Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian

[Rex Kwon Do]

To each their own. There are classics I struggle to see the greatness of. I for one found Blood Meridian to possess some of the finest prose ever penned in the English language.

Fair enough. But just so I don't come off as a hater, I'll post some "evidence" of what I see as shitty writing.

"He looked like some loutish knight beriddled by a troll." (I found this sentence just mind-blowingly stupid. I felt like he was playing a joke on me at this part.)

"They crossed before the sun and vanished one by one and reappeared again and they were black in the sun and they rode out of that vanished sea like burnt phantoms with the legs of the animals kicking up the spume that was not real and they were lost in the sun and lost in the lake and they shimmered and slurred together and separated again and they were augmented by planes in lurid avatars and began to coalesce and there began to appear above them in the dawn-broached sky a hellish likeness of their ranks riding huge and inverted and the horses' legs incredibly elongate trampling down the high thin cirrus and the howling antiwarriors pendant from their mounts immense and chimeric and the high wild cries carrying that flat and barren pan like the cries of souls broke through some misweave in the weft of things into the world below.

 

[Rex Kwon Do]

maybe you should read something by Danielle Steel or Grisham

Good one. Let's see your reading list, genius. Let's look at some of what I've read in 2013 already...

Billy Budd - Melville
Snow Country - Kawabata
The Master of Go - " "
Marcovaldo - Calvino
Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather - Xingjian
Who Killed Palomino Molero? - Vargas Llosa
Death in the Andes - " "
Men Without Women - Hemingway
Exiles - Joyce
Harp of Burma - Takeyama
Deliverance - Dickey
On Mozart - Burgess
The Woman in the Dunes - Abe
Pan - Hamsun
Othello - Shakespeare
Julius Caesar - " "
Titus Andronicus - " "
Hadji Murad - Tolstoy
Mozart and Salieri - Pushkin
Despair - Nabokov
Mary - " "
Transparent Things - " "
Waiting for Godot - Beckett
The Road - McCarthy
The Fatal Eggs - Bulgakov
The Road - London
John Barleycorn - " "

That's just a selection from the past 5 months. So please don't question my reading choices; it only makes you look stupid. Just because I don't like this book doesn't mean I read tripe. But by all means, stick to parroting what "respected" critics like Bloom say and making ignorant assumptions about those who disagree. Makes you look so intelligent.

 

[new_mexico1]

I just started reading Blood Meridian last night, and I'm about 60 pages in at the moment. I'm waiting for the part where this becomes a candidate for greatest novel of the 20th century, or "worthy of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick," as Harold Bloom seems to think. Because right now, I'm not chomping at the bit when I think of picking this one up. It doesn't repulse me due to the violence, it just bores me. The writing isn't very good, either. Maybe it's just taking me a while to get drawn in...

BTW, this is certainly not the first thing of McCarthy's I've read. In the past I've read No Country for Old Men, The Road, and The Sunset Limited. That's also the order of enjoyment, decreasing from left to right.

For me I didn't get too much enjoyment out of it while reading. I probably struggled just as much as anyone to get through it. It was after i was fully finished and it sank in.

In the last month or so I've read the Great Gatsby, As I Lay Dying and Blood Meridian when it comes to novels. I'd say Blood Meridian was easily the best.

 

[Rex Kwon Do]

For me I didn't get too much enjoyment out of it while reading. I probably struggled just as much as anyone to get through it. It was after i was fully finished and it sank in.

In the last month or so I've read the Great Gatsby, As I Lay Dying and Blood Meridian when it comes to novels. I'd say Blood Meridian was easily the best.

I'm going to do my best to solider through. It's too bad, as I was looking forward to it. I often try and delay reading an author's magnum opus until I read a few of their other works first. Perhaps I built BM up too much in my mind, since lots of critics place it above his others that I've read.

I'm a Faulkner fan, so I'll be surprised if I end up liking BM more than AILD.

 

[Ricky Spanish]

Good one. Let's see your reading list, genius. Let's look at some of what I've read in 2013 already...

Billy Budd - Melville
Snow Country - Kawabata
The Master of Go - " "
Marcovaldo - Calvino
Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather - Xingjian
Who Killed Palomino Molero? - Vargas Llosa
Death in the Andes - " "
Men Without Women - Hemingway
Exiles - Joyce
Harp of Burma - Takeyama
Deliverance - Dickey
On Mozart - Burgess
The Woman in the Dunes - Abe
Pan - Hamsun
Othello - Shakespeare
Julius Caesar - " "
Titus Andronicus - " "
Hadji Murad - Tolstoy
Mozart and Salieri - Pushkin
Despair - Nabokov
Mary - " "
Transparent Things - " "
Waiting for Godot - Beckett
The Road - McCarthy
The Fatal Eggs - Bulgakov
The Road - London
John Barleycorn - " "

That's just a selection from the past 5 months. So please don't question my reading choices; it only makes you look stupid. Just because I don't like this book doesn't mean I read tripe. But by all means, stick to parroting what "respected" critics like Bloom say and making ignorant assumptions about those who disagree. Makes you look so intelligent.

dude, i said nothing about anything. I just named some stuff you might enjoy. trying to help you out, bromosexual. I did not make any comment on blood meridian being good or not. I did not say if grisham is any good or not.

2013 what have i read. most of the good ones are re-reads

game of thrones (reread)
the informers - brett easton ellis x2 (reread)
glamorama - brett easton ellis (reread)
american psycho - brett easton ellis (reread)
neuromancer (reread)
the haunting of hill house - shirley jackson (reread)
flowers in the attic (reread, yeah, i went there)

workshop of horror
the lottery - shirley jackson
starship troopers (well, half of it before i forgot i was reading it)
the handmaid's tale
pet semetary
the histories - herodotus
God's battalion - stark
physics of the impossible - michio kaku

 

[new_mexico1]

I'm going to do my best to solider through. It's too bad, as I was looking forward to it. I often try and delay reading an author's magnum opus until I read a few of their other works first. Perhaps I built BM up too much in my mind, since lots of critics place it above his others that I've read.

I'm a Faulkner fan, so I'll be surprised if I end up liking BM more than AILD.

Yeah. That can happen with books, movies, etc. And sometimes you just don't like things. And sometimes you'll love shit that others can't understand why. I liked Blood Meridian so much it's the type of thing that I would spend cash on memorabilia and art or stuff like that. It sucks cause there doesn't seem to be any.

I'm reading The Old Man and the Sea for something quick while I think of another book to go at. I really liked As I Lay Dying. I might just go back to Faulkner right after I'm done with Old Man and the sea. I know you liked Light in August. I was thinking of going with Sound and the Fury.

 

[Rex Kwon Do]

dude, i said nothing about anything. I just named some stuff you might enjoy. trying to help you out, bromosexual. I did not make any comment on blood meridian being good or not. I did not say if grisham is any good or not.

2013 what have i read. most of the good ones are re-reads

game of thrones (reread)
the informers - brett easton ellis x2 (reread)
glamorama - brett easton ellis (reread)
american psycho - brett easton ellis (reread)
neuromancer (reread)
the haunting of hill house - shirley jackson (reread)
flowers in the attic (reread, yeah, i went there)

workshop of horror
the lottery - shirley jackson
starship troopers (well, half of it before i forgot i was reading it)
the handmaid's tale
pet semetary
the histories - herodotus
God's battalion - stark
physics of the impossible - michio kaku

Looks like you might like Stephanie Meyer or whoever writes those romance novels with Fabio on the cover they sell in the supermarket.

 

[Camus123]

Yeah. That can happen with books, movies, etc. And sometimes you just don't like things. And sometimes you'll love shit that others can't understand why. I liked Blood Meridian so much it's the type of thing that I would spend cash on memorabilia and art or stuff like that. It sucks cause there doesn't seem to be any.

I'm reading The Old Man and the Sea for something quick while I think of another book to go at. I really liked As I Lay Dying. I might just go back to Faulkner right after I'm done with Old Man and the sea. I know you liked Light in August. I was thinking of going with Sound and the Fury.

Faulkner is one of those classic authors I can't seem to appreciate, which is odd since Gabriel Garcia Marquez in one of my favourite novelists and they say he was heavily influenced by Faulkner. It does sometimes require a few readings for me to grasp the genius of some writers though.

 

[Rex Kwon Do]

Yeah. That can happen with books, movies, etc. And sometimes you just don't like things. And sometimes you'll love shit that others can't understand why. I liked Blood Meridian so much it's the type of thing that I would spend cash on memorabilia and art or stuff like that. It sucks cause there doesn't seem to be any.

I'm reading The Old Man and the Sea for something quick while I think of another book to go at. I really liked As I Lay Dying. I might just go back to Faulkner right after I'm done with Old Man and the sea. I know you liked Light in August. I was thinking of going with Sound and the Fury.

Yeah, would definitely recommend LIA. I think my next Faulkner will be Pylon, just because it's supposed to be absolute shit. Supposed to be painfully obvious that he just phoned it in for the paycheck. I have a perverse interest in reading bad books by good authors. I read Farnham's Freehold and The Sixth Column, both by Heinlein, for just this reason :icon_lol:

 

[new_mexico1]

Faulkner is one of those classic authors I can't seem to appreciate, which is odd since Gabriel Garcia Marquez in one of my favourite novelists and they say he was heavily influenced by Faulkner. It does sometimes require a few readings for me to grasp the genius of some writers though.

Faulkner and McCarthy get a lot of comparisons, too.

Also, with more difficult books sometimes I'll use notes to help me here and there while I read. I say screw it. The point is to grasp and enjoy the story. It's not a school test.

 

[Nights1515]

New teaser from QOTSA song goes so well when reading this book. The bass sounds like something The Judge would walk into before causing some Ultra-Violence. Just something that popped in my head when I was listening to it.

 

[new_mexico1]

here a good candidate for the role of the judge

Lol. Abercrombie guy? He does have the weird facial look I imagined the Judge to have. Just gotta shave that dome. Lol.

 

[Ebay]

Amazing book. I tried to write my undergraduate thesis on it but my asshole school forced me into a class that was just teaching one book you had to write your thesis on, which turned out to be Toni Morisson's Beloved, which I did not enjoy.

 

[AnarchyCamp]

One interesting interpretation I've read about the ending is that kid has been corrupted and swallowed up and that culminates with him and the judge murdering the missing girl from the saloon. After her dancing bear gets shot there's mention of people searching for her. So when people are looking into the jakes in horror it's her they're seeing.

It kind of makes sense to me because that would be a lot more horrible than the kid dead with a broomstick up his ass or something. I think it would fit perfectly to how the onlookers react at the end. There's so much brutality throughout the book that one final vicious act by the judge against the kid just isn't going to add much. It's not really going to top all the stuff that's already happened.

The judge is too purposeful for it to be simply about killing or defiling the kid in the most terrible manner possible. I think it's more about him completely enveloping and corrupting him.

This is the theory that I like.
I also think that the man outside the door warning people not to go inside is the kid.

 

[GilGunderson**]

Edit: I do also get the feeling that the person giving the warning is the Kid, and that what happened in there has to do with a maybe rape and/or murder of the missing girl

 

[new_mexico1]

One interesting interpretation I've read about the ending is that kid has been corrupted and swallowed up and that culminates with him and the judge murdering the missing girl from the saloon. After her dancing bear gets shot there's mention of people searching for her. So when people are looking into the jakes in horror it's her they're seeing.

It kind of makes sense to me because that would be a lot more horrible than the kid dead with a broomstick up his ass or something. I think it would fit perfectly to how the onlookers react at the end. There's so much brutality throughout the book that one final vicious act by the judge against the kid just isn't going to add much. It's not really going to top all the stuff that's already happened.

The judge is too purposeful for it to be simply about killing or defiling the kid in the most terrible manner possible. I think it's more about him completely enveloping and corrupting him.

Yeah. I was actually surprised when I jumped online after finishing the book and saw all this stuff about the judge killing and raping the kid. And the fact that it was coming from professional critics and reviewers made me re think things. After thinking on it for a while I ended up sticking with my first interpretation.


I agree about it not adding as much if he just gets killed horribly. Also, I don't buy some of the arguments that suggest the kid was raped by the judge. One of the pro critics said it was a time period thing. That to some rugged killer in the old west , being raped would have been a horror worse than death and would have been unspeakable. That doesn't make all that much sense because there was already rape in the book in the initial Apache raid where the kid is the lone survivor. For something supposedly so unspeakable, Mccarthy adds it in pretty matter-of-factly like all the rest of the violence.

The Judge being nude probably isn't a sexual thing in the jakes scene either. He was naked or half naked throughout the novel. Much of that there wasn't anything sexual going on. His nudity probably represented something. The Judge's purity or something. He represented evil and was pure in that evil. That would fit in with the idea that he simply enveloped the Kid. The kid was enveloped by a naked judge. He was enveloped by a pure evil.

 

[Soulbane]

The Judge being nude probably isn't a sexual thing in the jakes scene either. He was naked or half naked throughout the novel. Much of that there wasn't anything sexual going on. His nudity probably represented something. The Judge's purity or something. He represented evil and was pure in that evil. That would fit in with the idea that he simply enveloped the Kid. The kid was enveloped by a naked judge. He was enveloped by a pure evil.

Interesting that I see McCarthy's work being discussed in Mayberry. It's been a while since I've hung around here.

To this point though, McCarthy being as reclusive as he is, has made some remarks regarding intimacy in his work. He spoke out in regards to a scene which had Llewelyn and Carla Jean in bed (in No Country), and noted in response to a passing remark that the two had sex, a statement which he felt was irrelevant seeing that he felt the author should not, and has no right to, be inviting into such intimacy. Now regardless of subscribing to reader response criticism or authorial intent, and however you may view it, I would also assert that the Judge being naked isn't a notion of overt intimacy or sexuality.

McCarthy's palate is unmistakable, and seeing the Judge's pale and hairless figure in the midst of a sun that bakes all beneath, is striking imagery. The further propensity of McCarthy to use incorruptible characters, forces of nature and fate to wrest his characters into impalpably hopeless situations furthers the Judge's role. It simply adds an unrelenting contrast to the Kid's predicament (and many others in McCarthy's work) to demonstrate the simple lack of pity his worlds have for his characters.

I don't see the Judge's display of flesh as a sexual presentation, but rather a creature cognizant and enveloped by who he is. Enveloped by what he is. The way an eagle perches and dawns it wingspan for all to see.

 

[Camus123]

I re-read all Blood Meridian on Sunday and since then there's been a weight upon and a darkness around me. When I meditate images of violence and desolation like those described in the book are disturbingly conjured. I don't think that book is meant to be crammed down all at once. Now I'm reading Jane Austen to try and counteract the lingering sense of bleakness and death McCarthy left in my mind.

Good novel but god-damn is it ever grim.

 

[Rex Kwon Do]

Ah, Blood Meridian. I managed to soldier through the bombast and the antic ramblings of the poorly fleshed out characters and the near plotless back and forth marauding, and I finally finished the damn thing.

Not a fan. The idea was strong, but I wasn't impressed by the execution. Sure, McCarthy has a great command of the language, but other than that, it did nothing for me. It was like literary cotton candy; very pretty, but very airy.

I respect that everyone else likes it, of course. I certainly don't regret reading it. It was my fourth McCarthy, and won't be my last, despite liking two of them and disliking two of them.

 

[Phoenix Down]

@TS, By that time in the novel, he was no longer the kid....He was referenced as the man.



That said I've read everything McCarthy has written, including most of his play writes and Blood Meridian is a transcendent journey I've managed to finish six different times in my life. Twice in the last year. I cannot stop returning to it. It's gotten to the point where I can pretty much read it in one sitting.

The line that has forever stuck with me was: "He will not see again the freezing kitchenhouse in the predawn dark. The firewood, the washpots."

I can't explain it, but, it sticks with me.

Also:

Good novel but god-damn is it ever grim.

To me, it is ultimate beauty. The Judge encompasses every facet of humanity. McCarthy used the story of Glanton like Kubrick used King's The Shining. They turned it into a vehicle for a much deeper and hidden message.

EDIT:

Worth a watch, check these out!