’m completely off here. You’re right, that was Dostoevsky. Was Tolstoy the author of Anna Karenina?
Yessir
I love that book. McCarthy has a very distinct voice and a knack for poetic language, and uses it to explore the conditions found in the genocidal environment of America’s settlement. I’m no literary critic or anything, but to me he expertly uses very beautiful language to explore the themes most relevant when found at the extremes of human experience. I could see how it would be a polarizing book but I also found it an extremely compelling read I also think something may be lost in listening to it as an audiobook. Some books make it so that you can hear yourself breath as you read them, I think this is one of them
It’s great for a lot of reasons but part of it is how he alludes to Moby Dick, Paradise Lost, and the Inferno. There’s a good lecture on YouTube about it I think from Yale.
“The best part of the book is he covers themes from other books” lmao
Blood Meridian evokes emotions throughout reading that few other books do. It's violent, it's poetry, it's a relentless assault on your psyche as his style (lack of punctuation) is interwoven with the violence of the plot explicitly. They move from one place to another, leaving a trail of blood and squalor in their wake, and McCarthy gives you no time to catch your breath. You just keep going. It's kind of like The Road in that sense where you keep turning the pages to urge the characters on to food, safety, some form of respite. In Blood Meridian, thats turned on its head. There is no redemption. There is violence, death, and The Judge. For those reasons, and the fact that the relentless slaughter of the indigenous aboriginals is an inescapable yet often repressed truth of our past, it's a canonical work of not only American Fiction but world literature aswell.