Rating: 
Summary: Our American past written out on a mythic scale
Review: I was directed to Blood Meridian quite by accident, and opened the novel with no idea of its contents. What I found was an unforgiving and towering vision of human cruelty. Cormac McCarthy's text is thoroughly unsentimental, laying out the harsh landscape and times of the 1850's U.S./Mexican border wars with a cascading series of unfogettable images. At no time does the book allow the reader into the minds and hearts of its characters- we are forced to live as they do: mystified and terrorized by the scale of unending destruction and carnage the novel describes.But the book is much more a than historical novel. Blood Meridian is the story of an innocence lost- an innocence not of single character in the book (none there would admit to naivete), but lost by the whole of mankind. In the character of Judge Holden, Cormac McCarthy gives us the final outcome of man's thirst for knowledge and experience: the elegant sadist. All things are known unto him, and (once known) may not exist without his consent. The judge gathers the facts of his world coolly and precisely- but he does not store them to create. He gathers them simply to show the ownership and stewardship of his world, of himself and all creation. As all things are known, so are they destroyed- as lightly and as simply as their weight and measure has been taken. His knowledge is the deepest knowledge of all: the hollowness of his own heart. In this way he is the horrible (and logical) product of Adam's first taste of the Tree of Knowledge. The language of this novel is a delight, both exacting and all encompassing, and the details of its descriptions are shared with a carnal glee. The amazing work of McCarthy's text is that it calls to be devoured, and eaten whole. It's no accident that the reader feels a partipant in the predatory cycles of the world of novel- and it is only after he has eaten that he realizes what it is he is digesting.
Rating:
Summary: beauty amidst bleakness: a brilliant work of art
Review: "BLOOD MERIDIAN" is a novel of awe-inspiring ferocity, a mythological Western illuminating the choices men make and the consequences of their action and inaction. The stark and monumental beauty of the landscape is in fact the most noticeable aspect of this work ( I found that having some familiarity with the desert and mountains of New Mexico and Arizona helped me in following McCarthy's brilliant descriptive prose ). Somehow, through a tightly controlled yet rhapsodic style, McCarthy conveys the beauty of the natural surroundings in an objective manner, neither from the perspective of Glanton's nihilistic band of scalphunters ( a poisonous human "organism" taking on the characteristics of the amoral and equally deadly environment they rove through ) nor from apparently any human perspective at all ( I confess I was not aware of the presence of a narrator ). The paradox is that these passages ARE filtered through the lenses of McCarthy's perceptive and, one senses, humane sensibilities. To me, one of the primary themes the book conveys is what happens with man's divorce from any vestige of citizenship, a separation most definitely not resulting in the wistful Romantic era notion of a "return to nature". The overriding power of the Ancient Greek "tragic vision" of life has been re-born again in "BLOOD MERIDIAN" ( the myth of Pandora's Box comes to mind; also the symbolism of the snake devouring itself ). The novel's most fascinating and mysterious character is "Judge" Holden, a physical oddity ( 7 foot tall, albino, completely hairless ) and a figure of immense intelligence, creativity and rhetorical eloquence. His persuasive brilliance is "balanced" with proportional reserves of evil ( he is the archetypal destroyer; a child-murderer and perverter of dreams and aspirations ). The judges' kindness is cruelty, his honesty is deception- he is the very emblem of arrogance and resentment. The "Judge" is a character worthy of comparison with the great villians in literature ( Milton's Satan; Dostoevsky's "Grand Inquisitor" ). Previous thoughts notwithstanding, I don't wish to convey the notion that this is a simplistic morality play; McCarthy's ideas are not easily defined and categorized. As with all great works of art, this book contains much more than one can elucidate. Riches of insight abound. "BLOOD MERIDIAN" is a novel to come back to every few years; there is that much substance in it. An excerpt from the writings of the German mystic Jacob Boehme cited at the very beginning of the novel sets the tone perfectly: "It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost as if in sorrowing. There is no sorrowing. For sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death, and death and dying are the very life of the darkness." I urge others to journey through the bleak beauty of "BLOOD MERIDIAN". It is harrowing but you will be the richer for it.
Rating:
Summary: Intensely Powerful
Review: I was enticed to read McCarthy's "Blood Meridian" after listening to Professor Harold Bloom expound on the merits of the book on a recent edition of C-Span's "Booknotes". Bloom's praise of McCarthy and the novel were both effusive and well deserved. After finishing the tale,it seemed to me that the author's work should be viewed on two separate levels.First,the grotesque violence and the ceaseless,utter depravity will likely forever change your outlook of that time and place in history and perhaps of human nature as well. But on a larger scale,there is a deeper message.We see in Judge Holden,a creature of pure malevolence,the embodiment of evil incarnate.But,particularly in the final chapter, McCarthy opens our eyes to the fact that this evil,metaphorically expressed in the character of the Judge,vanquishes everything in its path and is in the end,all powerful,omnipotent,and eternal.
Rating: 
Summary: Blood! Dust! Boredom!
Review: On the book-jacket, Harold Bloom (of Yale) propounded this dreary book to be the "major esthetic achievement of any living American writer." Perhaps this is because literary debunkers enjoy demolishing romantic notions of the American West, "region-building" themselves a new nationalism forged from blood and dust. Fine. Maybe they're right, if not, re-bunkers will appear soon enough. For those uninterested in this sort of academic dithering, the novel will remind you of "Fight Club"--only without the delightful Helena Bonham Carter to contrast with page after page of intensly brooding, harsh accounts of the mid-19th century American West. The book concludes with a standard tribute to human nihilism: the Judge, personifying malificience, dancing and proclaiming his immortality. In between lynchings, barfights, and battles, there is some extraordinary prose and a few interesting reflections. Overall, those who have no need of being shocked into a new view of the West may be a trifle--dare I say it?--bored with this occassionally overwrought reminder of how dangerous a place the world can be.
Rating:
Summary: Absorbing and Fantastic
Review: The challenge of the first half of this novel is that most of us have never been part of such a world. It is Illearth brought to the American West. Then, in the middle of it all, a certain osmosis seems to take place, and the current of events catches one up, and all that remains (and matters) is to see where it will carry you. Fascinating, and worth the effort.
Rating:
Summary: This is the first book I have read written by Mr. McCarthy.
Review: This is the first book I have read by Mr. McCarthy. His style is similar to that of Faulkner and Hemingway; anyone familiar with those two will see the obvious influences. McCarthy's prose is an unusual combination of Hemingway's minimalism and Faulkner's multi-clausical (sometimes run-on) sentence structures and colorful use of obscure words. Also Faulknerian is the frugal use of punctuation. Dialog is never set in quotation marks, which might be confusing to some at first. Also a little hard to take is the main character, The Kid. He's a tad on the violent side, and McCarthy pulls no punches about this character's dark nature. Although The Kid isn't responsible for all the novel's violence, he does his fair share, and then some. But this fact can be overlooked by McCarthy's writing; his prose draws you into the story, however ugly it may be. In fact, the disposition of "Blood Maridian" reminded me of Faulkner's "Sanctuary." A great, but dark, read. But I was glad to have read it. "Blood Maridian" is another example that modern literature is not dead. McCarthy also wrote the "Border Trilolgy," "All the Pretty Horses," "The Crossing," and "Cities on the Plain." Also worth checking out is his debut "The Orchard Keeper" and "Sutree."
Rating:
Summary: What's the 'bloody' point?
Review: The prose is excellent, the characters very convincing, and the descriptive narrative is truly atmospheric. You really feel as though you have entered a living, breathing world in this novel. So why the hideous, quite pointles violence for scene after scene after scene? Is it just some immature impulse on the author's part to see how disgusting he can be? Is it an attempt to out-do the Bret Easton Ellises of this world? It's a shame that such an obviously talented author stoops to such repulsive imagery - the novel would have worked perfectly well without it. The concept of decency seems to have disappeared from modern American writing - apparently not even the finest luminaries are immune. I can hardly bear to say it, but if you think a work which features graphic descriptions of infants' heads being smashed open across rocks is still literature, then read it. Otherwise, there's really something lacking in someone who can publish this stuff without embarrassment.
Rating:
Summary: Blood Meridian: A Relevant and Brilliant Masterpiece
Review: One of the strengths of this novel is its depiction of genocide. Bring the characters into the present, ditch their horses, and arm them with automatic weapons and this novel could be describing any number of mass murders that have occurred across the globe in the past decade. The fact that it's describing America 150 years ago makes it that more relevant. It peels away all the Old West myths and reveals the ugliness behind. There are no heroes to root for; there are no gunfights between the good guys and bad guys at the OK Corral. Often, the people being killed are women and children. From fistfigts in mud to horses swelling from snake bites to The Kid(the central character, if there really is one) carrying a festering arrow stub in his leg to the countless sculpings of Native Amercians, this is far more than a "western". It's an epic novel that just happens to be set in the West. McCarthy's writing is a feast, filled with long sentences, tight dialogue, and an endless supply of details. The only flaw I can think of is that it climaxes too soon, with a four page tour-de-force of energized prose, as McCarthy describes in numbing, vivid, almost hyperreal detail, a Comanche attack. This centerpiece reminded me of only one other moment in modern literature, Julio Cortazar's rumination on jazz in Hopscotch. I have read both scenes by themselves just for their accomplishments in language, for the fact that they show writers playing with all their skills in an effort to elevate their craft. With Blood Meridian, it doesn't appear that McCarthy has elevated just his own craft but that of all American writing.
Rating: 
Summary: Group Speak is McCarthy is Good, But............
Review: I have read four of McCarthy's books, the latest being "Blood Meridian." This author tells a good story, and his prose is among some of the best of our modern writers. Unfortunately his rambling, cracked philosophical gibberish often detracts the reader from what otherwise would have been an excellent novel. This is an author who is in love with his command of baroque and arcane words, and far too often allows himself (at the expense of the reader) greatluxuries in convoluted, confusing passages more akin to riddles than novels. McCarthy is a precise historian and a good story teller, but too self-absorbed for his own good. "Blood Meridian" is a good novel; it could have been a great one.
Rating:
Summary: The Great American Novel
Review: Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian: or, the Evening Redness in the West (Vintage, 1983)
availability: in print, the usual suspects The whole idea of "the great american novel" really kind of misses the point because we have taken the original meaning of it and twisted it. The "great american novel" should probably today be caleld "the quintessential american novel," because the word great, in this context, refers to the novel that will encompass what we have been, why, how we got there, and where we were going. And because of the story, by definition, it cannot be "great." The story of America will be unremittingly (and unapologetically) brutal and bloody; it will lack all traces of logic and civilization on a grand scale (though, certainly, there will be logical or civilized characters); and throughout there will remain the slightest glimmer of hope, although depending on the viewpoint of the author, that hope may be snuffed out at the end of the novel or kept alive. I have read the great american novel, and it is Cormac McCarthy's stunning Blood Meridian. Blood Meridian centers on a character known only as The Kid, who leaves home at fourteen to make his fortune during the expansion of the American West (the book begins ten years or so before the outbreak of the Civil War). (and comparisons with the hallmark of that genre, Robert Deveraux's brilliant Deadweight, are inevitable, and correct). McCarthy never shies away from the actions of his characters, never allows the reader any leeway, but the prose in which McCarthy describes the atrocities Glanton's band commits is so starkly beautiful the reader cannot help but be capitvated by the carnage. And during the lulls in the action, when members of the band philosophize, the philosophy is not so overbearing as it is instructive for those who may not be able to understand the mechanisms that work in the collective mind of Glanton's troops: * * * The good book says that he that lives by the sword shall perish by the sword, said the black. The judge smiled, his face shining with grease. What right man would have it any other way? he said. The good book does indeed count war an evil, said Irving. Yet there's many a bloody tale of war inside it. It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way. He turned to Brown, from whom he'd heard some whispered slur or demurrer. Ah, Davy, he said. It's your own trade we honor here. Why not rather take a small bow. Let each acknowledge each. My trade? Certainly. What is my trade? War. War is your trade. Is it not? And it ain't yours? Mine too. Very much so. What about all them notebooks and bones and stuff? All other trades are contained in that of war. Is that why war endures? No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not. That's your notion. The judge smiled. Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselevs sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all. Suppose two men at cards with nothing to wager save their lives. Who has not heard such a tale? A turn of the card. The whole universe for such a player has labored clanking to this moment which will tell if he is to die at that man's hand or that man at his. What more certain validation of a man's worth could there be? This enhancement of the game to its ultimate state admits no argument concerning the notion of fate. The selection of one man over another is a preference absolute and irrevocable and it is a dull man indeed who could reckon so profound a decision without agency or significance either one. In such games as have for their stake the annihilation of the defeated the decisions are quite clear. This man holdgin this particular arrangement of cards in his hand is thereby removed from existence. This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at least a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god. Brown studied the judge. You're crazy Holden. Crazy at last. * * * Like James Jones' masterpiece The Thin Red Line, McCarthy gives us men at war, though McCarthy's troops answer to no one but themselves, and act as such, and he does it in such a way that we cannot help but understand what it is about violence and bloodshed that makes it so attractive to some. By far the best book I have come across this year. If all of McCarthy's novels are this good, then truly, he is one of America's most neglected authors, as The Atlantic monthly would have us believe. ***** * * * (It's worth nothing, by the way, that while I've handed out a number of four-and-a-halfs this year, Blood Meridian is the first book in the year 2000 to receive a five star rating.)
| 
