Blood Meridian is a masterpiece of literature. Published in 1985 and not immediately hailed as any grand work of fiction (in fact it was panned slightly by critics as too verbose and too long), Blood Meridian has been selected by The New York Times and Time as their greatest novels. This book has the staying power to be among the American canon for decades to come and Cormac McCarthy is probably the greatest American writer living today. No other author can match his prose or his unique writing style. Not since Hemingway or Faulker have I encountered a writer whose mere style, punctuation and word choice render the prose immediately distinct.
Blood Meridian tells the story of the Kid and his travels throughout the southwest with the Glanton gang, a posse of scalp hunters who collect scalps and body parts of Indians and Mexicans for profit in the lawless west of the mid-1800’s. There is Glanton himself, a violent man whose code of conduct is predicated only on how violence can earn a profit. There is also Judge Holden, a bald, white, hairless man who is presented as violence personified, but who also carries with him a strict code of conduct that only he seems to understand. He is an intelligent man, a religious man, a law man, a philosophical man, a pedophile and a stone cold killer all rolled into one.
This book is a western, a fact that delayed my reading of it for several years. While I love the western in the scope of the film genre, a book of a western intimidated me for one reason. Western films are very much a product of their terrain. What distinguishes a western from any other film is it’s visual capture of deserts, mountains, hideouts, and the desolation of the American West. However, a book must rely on detailed description to illustrate the landscape, and I’ve long viewed description as a mere necessary evil.
But I finally mustered the courage and was well rewarded. McCarthy’s novel is a treatise of the American violence that plagued and helped shape our nation. It is a regrettable fact that the forming of our nation did come at the cost of the near complete genocide of the indigenous Indians. We took their land, raped their women and killed so many of them that their proud descendants are pockmarked throughout the country on reservations. Along with slavery, the extermination of the American Indians is the greatest embarrassment in the history of the United States. This novel serves as a portrait of the frightening mindset of Americans during this period of extermination.
McCarthy’s description is both beautiful and vital to the storytelling. Many critics have used the word biblical to describe the prose of Blood Meridian- which is also indicative of McCarthy’s style. He throws grammar and punctuation to the wind, relying on words to set a mood. Perhaps his most famous grammatical device is his lack of quotation marks to signify spoken dialogue. He relies of the context of his sentences to indicate to the reader whether new dialogue has started. This can take some getting used to, but once you get a feel for his prose and his tempo, the book flows.
This is the most violent book I have ever read. Think of this book as The Passion of the Christ meets Pulp Fiction. The book serves up scene after scene of depraved violent acts interspersed with scenes of dialogue that is both poetic and simple, yet revealing of the times and the environment. What is original about McCarthy’s prose is his consistency. He can narrate a scene where the Judge is showing Glanton’s posse how to make gunpowder with urine or the aftermath of a bloody battle with the same steady voice.
Is there more to this book than violence? Of course there is. My favorite scenes are the ones where it is night and the posse sits by the fire and they just talk. Through these conversations are enclosed the themes of the book. Is violence an inherent characteristic of man? What function can the law serve in a lawless land? Is America a lawless land?
A last word to you, the reader of this column and possible future reader of Blood Meridian: this is NOT an easy book to read. This book will challenge you. This is not a book you can read snippets of here and there while waiting at the doctor’s office. This book demands complete, full attention. It requires at least an hour of quiet, under your bed covers, with your table lamp on and no other distractions. If you make it to the end of this book, drop me a line and we can talk about the controversial ending. There are numerous theories.
