Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West
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| Random House |
Cormac McCarthy
1985
1985
"And the answer, said the judge. If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creature could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet? The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day. He loves games? Let him play for stakes. This you see here, these ruins wondered at by tribes of savages, do you not think that this will be again? Aye. And again. With other people, with other sons."
I really didn't like Blood Meridian.
Apologies to all dedicated Cormac McCarthy loyalists out there. Apologies to the legions of my fellow book reviewers out there, to the hundreds of men and women who have put pen to paper or fingers to keypads to compose a no-doubt sterling and well thought-out and well-received pieces that have all eventually combined through the power of the Internet to pronounce McCarthy's break-out work of fiction as a legitimate classic in twentieth century American fiction. Sorry you guys, but despite all the fawning plaudits I thought it was kind of a bad book; by no means lacking in substance or craftsmanship, but consistent of different factors put together as a package that didn't give me very much enjoyment.
Blood Meridian is only my second exposure to the now very large literary figure of Cormac, with the first naturally being previously reviewed The Road, which (spoiler alert) I really quite liked. Of course The Road remains McCarthy's most recent novel (published 2006), while Blood Meridian is twenty-years older, written back in a section of the author's life where his favoured preoccupation was the genre of the Western (leading towards The Border Trilogy, which sits on a unread pile of mine) , and Blood Meridian is very much a Western. It follows a portion of the life and adventures of a lead character known only as 'The Kid', introduced as a tough-as-nails teenage boy with a murky, escaped history, who has been traveling the wilderness of Texas, surviving with his fists and wit. He soon meets a series of quirky, dangerous, and equally mysterious individuals who cast a shadow over the story, and play a major part in its developments; particularly 'Judge' Holden, charismatic and vicious.
The Kid's ramblings and new friendships lead him through San Antonio, and into Mexico as part of a group of army irregulars hunting for Mexicans. The result is a mass of violence, mayhem and murder, continuing as The Kid travels back over the border, and characters such as the Judge pop in and out of the narrative. McCarthy unexpectedly (to me, anyway) stretches the story over decades to follow The Kid into adulthood suddenly, and into further conflicts and contacts that ultimately lead to his fate, in a somewhat ambiguously downbeat ending. Supposedly, according to others, the many intense trials and tribulations of The Kid's life leads towards the ending being not only climactic, but meaningful and poignant, but unfortunately by this point any real remnants of my interest had crawled into a ball and died.
Despite being somewhat of a grammar Nazi, I've gotten over the fact that Cormac McCarthy doesn't like quotation marks, or really much punctuation at all. I'm also happy with the fact that McCarthy chooses to go with an established genre feature of not giving his lead character a real name. My real problem with this book as a whole was that, after maybe a hundred pages or so, I was completely sick of the repetitive tone of the narrative. Dedicated stylistic prose is an incredibly tough trick to pull off over a sustained period without becoming a self-parody; not only from a technical standpoint but through running the risk of becoming stale. If your style isn't entertaining or personable, then it can become boring, and the dry, unhelpful tone of McCarthy's narration couldn't sustain my interest. Even the much-vaunted brutality, staining many of the pages red and black with blood and death, gets old and meaningless, unimpressive to me compared to the striking individuality of something like Patrick Bateman in Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho.
So again, I apologies to all those that worship this book, because perhaps it was simply not for me. I greatly enjoy authors who are full of variety and surprise; whom mix reality and the surreal on a whim, and whom make me care about their characters on a personal level. Cormac McCarthy doesn't do that for me, not even in The Road, which I liked. It worries me slightly that I've got four Cormac McCarthy books to read from my pile (Border Trilogy and No Country For Old Men) and it might worry you, dear reader, that I might have four more dismissive, self-righteous rants about why I don't like them. Ah well, can't say I didn't warn anyone.
Apologies to all dedicated Cormac McCarthy loyalists out there. Apologies to the legions of my fellow book reviewers out there, to the hundreds of men and women who have put pen to paper or fingers to keypads to compose a no-doubt sterling and well thought-out and well-received pieces that have all eventually combined through the power of the Internet to pronounce McCarthy's break-out work of fiction as a legitimate classic in twentieth century American fiction. Sorry you guys, but despite all the fawning plaudits I thought it was kind of a bad book; by no means lacking in substance or craftsmanship, but consistent of different factors put together as a package that didn't give me very much enjoyment.
Blood Meridian is only my second exposure to the now very large literary figure of Cormac, with the first naturally being previously reviewed The Road, which (spoiler alert) I really quite liked. Of course The Road remains McCarthy's most recent novel (published 2006), while Blood Meridian is twenty-years older, written back in a section of the author's life where his favoured preoccupation was the genre of the Western (leading towards The Border Trilogy, which sits on a unread pile of mine) , and Blood Meridian is very much a Western. It follows a portion of the life and adventures of a lead character known only as 'The Kid', introduced as a tough-as-nails teenage boy with a murky, escaped history, who has been traveling the wilderness of Texas, surviving with his fists and wit. He soon meets a series of quirky, dangerous, and equally mysterious individuals who cast a shadow over the story, and play a major part in its developments; particularly 'Judge' Holden, charismatic and vicious.
The Kid's ramblings and new friendships lead him through San Antonio, and into Mexico as part of a group of army irregulars hunting for Mexicans. The result is a mass of violence, mayhem and murder, continuing as The Kid travels back over the border, and characters such as the Judge pop in and out of the narrative. McCarthy unexpectedly (to me, anyway) stretches the story over decades to follow The Kid into adulthood suddenly, and into further conflicts and contacts that ultimately lead to his fate, in a somewhat ambiguously downbeat ending. Supposedly, according to others, the many intense trials and tribulations of The Kid's life leads towards the ending being not only climactic, but meaningful and poignant, but unfortunately by this point any real remnants of my interest had crawled into a ball and died.
 |
| A Cowboy and Indian, yesterday. |
Despite being somewhat of a grammar Nazi, I've gotten over the fact that Cormac McCarthy doesn't like quotation marks, or really much punctuation at all. I'm also happy with the fact that McCarthy chooses to go with an established genre feature of not giving his lead character a real name. My real problem with this book as a whole was that, after maybe a hundred pages or so, I was completely sick of the repetitive tone of the narrative. Dedicated stylistic prose is an incredibly tough trick to pull off over a sustained period without becoming a self-parody; not only from a technical standpoint but through running the risk of becoming stale. If your style isn't entertaining or personable, then it can become boring, and the dry, unhelpful tone of McCarthy's narration couldn't sustain my interest. Even the much-vaunted brutality, staining many of the pages red and black with blood and death, gets old and meaningless, unimpressive to me compared to the striking individuality of something like Patrick Bateman in Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho.
So again, I apologies to all those that worship this book, because perhaps it was simply not for me. I greatly enjoy authors who are full of variety and surprise; whom mix reality and the surreal on a whim, and whom make me care about their characters on a personal level. Cormac McCarthy doesn't do that for me, not even in The Road, which I liked. It worries me slightly that I've got four Cormac McCarthy books to read from my pile (Border Trilogy and No Country For Old Men) and it might worry you, dear reader, that I might have four more dismissive, self-righteous rants about why I don't like them. Ah well, can't say I didn't warn anyone.
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