Blood Meridian: The Darkest Book I Finished
The Book That Tested Everything I Think About Violence in Fiction
Blood Meridian is set in the American Southwest in the 1850s and follows a nameless boy who joins a scalp-hunting gang. Cormac McCarthy does not use quotation marks. He does not use chapters in any conventional sense. He does not offer psychological comfort. The violence in this novel is not stylized or aestheticized. It is described with the same biblical plainness as the landscape, which is the point. I finished it and believe it is the most important American novel about what violence actually is.
McCarthy describes violence with the same flatness as landscape. That is the point.
351Pages
"Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.
"Cormac McCarthy
Reading Blood Meridian
Impact
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Section
Thinking about No Country for Old Men, which is McCarthy using a similar moral frame with more conventional structure, as a companion to this novel.
This is the most violent book I have finished. It is not violent for shock. The violence is the argument. Whether that argument is worth engaging with is a decision you have to make for yourself.