Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West | 
|  | | | Title: | Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West | | Author: | Cormac McCarthy | | Publisher: | Vintage | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 05 May, 1992 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0679728759 / 9780679728757 | | List Price: | $14.95 | | You Save: | $4.78 | | Amazon Price: | $10.17 | |
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| Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
Product Description
An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridianbrilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west." Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.
Amazon.com
"The men as they rode turned black in the sun from the blood on their clothes and their faces and then paled slowly in the rising dust until they assumed once more the color of the land through which they passed." If what we call "horror" can be seen as including any literature that has dark, horrific subject matter, then Blood Meridian is, in this reviewer's estimation, the best horror novel ever written. It's a perverse, picaresque Western about bounty hunters for Indian scalps near the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s--a ragged caravan of indiscriminate killers led by an unforgettable human monster called "The Judge." Imagine the imagery of Sam Peckinpah and Heironymus Bosch as written by William Faulkner, and you'll have just an inkling of this novel's power. From the opening scenes about a 14-year-old Tennessee boy who joins the band of hunters to the extraordinary, mythic ending, this is an American classic about extreme violence.
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Customer Reviews:
• Stop The Long Reviews: This Is An Awesome Book! 02 July, 2008
Lets, please, keep the reviews brief.
I have ADHD and loose track of the plot,charachters and situations faster than I can say 'pffft'. I read this book over two weeks and everytime I picked it up, it would enthrall me.
Amazing prose, lyrical. an american classic.
If you liked 'the road' and 'no country...' this book is for you.
Dont read Harold Bloom's introduction before you finish the book: He does the book justice, but gives away key details.
5 stars!
- Reviewed by customer ID: A37OWBHZEY1HAQ
• It's A Bloody Masterpiece! 23 June, 2008
First off, a big screw you to Harold Bloom, who on the very first page of the introduction tells you what happens at the end.
Ok, ok Harry, nobody doubts that you read it, but do you have to go and give it all away? Prick.
He doesn't give it all away, there's so much more here then just a prelude to the conclusion. I'm not going to tell you what happens at the end because I'm not a dick, but I will tell you not to read the intro if you want to preserve the integrity of the powerful ending.
I'm also not going to bore you with a synopsis or recycled analysis. There's been plenty of those already. I will tell you this though, it's not a casual, fluffy read. Cormac has a bit of an idiosyncratic writing style that doesn't immediately engage the reader, more likely then not deliberate as it compliments the overall theme and mood. He's also deceptively dense, using a masterful command of nuance and subtlelty to convey greater meaning in concise articulation. Nothing is superficial here, and in order to get the most out of it you need to show the writing proper respect by giving it your undivided attention.
As a special aside, if there are any high school kids out there who got sent to the school psychologist because you wrote a dark story for english class, bring a copy of this book along to the meeting. When they ask what's wrong with you, whip out this book and ask why it is that when you write a dark story they call it psycho, but when McCarthy does, they call it genius.
Disturbingly brilliant.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2F9OGCYF97YLP
• Interesting 02 July, 2008
I find it interesting that one reviewer entitled their review with a Slayer song and a Misfits song. Most people who've read this book would miss that referrence completely and I find it interesting because these bands are both giants of their industry who don't deserve the massive praise they get, so its ironic they're linked with this book. But that's music and this is a book. While Im not a real big fan of this book - it tends to plod along like a half dead horse staggering under the burden of an equally half dead man across the mexican desert - there is a quality about it that made me want to read more and left me feeling as if I'd learned something about life once I'd finished. If you like suffering you'll like this book. If you're one of those people who think reading great authors will make you a better person, you might be pleasantly surprised that this book might just enlighten you a little.
On a side note, No Country For Old Men will make you sad. The Road will touch you deeply and leave you terrified.
- Reviewed by customer ID: AV38HA259TT23
• The Road Goes Ever On And On And On 23 June, 2008
Blood Meridian is not a bad book. Let's get that out of the way from the get-go. Well and all, about half way through the thing, I found myself getting restless and impatient with page after page of metaphor heavy prose describing one desert landscape after another and one thunderstorm after another. I get it, the sun is hot and a body gets mighty thirsty without it and lightning in the distance is impressive and ominous. The book is, at heart, a morality play pitting "the kid" against "the judge" so why the lengthy detour into descriptions of local flora and fauna? The center of the novel, the part where it seems most negative reviewers gave up, is almost a first draft of "The Road" with a band of violent stragglers wandering through a bleak landscape of desolation and blood. But as far as I can tell, this has NOTHING to do with the tale being told. McCarthy just kind of wanders off into an adjective heavy haze and his keen sense of poetic and colloquial language (some passages of the book just scream to be read aloud) spins wildly out of control. The book starts well and, once it settles back down, ends well, but there is a huge tract of text that reminds one of the whaling chapters in "Moby Dick" in their irrelevance to the tale being told. This is a 200 page novel crammed into 330+ pages. So my advice is just skip the middle hundred pages. Here is the synopsis--Glanton and his party wander around Mexico killing and scalping, first Indians and then, Mexicans, as they wear their clothes and horses out across countless miles of desert. That's it. That's all that happens. You have just "read" the entire center section of "Blood Meridian" and didn't have to endure the exhaustive vocabulary. Around page 200, where Glanton and his men hijack a ferry, the kid and the judge once again become central figures in the tale and the story hunkers down into a taut battle of wills and philosophies. It is funny to note that in this final act of the book, when things really start moving, McCarthy all but abandons his mind bending twists of phrase and poetic language. There is too much actual story to tell. Although it is touted as one of his most "important" works, this is not nearly as good as other books by the same author. It isn't that this book isn't (as the cover blurb on my copy suggests) a masterpiece, because there is certainly a masterpiece huddling down in there somewhere--it is simply that you have to work too hard to unearth it.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A27OTNXHNQZ0T4
• Wash The Blood From Your Hands 26 June, 2008
I read this book twice now, finishing an audio version just recently. I know I will read it again, and I know that even after that reading, I will still wonder what all I have missed in this complex and compelling read.
A quick google search of the book will let you know what people think and feel about this book about the expanding west and a lawless time.
Some will say that it is satirical and holistically symbolic of the violence regarding the western expansion of the young US. Some will say it is a detailed account of men with no inhibitions, that become collectively scarier than any monster ever created in the horror genre, or some will say that it is a deep and symbolic book with Gnostic overtones and other historical accounts on every page, dripping with violence.
But this book, quite simply, is about satan on earth. This is a book about the devil, and it is a detailed account of how he takes a group of men and ravishes the country side. This devil is not a brute or some stereotypical baddie, but personifies science, law, modern philosophy, culture and at times even civil behavior. But this is all without love, faith or god. He exhibits all qualities that society holds dear and strive for, but leaves out what makes us our best.
This is Cormac McCarthy's way of telling us that no matter how advanced we become, no matter what new technologies we bring, and no matter how `just' we make ourselves out to be, that without love, we are nothing and we are inherently evil.
The amount of violence in this book is appalling, and it is not for the squeamish. But after that qualifier, if you can get past it, this is a marvelous read that is difficult to get out of your mind once you put it down.
Others have made this comparison, so this is not original here: but this book reminded me of first time that I read Moby Dick, in that the details of an expedition were given in such real and brutal words, that the violence and conflict don't seem out of place or they don't seem to be used simply as a plot device, but as a central and necessary part of the story. The story is violence.
Judge Holden is by far the scariest monster ever put to fictional page, and you are left with a want for justice once this book is done, but McCarthy doesn't give it to you, like in many of his reads, he won't let you off easily.
Justice isn't served, and you are left with your fists clenched and your teeth grinding, but you want to read it again.
- Reviewed by customer ID: ANCUOKFJOQ4CS
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