Blood Meridian

Since discovering how broad the field of literature really is around the age of 16, I have always been on the lookout for books that challenge me, both as a reader and in terms of my view of the world. Often touted among the most important writers of the late modernist era, a foray into the works of Cormac McCarthy was long overdue. Cited by many as his best work, Blood Meridian was the obvious choice.

Make no mistake, this is a spectacularly brilliant piece of writing. McCarthy adapts the supposedly true (but almost certainly exaggerated) journal of Samuel Chamberlain, a former soldier who rode with a band of outlaws in the mid-19th Century, adding in a fictional anti-hero protagonist ("the kid") and presumably augmenting still further the real-life John Glanton, the gang's ruthless leader, and Judge Holden, a mysterious figure who travels with them. But more than that, Blood Meridian is a treatise on human nature, the birth of America, and notions of good and evil.

The violence in this book is relentless. From the very start, the kid finds himself stumbling from one violent encounter to the next, beginning with bar fights and working his way up to riding with Glanton's crew for the majority of the book as they tear through the southwestern states destroying everything and everyone in their path. But for all the scalpings and massacres, headshots and hangings, not once does McCarthy set out to shock or appal with his prose or plot; he merely reports as a passive bystander, his characters bearing unfeeling witness to the atrocities before them - be they perpetrated by the characters themselves or merely a reminder of the myriad other tragic stories that are occurring elsewhere in this brutal world. It must be said that the quality of life in that area at that time was actually a lot better than what we are shown here, but McCarthy still provides a stark reminder of how comfortable we have become in the modern world, and perhaps how far we have yet to go.

The prose is relentless, plodding along without a single superfluous word like a mule through the desert - or perhaps like a vulture circling its prey. I don't think I have ever read a book so focused on maintaining its writing style, as bleak and barren as the worlds that McCarthy describes, and, in so being, as unfathomable and alien as well. The kid may be the main character, but we are not provided with so much as an interior monologue - in fact, entire chapters go by where he is not mentioned at all. Glanton is likewise a singular character, motivated only by his own personal gain, not afraid to kill with no questions asked and indiscriminate in the frontier justice that he and his men dish out. Far more intriguing, however, is the Judge: a man as bizarre in appearance as he is in character. Standing over seven foot tall, entirely hairless and possessing the strength to wield a cannon with his bare hands, he is also an expert linguist, chemist, philosopher, musician and naturalist. As the plot wears on, he begins to expand more on his world view, hinting at a supernatural background as he pontificates on the nature of the universe, extraterrestrial life and the origins of man. It's quite possible that he is meant to be an incarnation of Satan himself, or perhaps a combination of God and Satan, as he serves as judge, jury and executioner throughout - or perhaps he is merely a man driven increasingly mad by the death and carnage around him.

I thought that, in Infinite Jest, I had read the most thought-provoking book I would see for a long time, but Blood Meridian is right up there with it, in a much more convenient and satisfying package. This is a fascinating study into humanity's violent upbringing, the nature of man (or perhaps, more accurately, of men), and the huge questions of existence, belief and perception.

5/5

The Wild West has never been so metal.