Review: Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian is on enough “best of” lists that I’ve been curious about it for years. Violence is McCarthy’s preferred subject and he writes it with lyrical language that’s often described as biblical. His stories are stomach-churning and frequently depressing since they aim to capture the worst inevitabilities of human nature. It’s taken me a decade to get through The Road, No Country for Old Men, Outer Dark, and Blood Meridian. While Blood Meridian may be held as a high point in American lit; it’s the weakest McCarthy I’ve read.

The Plot

The kid, an unnamed runaway, rides into Nacogdoches in 1849. There, he meets Judge Holden and gets in a number of fights before leaving town. After word gets out about what he did to a barman, he’s recruited for Captain White’s army “to whip up on the Mexicans.” (29) This army is short-lived and the kid later falls in with Glanton’s gang (which has historical roots). Though the gang’s official goal is to kill and scalp Apaches, they branch out to kill most everyone they meet. Judge Holden re-enters the story and becomes more mythic, grandiose, and violent with each sequence. There’s no character development, no commentary, and the only breaks from routine are little revelations about the judge’s character: He’s a linguist, a philosopher, a chemist, and a frequent nudist who doesn’t seem to age.

The Questionably Great

Really beautiful sentences. I know I mocked this in my review of The Little Stranger, but Blood Meridian is chock full o’ beautiful sentences. The downside is that many of the best sentences cover recurring elements—the landscape, pseudo-philosophical babble—and they run together in their repetition. It’s also hard to distinguish between the characters because they all have the same voice (except the judge) and they don’t care where they’re going so long as they get to shoot and scalp people along the way and half of them don’t have an opinion on the shooting and scalping. The judge isn’t the best character; he’s the only character. As far as everyone else is concerned, this is the book: “Oh, the landscape; look at the sun’s position. Load the gun. Bang. Get shot. Horse gear is neat. Load the gun. Bang. Bang. Oh, the landscape is covered in blood now.” Which is rubbish, of course, but not the way McCarthy writes it.

It’s more difficult than I thought to say this book reaches greatness on behalf of some fancy phrasing. At the end of the day, Blood Meridian isn’t anything that most people will want to read. It’s not anything that I want to read again. The book falls into an abyss. Maybe this wasn’t the best time to read a book that is all “us vs. them” when there’s no reason given for the “vs.” other than nationality/race. At times, even this falls away and not even indefensible racism is held as a reason. Nothing comes of anything in this book—no, that’s not right: Violence comes of violence, again and again. Yet no one has a thought or reaction to this. Nothing is gained, felt, or learned. No one takes joy and no one feels guilt. It’s just one long slog of barren landscapes, horses, guns, and depraved acts. Is the utter meaninglessness supposed to make a point? Other McCarthy books don’t have this problem: In Outer Dark and No Country, the seemingly unstoppable and unreasonable violence that stalks the protagonists follows a logic—it’s meant as a brutal comeuppance, no one is clean, and no one can get away. But here?

You know what, shove it. This book blows. I hate it. Even the pretty sentences are messed up and I read the whole stupid thing and didn’t even get a proper ending. And WHO SITS NAKED IN AN OUTHOUSE? OUTHOUSES ARE DISGUSTING. !@#$%^&!

Why Outer Dark, No Country For Old Men, and The Road Are All Better

Because they are. The end of Outer Dark is also heinous, but at least the characters have thoughts and motives beyond “I’m hungry” and “screw these people.”

In the case of the judge, what is the point of creating the landscape/routine/image of a hyper-real tinderbox in which resources are scarce and people are desperate, only to deposit an overpowered (possibly ageless) creature to really stir the violence? Like these people couldn’t do it themselves? Why must the violence be so exaggerated that it’s the one thing not bound by reality? Perhaps this is why The Road is the stronger book: The horror in The Road is that regular people have been made monstrous through fear and desperation. Its hellish world is already here, just waiting for a disaster to bring it out. No judge required.

Oh, and should you read Blood Meridian, the people who tap out because of the violence aren’t just being squeamish. It’s bad. How bad? Well, once you read a tremendously long sentence all about spearing, clubbing, scalping, disemboweling, mutilating, and sodomizing (which could probably get this post flagged), you get a description of the aftermath:

And now the horses of the dead came pounding out of the smoke and dust and circled with flapping leather and wild manes and eyes whited with fear like the eyes of the blind and some were feathered with arrows and some lanced through and stumbling and vomiting blood as they wheeled across the killing ground and clattered from sight again. Dust stanched the wet and naked heads of the scalped who with the fringe of hair below their wounds and tonsured to the bone now lay like maimed and naked monks in the bloodslaked dust and everywhere the dying groaned and gibbered and horses lay screaming. (54)

Sidenote: Is any other author allowed to use “and” 16 times in two sentences or is McCarthy truly allowed to do whatever he wants? He also hates quotation marks, apostrophes, and hyphens. Oh! I thought of something nice to say: I love how his prose is intensely layered with fab $20 words that are rare in life and lit. The disparity between what he writes and the vocab/education-level of his characters creates a unique texture.

Overall: I don’t know.

Translation: Read at your own risk.