Blood Meridian
1985 · Cormac McCarthy · 368 pages
One of The Atlantic’s “Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years,” now with a new foreword by Marlon James Widely considered one of the finest novels by a living writer, Blood Meridian is an epic tale of the violence and corruption that attended America’s westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the “Wild West.” Its wounded hero, the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennessean, must confront the extraordinary brutality of the Glanton gang, a murderous cadre on an official mission to scalp Indians. Seeming to preside over this nightmarish world is the diabolical Judge Holden, one of the most unforgettable characters in American fiction.Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, Blood Meridian represents a genius vision of the historical West, one whose stature has only grown in the years since its publication.
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blood meridian is a book that I read prepared to pull out litcharts after each chapter. if not purely for pieces of the plot buried in some of the densest prose and most challenging diction I’ve ever read, then for the rich biblical allusions and symbolism that are pervasive through the eyes of wily and mystical characters. the judge is the scariest villain ever put to paper, and his philosophy of total suzerainty of the earth and delighting in violence will leave you chilled to your core. i could read it every day for the rest of my life and not surface all that lies beneath the pages. cemented mccarthy as my favorite fiction writer of all time due to just how affected I was after reading
Read 2024-01-01