Customer Reviews
Where do I go from here? - By: G. W. Lubin, 23 Dec 2008 
The writings of Cormack McCarthy for came to my notice earlier this year when I read The Road. Next came No Country For Old Men. After that, I decided to read Blood Meridian. It took me several weeks to read it &in some ways it was laborious, having to use a Spanish & English dictionary all the time. But the effort spentin trying to understand all of the unusual words & concepts that he introduces was worth it.
It is an amazing piece of literature, up there with some of the great 20th century authors.
I urge you to read it!
A journey to the dark side - By: Bob Salter, 28 Sep 2008 A long time ago a very astute reviewer said of Herman Melvilles great novel Moby Dick,"A polar wind blows through it & and birds of prey hover over it". A very fitting description of Cormac McCarthys "Blood Meridian" which it resembles.Both the Judge & Ahab are the Devil personified. Both lead their men to destruction over time & vast forbidding terrains. Ahab over the savage seas & The Judge over the stark lunar landscapes of the West. The charactersin both books head towards inexorable destruction.
The book is a Western setin that time & place. But it does not slot easily into that genre. I can think of no Western that I can compare it with. Alan LeMays character Amos Edwardsin "The Searchers" is a similarly dark character but he is not the devil himself. Aside from Moby Dick I can only compare it with certain Old Testament passages or perhaps an eighteenth century Gothic horror story. The setting I feel is irrelevant. I note one reviewer has read this novel five times such was its power. It has a terrifying beauty that has the strange ability to transfix you like the Gorgons head. You know you are looking at dark forces but are unable to avert your eyes. You are appalled yet compelled. I can understand the compulsion to go back to this book again & again. Could I ? I dont believe so. The novel is just too deep a look into mans heart of darkness. But read it once you must. The power of McCarthys writing takes the breath away. It possesses a strange biblical cadence. Yes it is also visceral, have no illusions, but for all that it is some of the most potent stuff I have read. He has his own unique style which the truly great painters & film makers possessed & he is stamped with the same hallmarks of greatness. Dare I say I believe his writing is as visionary as any of the last centuries writers. A bold claim I know. I can think of no author who can describe landscape better. Contemporary or otherwise. Only time will testify to the truth of this statement. McCarthy can make an unpromising plot mesmerising. Read "The Crossing" to evidence this.
Blood Meridian is setin the 1840s American/Mexican West. It covers the activities of a gang of scalphunters who leave rivers of bloodin their wake. It was a period when this area was being laid wastein a scorched earth policy carried out by the Apache Indians. Mexico just South of the border was particularly hard hit. The Apache had warred with the Mexicans for centuries. The hatred ran deep between the two & atrocities were an everyday occurrence. The perfect setting for the nightmare vision that is Blood Meridian.
One can read many things into this book. Many of which may be correct. You must read it yourself & interpret itin your own way. Reading can be a very personal journey. For myself I just saw a rapid & spiralling descent into the dark recesses of the human soul. Aside from the Judge the other characters are not worth mentioning other than to say that they have not a single redeeming feature amongst them. They are a glimpse into those dark places where mans worst vices lurk. No depravity is beneath them. But there is a price to be paid come the final reckoning. They will be judged. The Devil himself liesin wait. He does not age & he laughs at the folly of men. He sees that man never learns from past mistakes. They keep himin business. This keeps him happy so that he can play his fiddle & dance to the end of time.
Far from his best - By: D. McHugh, 15 Sep 2008 
While there's always meritin McCarthy's prose, this book suffers badly from a lack of a plot. It's not much more than a collection of well written & interesting massacres.
Bloody and a Little Tedious - By: Herman Norford, 12 Jul 2008 Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian traces the kid, that is all we know him as, on an abominable adventure. The story traverse the wild west of the Texas & Mexico border landscape. It depicts the debauchery of a gang of rebels led by someone known as the judge & a character called Glanton. This gang ride on & on committing pointless pillage & murder. The reader is drawn into a beautiful rugged terrain where there is little or no sense of society & certainly no moral compass.
Blood Meridian does not depend on story tellingin a conventional sense. Rather the novel's structure & execution is reminiscence of a fly on the wall documentary. The narrator holds the camera & points it at a series of events that is observed. This approach is clearly hightlied by the fact that each chapter summarises eventsin a pithy manner. Further, as the story progresses paragraph after paragraph beginsin this manner: "They rode on, They paused without the cantina, They had lost four men" & so onin a deadpan manner. This approach has the effect of wearing down the reader.
For me the above presents a major flaw with the novel. McCarthy simply report events. Indeed, the novel is said to be based on true events that took placein the nineteenth century. There was no moral dilema for the band of rogues, there was no psychological conflict for any of the characters nor was there any conflict between the individual & his social milieu. As I read, I kept repeating to myself tell me something I don't already know or could researhin the relevant history. In other words, the novel is meant to reveal something newin the story it tells. Arguably, that is one of things that distinguishes it from mere story telling.
Nonetheless, it cannot be said of McCarthy's characters that they operate outside a social context. The politico/social worldin which the chracters operate is a Hobbesian one, where the: "Life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish & short." We know this because the narrator tells us that: "Here beyond men's judgment all covenants were brittle." In this new world men (for it is men who rape & plunder) are asserting themselves & the weak becomes vanquished. Ironically, if McCarthy purports Christian values then even God is unable to help. In one passage the kid enters a church to discover: "There were no pewsin the church & the stone floor was heaped with scalped & naked & partly eaten bodies of some forty souls who'd barricaded themselvesin this house of God against the heathen."
The impact of reading Blood Meridian is that one is left feeling battered by its relentless visciousness & barbarity. The diction of the prose is one of repetitive cruelty. In one pragraph the kid & his prisoner companions saw: "blackeyed young girls ..., a pack of vicious looking human ..., riders wearing scapulars or neckless of dried & blackened human ears." The prose also conjures up a sense of black-darkness. Many of McCarty's adjectives are compound words made up of black, for example blackeye, blackened & blackhaired. Along with the fact that the Indians are labelled: "half naked savages reelingin the saddle, dangerous, filthy brutal, the whole like a visitation from some heathen land where they & others like them fed on human flesh," someone with a politically correct bent would accuse at least McCarty's narrator of racism.
What lifts McCarthy's narrative from its depressing bleakness is at times his marvellous descriptive writing. Here is an example that comes alivein onomatopoeia fashion: "The first cries of birdsin the trees along the river & the clink of harness & the snuffle of horses & the gentle sound of their cropping." These sounds are setin the predawn dark so even though we cannot visualise the scene we nonetheless get a good image of it by the sounds. This is first rate writing.
However, McCarthy's style is a mixed bag of the impenetrable & the transparent. In places the syntax of McCarthy's sentences is biblicalin style. For example, "Now come days of begging, days of theft. Days of riding where there rode no sould save he." On the other hand, the use of figurative language captures & evokes the desolate landscape very well. For instance, "... where the earth drained up into the sky at the edge of creation the top of the sun rose out of nothing like the head of a great red phallus."
About a third of the way through this book, I felt that I had the measure of it & as I was not enjoying it I should cease reading it any further. Nonetheless, I ploughed on & discovered some passages of great writing. However, the sum of these great passages does not make up for a whole book that could be called great.
Disappointing: Not as engrossing as other McCarthy Novels - By: Mr. Laurence Williams, 13 Jun 2008 I have already read several Cormac McCarthy novels & found them all thoroughly entertaining, emotional & thought provoking. I am sorry to say that I found 'Blood Meridian' quite disappointing;in fact, I stopped reading it just over 3/4 of the wayin as I was getting bored with it & just couldn't be bothered to finish it. Despite it clearly being a work of McCarthy, with his fantastic descriptive techniques & conversational style of writing, the story just did not hold my attention or provoke my interestin the same way his other works did.
The plot covers an ever-changing selection of male characters, with a few that are prominent & have an enduring-presence, who are involvedin the 'Indian' wars of the 1840sin West Texas & Mexico. They are essentially mercenaries, except that there is very little discrimination as to who, or what, is killed nor whether a reward will actually be forthcoming for their 'work'.
There is an extreme level of violence, a lot of it is senseless & unprovoked & it goes largely unexplained or justified. Whilst I was not put-off by that violence (or lack of reasoning for it), it was essentially this & other repetitive occurrences which dominate the plot, with nothing else of enough note happening to maintain my attention. I believe the main premise of the novel is to highlight that indiscriminate & brutal violence, but I don't think that was good enough reason to justify it being fictionalised with no other significant elements to the tale.
For me, the magic of McCarthy's writing is that despite there rarely being an all-encompassing plot, an interest is maintained by a combination of being interestedin his fascinating characters and/or the wry humour associated with their story.
Blood Meridian has one interesting character (The Judge), but he does appear until some way into the novel nor feature prominently enough from then on (despite him clearly evolving into the central character); crucially, I did not feel any connection or real interestin the fate of any of the characters.
Yes, as I have already alluded to, the identifiable methods & style McCarthy uses to describe the action are present & occasionally breathtaking. But halfway through the novel, whilst I was still engrossed, I realised the monotony of what was happening & slowly (and reluctantly) realised that this was not classic McCarthy; I think there is good work inside this novel, but it needs to be about half the length.
If I compare this book to my favourite McCarthy work, 'Suttree' (see my Amazon review), there is no contest. When I note that Blood Meridian was publishedin 1985 & Suttreein 1989, I can only presume that McCarthy matured as a writer at some point between those dates.
By all means, give Blood Meridian a try to experience a unique & noteworthy writing-style describing dramatic violence & traumatic life, but don't expect the story to develop much from what is outlined within the first few pages.....
My recommendation is to read Suttree instead !
