Meridiano De Sangre

There's a five-hour video on YT describing this novel. I didn't sit through it all.
Can sum up this doorstopper quicker:
Boy from a broken home joins up with a frontier patrol in the SW United States. Patrol is massacred with him as a rare survivor so he joins a gang of scalp-hunters led by the vile John Glanton and accompanied by a huge suspiciously learned man who may or may not be the devil. They go from taking the scalps of insurgents to killing and scalping just about anyone.
The enigmatic last scene shows him (the former kid) as a man and illustrates that he, unlike everyone else, has grown up.
Most of the book is about men riding across parched landscapes, scalping and killing people, getting drunk and causing trouble, told in a cod-Biblical language which it is impossible to parody as it just becomes the same style, for it will not go.

Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.

Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.

So you think you're a man? To be considered a real man you have to read Blood Meridian all the way through without once grimacing. I made it halfway before I found myself pulling a face at one scene.

This is quite a philosophical book, full of metaphors, I'm certain I've not fully grasped everything. The main character is "the kid", the weird thing is for a lot of the book he is mainly in the background, a witness for the acts that are happening around him. You then have "The Judge" a 7ft tall, 24 stone, hairless giant....a twisted, perverted, violent Sociopath. At one point the judge makes a pact with Glanton, he is good at everything, he keeps popping up, seemingly stalking the kid...combined with the last scene my theory is he was the devil .

I've enjoyed this book, one of the most violent books I've ever read, makes American Psycho seem tame....and that's one of the problems I've have with it. After a while I became numb to the violence, it started to feel like a poor slasher movie that gets silly after a while as it tries hard to shock you. Some of the language was a bit suspect, at one location there are "Transvestites", I don't think that term existed in the time the book is based, it's just been thrown in to cause a little shock. Some scenes though were stunning, the dancing bear was so sad I got a lump in my throat.

My first Cormac McCarthy book, considered his masterpiece, I can see that, even with the flaws, it has that epic feel to it that all masterpieces have.

I'm roiled by this book.

This is the most violent book I've ever read. That is a slippery distinction considering the fantastic massacres and planetary destruction that I've sailed through in my reading, but Blood Meridian is about its violence in a way that Star Wars isn't. It indicts all mankind as a product of and producer of brutality, and all civilization as a disguise for that truth.

To read this book and be drawn in by the force of its imagery, to be surrounded by its meticulous vision of historical savagery, is to participate in its nihilism. A part of me feels like I rode along with Glanton and his cursed marauders. This is a book of monsters that made me feel like a monster.

It's far from seamless: the famous prose is hit-or-miss. Sometimes it dragged my mind down a track of horror, like a bad dream. Other times it just befuddled me. It does not seem to me that, as others have said, every word here is perfectly chosen. Instead it seems like Cormac McCarthy has managed to dump all the thoughts in his head out onto the page, sometimes coherently.

What thoughts, though.

What would have happened if Jim Theis hadn't been put off writing by the reception of "The Eye of Argon."

- a purple prose bloodfest
- a metaphor dies on every page!
- the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to the Thesaurus is swamped with calls.

Given his later fondness for WB Yeats titles Cormac McCarthy could just as readily have called this "The Blood-Dimmed Tide" (from "The Second Coming") but that is a title someone else can use. It is appropriate however - this is a Western and a Western turned up to 11, the inevitable result of a time where the gun is law is that you end up with bloodshed and nothing but.
A band of scalp-hunters who overstep their mark and decide everyone is fair game, and tribes of hostile Indians who are no better than them. But the figure who stands out of course is Judge Holden. Reminiscent of Kurtz in "Heart of Darkness" (something Salon.com picked up on a while back, imagining a Kubrick film of the book with Marlon Brando as the Judge), Holden is a vast hairless figure given to sesquipedalian philosophising on the nature of life, death and both of these as games. Which is reminiscent of The Magus but it would have whupped The Magus' arse and sent it crying for its mommy (no bad thing to do). The Kid (the main character, 16 at the start and late 20s at the end) muses, in the company of the only other half-decent character the ex-priest Tobin, whether Holden is even human at all (so is he Randall Flagg also? "You ain't a man at all! You're some kind of devil!" "That is correct."). Holden draws the things he discovers - rock paintings, Anasazi artefacts - meticulously and then destroys them. He even objects to birds singing - anything that exists in his purlieu that he does not know about, exists without his permission. What is he a judge of? Tobin asks at one point. But there is no answer. Nobody knows what he is a judge of. In a moment of mischief I imagined this story existing in the Judge Dredd universe, the Glanton gang being outcasts from Texas City among the mutants and Judge Holden being a judge sent along to keep an eye on them.
Not everything is explained. When the Glanton gang enter a village to the locals' delight, given food and drink and leave a few days later not even followed by a dog, the reader can imagine what happened because it's the same thing they do everywhere. The ending also, not necessarily ambiguous just undescribed.
McCarthy's writing style is idiosyncratic but despite the rigorous paring back of punctuation marks is straightforward to read. Less popular with many readers is his habit of reporting speech in Spanish without translating it - I had to look up a few words and even where they are words known in English he will put them in the Spanish form (e.g. 'juzgado' for 'hoosegow' assuming anyone knows what a hoosegow is any more. In the original though it is clearly derived from 'juez', that's to say, judge). Admittedly the writing style isn't for everyone and very easy to parody - take any description and continue it with tendentious mock-Biblical comparisons. Thankfully I enjoy this kind of thing and it doesn't detract from the book for me.

I’ve wanted to read another Cormac McCarthy book after enjoying The Road; so after a long time of sitting on my To-Read shelf, I decided it was about time to give Blood Meridian a go. This is probably McCarthy’s most known book; other than the Pulitzer winning The Road. Narrated by a runaway known as the “the kid”, Blood Meridian follows the Glanton gang scalp hunters as they massacred North American tribes. Judge Holden is the main antagonist and is an intelligent man but terrifying which his constant need for conflict and violence.

I often enjoy books aspects from history to make a compelling story; James Ellroy and Hilary Mantel come to mind when thinking of authors that do this well and now Cormac McCarthy. As an author McCarthy is rather brilliant, he knows how to spin an entertaining and intelligent story with wonderful prose’s for a book of intense violence and bleak environments. I’ve not read many Westerns but if this is anything to go on then I might have to read some more.

Blood Meridian has very environmental and characters driven and it was a real pleasure to read. But then there is an aspect of this book that I really didn’t like. The violence and horror aspects of this book is not for the faint hearted, and I tend to enjoy these elements but even for me I feel like maybe Cormac McCarthy too it a little too far; to a sickening level. This is like reading a nightmare; the acts of violence are so intense and evil that even I was disturbed.

This book is not for everyone, it’s a hellish read and Cormac McCarthy brilliance does seem to be drowned out by the blood of the Judge Holden’s victims. I couldn’t recommend this book to anyone as it is really intense, but if you think you can handle it, it’s worth reading. The book is fairly dense when comparing it to The Road, but it was still an interesting look at the disturbing nature of Judge Holden and the Glanton gang.