Rating: 
Summary: Purple Pretense
Review: I came to this novel urged on by the gushing, almost speechless, praise of Harold Bloom in an interview on television a couple of years ago. He called it the most important novel of our time and MacCarthy the finest writer living. He said all of this in the context of a discussion of the controversy he created in breaking with some literary elitists in his severe criticisms of hallowed icons of the modern literary canon. In short, I got the impression that Bloom was as impatient with pseudo-literary pretentiousness as was I.So I picked up MacCarthy's noble work in a feeling of near euphoric epiphany. This was surely going to be the most gritty, realistic and (above all) unvarnished western ever written. Then I hit this sentence: QUOTE: The thunder moved up from the southwest and lightning lit the desert all about them, blue and barren, great clanging reaches ordered out of the absolute night like some demon kingdom summoned up, the mountains on the sudden skyline stark and black and livid, like a land of some other order out there whose true geology was not stone but fear. That would make for perfect purpling in H. P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness", but its a bit too much to swallow for a novel that aims to be an unvarnished account of unflinching realism. It is by no means an exceptional out take. The book is unctious with this kind of prose. MacCarthy is the absolute worst pretender to literary significance I have ever read for the plain reason that he tries so damned hard to be literary that it gets in your teeth like fine alkali dust. Yes, he has a fine gift for a well turned sentence. So do armies of nameless hacks and better known writers who never get nominated for being visionaries of our time. What sets him apart is his deliberate effort at obtuseness. He makes no obvious effort to say anything, so the mavens of literary pith conclude that it must be so profound that it reaches beyond the capacity of mere mortal words to tell, thoughts angelic or infernal in transcendence. Please. This is the kind of pretentious rubbish that has made Melville the dandy of lit professors for the last 150 years. I hate to be uncharitable, but the emperor is starkers. If you think this is as good as it gets, or rises above the too self-consciously literary efforts of modern fiction, then you need to read more widely.
Rating: 
Summary: Absolute Genius
Review: Those who have a difficult time getting through this book typically fail to grasp the meaning of the Judge's character and significant parts of the subtext. I found it helpful to come across an interpretation that the Judge is mankind-eternal, from humans' existence to its end. The Judge symbolizes man's determination to educate himself, categorize and control his surroundings, learn languages, history, art, philosophy etc etc. On the other hand the Judge symbolizes the absolute, basal violence that man is molded from, and is ever reverting to when confronted with even remote intimidation. McCarthy equates or describes his characters at least 7 or 8 times as ape-like. Man, no matter how evolved will always be a chest-pounding ape.
A lot of people also have problems with the vocabulary and assert it is pedantic. I have to disagree. The vocabulary, while difficult, flows perfectly and is perfectly suited to balance out the reoccuring stories of violence. Furthermore, many of the obscure or antiquated words McCarthy uses have double meanings which make the text thicker and more interesting to delve into.
This is my favorite book, ever. But don't turn to it to get inspired about the future of mankind.
Rating:
Summary: The Seventh Steal
Review: One star for style; one for content....Here I was all set to do my own screenplay: the definitive Western remake of Igmar Bergman's Fifties' existential angstfest: "The Seventh Seal". I had the idea my version would counter the old medieval view with a more modern and updated take on the Christian faith. I sent the screenplay to my beloved cousin: night editor for a great midwestern newspaper and reader voracious. He says, "Read 'Blood Meridian'". YEP! there's the (descriptive-prose-) plagued countryside, the errant, questioning knight (Glanton) and his (kid) squire, the big, baldheaded devil (Holden - caul-field?), the crusade to wipe out thr infidels, the pilgrims, the dancing show! Plus, everybody dies in techicolor 'ultra-vi', like in Burgess! Real Horrorshow! Of course, it took me a couple of false starts to get past McCarthy's hermit hut scene early on, before I realized: Cormac is the protagonist! Well, call me "Fishmeal"! Without a first person, much less a feminine POV, I was leeft pretty much with Peckinpah-ian paeans to stylized butchery...... Bergman did it better in B&W in a narrower aspect ratio, fer sure.... but I did manage to finish the book with a couple of minor technical complaints: the mining scene could have benefitted from a perusal of an old miners' glossary (breaking rocks with a hammer is called 'cobbing', an obscure and arcane term the author somehow missed among the myriads); the word 'judgment' is consistently spelled with that aggravating extra (British) 'e'. Why not spell 'color' with the 'u'?.....
Cousin Jackie: with your permission, I will send the screenplay along.
Rating: 
Summary: I couldn't get through it
Review: This book was an extremely tough read for me. I don't know what it was about this book but I had to struggle to get through it. Once I put it all together it had an interesting plot.It just needed to be written better.
Rating:
Summary: McCarthy's masterpiece
Review: Blood Meridian
by Cormac McCarthy
Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy, is the most overwhelming novel I've read for years. I came late to it in two senses. It's almost 20 years since it was published in 1985, and it is late in my own reading life, because I'm 63. I read it on holiday. Not a comfortable choice, and certainly not the best thing to relax with on a sunlounger, while supping a drink with a hat on. But Blood Meridian is, at the risk of sounding pretentious, on a par with Faulkner's 'As I Lay Dying' or Beckett's 'Waiting For Godot' or even that most astounding work of all, 'King Lear'. High claims, but give it a try.
You might well have to try it more than once, because it is very strong, and at times even rancid, meat. But a lot of people, after they've closed the book, might find they can't read another novel for a while.
I finished the book, and picked up another. But the pages were slipping by and all my head could think on was Blood Meridian. So I did something I very rarely do. I put the other novel down and turned back to Blood Meridian, and read it again. It's a hell of a book. And I'm not speaking particularly metaphorically. It tells us more about the human condition than most other respectable works we laud so much. Blood Meridian is original, disturbing, heretical, challenging, difficult, and awe inspiring. Just like King Lear.
Here endeth my rant.
Rating:
Summary: "war is god"
Review: The online reviews of this book confirm my suspicion that intellectuals are seldom original in their appraisal of anything. Once an "authority" makes an analysis, everyone who wishes to confirm their self-perception of themselves as intelligent gets on the band wagon. Selective perception affirms the observations of those with whom they would like to be identified.
Literati seem to thrive on the obtuse and esoteric. I loved "All the Pretty Horses." This book is something different altogether. How pretentious can you get? Obscure wording and arcane imagery are substituted for subtle discriminations and richness. The juxtaposition of novel phrases and incongruent words does not constitute genius in a writer.
Literary criticism is replete with the antiquated artifacts of Freudian symbolism. A character represents some psychological attribute of the author or some universal archetype which we can all apprehend through the representative language of the writer.
The less we understand it, the more "depth" it must have; the more meaning. Horsey Poop. Meridian has biblical allusions. Does this teach us anything about right or wrong? Have we had an emotional learning experience that we take away; an increase of knowledge or wisdom?
Do we need anyone to tell us how violent our species is and how capable we are of atrocities against our own kind? The violence in Meridian becomes gratuitous and predictable. It serves no purpose.
The worst part of this book is the patronizing morality lessons presented through the character of the judge. The author gets on a soap box and presents his personalized philosophy of life in a manner which reminded me of Ayn Rand at her best.
There is no "wisdom of the heart" here - merely artifice.
Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: The book takes place in the early 1800s and follows the exploits of a nearly silent Tennessee youth referred to only as "the kid," who leaves his home and seeks a future out west. After falling in with a belicose captain that entertains delusions of conquering Mexico, the kid barely surives a savage attack by Apaches upon their company. Shorty thereafter, he joins the Glanton Gang--a rabble of men who make their living from the flourishing scalp trade. It is in the company of these killers that the kid makes the acquaintance of the Judge--one of the most fascinating and horrific characters I have ever encountered in the entire cannon of the written word.
The book is violent in the extreme, yet McCarthy's command of language is so superb, his story telling so sublime, that the reader never feels a scene is cheap or gratuitous. It this duality between the incredible beauty of the language and the stark brutality of its subject that gives the book its power. Critic Steven Shaviro comments, "the scariest thing about Blood Meridian is that it is a euphoric and exhilarating book, rather than a tragically alienated one, or a gloomy, depressing one."
McCarthy also researched his book heavily, so that descriptions of landscape, fauna, and life in that period ring true. Apparently the characters of Glanton and the Judge are based on real people. Chamberlain, who rode with the real Glanton, gives an icy account of the fun had on their bloody conquest in his memoirs, entitled "My Confession." And the scalp trade is faithfully depicted and historically accurate, though some may have a hard time envisioning when such a time in America could ever have existed. But the book isn't merely about America or the acts of violence of any one period in human history; it really is a meditation on the human animal, our limitations, and our collective character. McCarthy opens his book with this telling passage:
"Clark, who lead last year's expedition to the Afar region of northern Ethiopia, and UC Berkley colleague Tim D. White, also said that a re-examination of a 300,000-year-old fossil skull found in the same region earlier shows evidence of having been scalped."
--The Yuma Daily Sun, June 13th, 1982.
Lastly, I cannot stress how rich this book is. Yes, it is a difficult read--McCarthy dislikes punctuation and has an enormous vocabulary, I recommend keeping a dictionary handy--but the rewards are immense. The best literature to me has always included not only soaring language, but ideas worthy of such language. Blood Meridian is perhaps the purest example of this I have ever found. I'll leave with this passage, taken shortly after the kid arrives in a rough desert outpost and is drawn toward the light of saloon:
"Then he pushed open the door and entered. A dimly seething rabble had coagulated within. As if the raw board structure erected for their containment occupied some ultimate sink into which they had gravitated from off the surrounding flatlands."
Comparing men to objects affected by gravity also ties into one of the book's main themes, yet I hope you all will attempt to discover that on your own. (Yes, I'm ending my review with a cheesy "If you want to find out more, please read the book." ) A++
Rating:
Summary: Atmospheric and harrowing tale of the 'Wild West'
Review: This book is the ultimate litmus test for the avid reader of fiction. An arguable triumph of prose, style, form and content it has no equal I could think of to compare it to. I haven't read an exceptional amount of Westerns but then I'm not sure that this is the best category to place this book. It is epic in story conception and completely without the romantic elements that are so prevalent in such novels. Its theme of depraved brutality is unlikely to appeal to a mass audience despite the magnificent poetic style and form McCarthy utilizes here. Even though I was repelled by the violence of the story and found it quite difficult to read I still felt driven to finish it because of the author's excellence in creating a powerful visual picture inside the mind's eye. An example of the prose found within the pages of McCarthy's book: "There is hardly in the world a waste so barren but some creature will not cry out at night, yet here one was and they listened to their breathing in the dark and the cold and they listened to the systole of the rubymeated hearts that hung within them."
McCarthy has turned the normal pageantry of the Western tale inside on itself in an effort to help us discover the part of the western advancement of our nation that seeks to remain hidden and often at our own insistence. Our desire to remain happily ignorant of this dark region of history comes naturally to everyone - it isn't pleasant to hear (or read) about. And confronting that evil (and being confronted by that evil) even at this now great distance of time is unsettling for most of us. It won't be an easy read for anyone, will get under your skin and stay there for the duration of your reading and may even leave you feeling uneasy after you've finished.
"Blood Meridian" recounts the odyssey of a Tennessean, 'The Kid', a fourteen year old runaway who eventually falls in with a band of men that have only the barest threads of humanity which they loose quickly. It isn't long before the kid learns to survive by learning their ways, willingly assisting in the terror they spread as they journey westward beginning at the Texas - Mexico border and spanning a few years between the 1840's & the 1850's. The rest of the supporting characters in the story are vividly fleshed out with the judge, an educated and shrewd man among near-savages, being the most unforgettable. The kid outlasts all of his counterparts with his wanderings taking him to the coast of California and almost back to the same spot where his travels began, meeting up with the judge one final time.
Understandably "Blood Meridian" will not fascinate each reader in the way it did me. Read as many of the reviews here as you can; you'll see that there is a huge debate over the merits of the book. There is plenty of criticism and equal (or more) amounts of praise for this controversial but bravura work by McCarthy. If you're a reader of fiction who is looking for a real challenge then I suggest the book to you; and be certain to venture as far into the book as you can. Getting accustomed to the style and rhythm of the storytelling takes a while, and steeling yourself against the often numbing theme of violence will also be difficult at the beginning. But I found the rewards were worth it and I can't recall such a senses-stunning, more memorable ending to a book ever.
Rating:
Summary: no place for the innocent
Review: Based loosely on actual historic events, McCarthy-alongside of James Salter, probably the best living American author--explores bloodlust and the desire to know and in knowing possess and in possessing destroy that seems central to American expansion. He glorifies nobody, not the Indian hunters nor the Indians; they are all of clay and at each heart burns a darkness, save maybe that of the main character, who himself cannot stand up against the darkness, but will be sucked down into it, destroyed like everything else in a world that has no respect for innocence and no real belief in the sacredness of anything.
Rating:
Summary: Best of the West
Review: I never knew the devil ran around naked with just a cowboy hat on. Oh, you evil west. Read it and understand
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