Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Summary:
"The men as they rode turned black in the sun from the blood on their clothes and their faces and then paled slowly in the rising dust until they assumed once more the color of the land through which they passed." If what we call "horror" can be seen as including any literature that has dark, horrific subject matter, then Blood Meridian is, in this reviewer's estimation, the best horror novel ever written. It's a perverse, picaresque Western about bounty hunters for Indian scalps near the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s--a ragged caravan of indiscriminate killers led by an unforgettable human monster called "The Judge." Imagine the imagery of Sam Peckinpah and Heironymus Bosch as written by William Faulkner, and you'll have just an inkling of this novel's power. From the opening scenes about a 14-year-old Tennessee boy who joins the band of hunters to the extraordinary, mythic ending, this is an American classic about extreme violence.
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
A Difficult and Troubling Masterpiece
Customer Rating:
Blood Meridian is a masterpiece, which like Moby Dick and Ulysses requires considerable effort from the reader. On the other hand, McCarthy is an easier read than Melville or Joyce, and his book is more accessible emotionally. The elaborate symbolism and language of the book is a PhD's wet dream, but for the more casual reader the important thing is whether after all the effort that goes into slogging through a book like this, the author can connect on a gut emotional level. McCarthy succeeds in this most important respect.
"Blood Meridian" refers to the red, north-south meridian defined by the Western sunset, as McCarthy's rather obvious subtitle reveals. But in a larger sense it refers to the geographic and temporal frontier of the old West. One crosses the north/south meridian that runs through Texas of 1848 and in the process crosses into the bloody frontier of our historical memory -- including, as McCarthy's epigraph reveals, a history of indiscriminate bloodshed and scalping that defined human civilization for the past 300,000 years. For McCarthy, the recent "civilization" brought to the frontier over the past 150 years is a paper-thin moment in time. We are not really far removed from the blood meridian, and much of our seeming civilization is sheer hypocrisy and self-deception.
As the body count piles up in chapter after vivid chapter, the reader strips away the veneer of civilization and overcomes the cultural taboos that prevent us from seeing humans as road kill. Our skull and brains really are only marginally less fragile than a watermelon, and human civilization and action hangs on the ridiculously thin threads that run down the central nervous system. The ethical codes against killing and violence are also paper thin, and in the frontier, the killing is as indiscriminate as the practices of army ants and wolf packs. The species kills and is killed, and is distinguished only by the imaginativeness of the act.
The most striking character of the book is not the nominal protagonist, the "Kid" who helps to pile up the body count, but the figure of the "Judge" who is second in command of the paramilitary band of scalpers the Kid joins. The Judge says he is the legal representative of Glanton, the band's leader. But his procilivity for blowing brains out, molesting children, and his ridiculous denials of Glanton's atrocities combine to make him a distinctly different kind of jurist. But then, the Judge can deliver speeches and cite precedents in a mesmerizing way. For me, the Judge captures all the hypocrisies and self-deceptions of our current civilization.
It is not at all clear whether McCarthy sees some redemption for the species. Is there some redemption at the end of all this violence? The Kid stops killing. The maniacal fear-flight defense and blood lust that motivate the violence is put on hold when the Kid declines to kill the Judge or the Judge's "Fool" companion. The Kid comes in from the frontier, and for the next 20 years obeys the rules of civilization, with the exception of one justified act of self defense. But the ambiguous end of the novel seems to indicate that the Judge has killed or perhaps even raped the Kid -- and he ends by dancing and exclaiming "I can never die."
I find the ending of the book to be one of its important flaws. It is simply not clear what the Judge does at the end, nor is it clear just what McCarthy is trying to convey. Nor is the one-page epilogue helpful. Perhaps he has not worked out for himself the fundamental question of whether there is any hope of redemption for the species. I'm of a more optimistic bent, and find some promise in how the Kid seems to come to terms with himself after returning from the Blood Meridian.
This is one of a handful of truly great American novels.
Based on a true story !
Customer Rating:
I believe McCarthy to be our greatest American novelist. His lyrical prose is so amazingly descriptive. You can't skip a sentence, & like his other novels, deserves to be read & re-read. Worth reading out loud for the full impact. Based on the true story of the Glanton gang's scalp hunting expedition in Mexico circa 1849-50. Feel free to Google Glanton for more info.
Bloody and cruel
Customer Rating:
This is a book that you have to have a strong stomach to appreciate. It takes some historical facts (William Walker and the Filibusters) and creates a vivid and cruel world. The writing and the plotting are spectacular. If you are uncomfortable without punctuation you may want to give this a pass, though. As with most McCarthy books he plays fast and loose with the language.
Devastating and Beautiful-Truly a Gift
Customer Rating:
Blood Meridian lays waste to its readers. Much is said about the violence in the book, which accumulates to such a scale that by the end the wreckage seems to be as large and as bleak as the land it takes place on, but the true reward of this book is the themes and symbolism that coat each page. It leaves you both devastated by the scope of its brutality and violence, and mezmorized at the beauty of the prose. Those of his who hold Gastby and his green light close to our hearts are hypnotized by the fireside lectures of the judge, looming large at the fire.
My interest in Cormac McCarthy through the Coen's adaptation of No Country For Old Men, which made me mark his name down in the back of my mind. Then in the grocery store I saw The Road, sitting in their tiny book section, and decided to pull the trigger on the impulse buy. What a wonderful decision. I knew from the moment I noticed there were no chapters in the book, that the author appreciated pacing and atmosphere. After finishing The Road, I went looking online for other titles to pick up. Reading that Blood Meridian is considered to be in the top three of the best novels written in the past 50 years creates as effective a sales pitch as any other.
This book is not for the Stephen King crowd. It is not for the Twilight crowd. It is for those who love books that make them think and reflect at length about all they know about evil and the very primal nature of humanity.
This book is not easy to read. The uncompromising and indiscriminate violence of the book is so shocking that at times I found myself having to pause for five or ten minutes just to comprehend the cruelty and horror of what I'd just read. But those who persevere are rewarded with an examination of war and evil and violence that will echo in the quiet moments of your life, long after the book is covered with dust on its shelf or better yet loaned to a friend.
If you love literature, read this book. The violence will cause people to read at differing paces, despite being only slightly longer than The Road, Blood Meridian took me nearly twice as long to read due to the violence. But keep going. It is very very rewarding.
Whats all the hype?
Customer Rating:
After laboring through this novel I must ask whats all the hype? I think it should be placed in a horror book catagory instead of a western. It's full of creepy people and surrealisim. If I want surrelisim I'll listen to Dylan's songs from the 60's/70's. If I want horror I'll read Stephen King. As a western it is uninteresting. Full of flashy violence. As a modern literature masterpiece? No thanks, I'll take John Stienbeck, or Hemmingway. Yeah, it's well written, but not worth the hyperbole.
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