Book Review: Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Synopsis: A kid runs away from home and hooks up with a band of mercenaries who then spend the rest of the book killing lots people for reasons not clearly explained. All of this done without the use of quotation marks or commas.

I have now read three novels by Cormac McCarthy, and he's my favorite recently discovered (by me) writer. This book was my least favorite of the three. Of course, when I finished the others, I was somewhat lukewarm until they had marinated in my brain for a few days. Then the genius of the works hit me. Maybe that will be the case again, but I was much more on the cold side of lukewarm upon finishing this book.

The major problem was a lack of direction. We spent lots of time killing indians and carousing, and such, but none of it seemed to be toward any appreciable end. I'm clear that it is an unedited look at the way life really was in during the settling of the west and the aftermath of the Mexican-American war. It's an expose on violence. But it doesn't have a plot.

One of the characters is an enigmatic "Judge" named Holden. I still haven't decided whether he is a personification of war or of violence.

I've read reviews that comment on this book revealing our fathers and their sins. If that was the point, it was lost on me. I don't believe in liberal guilt. I do not believe in reparations of past wrongs. I am not responsible for the sins of my fathers. Neither are my children responsible for my sins. And besides, none of my ancestors were involved in the settlement of the west.

The last few pages, when McCarthy pounds home the point of the book, are absolutely beautiful. If, in a few days, I decide this book is better than I give it credit, it will have been these last pages that did it. McCarthy is a brillient writer and composes some of the most timeless prose. Half of the lyrical passages are what I have come to expect from McCarthy.

The other half left me saying, "What the hell was THAT supposed to be?" I had to reread such passages three or four times to pull ANY meaning from them (even literal). While literary analysis finds no fault with passages that you have to stop to digest, I'm a pragmatic reader and writer. If you have to stop, detach completely from the story, and mull, there's something wrong.

But then again, everything else I've read of McCarthy has appreciated with time. Perhaps this will, too.