"Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West" A Painful, Thoughtful Read

 

    Originally, I was planning on using that single iconic painting of "The Judge" as the cover for this review, but after some deliberation I decided against it, even though you could argue he was by far the most interesting part of this book. I mean after all he was the main reason I decided to give this book a try. The white skin, the unsettling grin on his face, it was calling to me. Though, now after reading this novel I can safely say, wow, what a slog. I don't think I can unironically recommend this book to most of my friends, just because it is a real pain in the ass to get through. I even spaced it out, but no matter what I did, in terms of the actual reading experience I can safely say I did not particularly enjoy Blood Meridian. Let's talk about it.

    After finally finishing the book, and looking up some threads to see other interpretations of the ending I can safely say that this book is significantly more interesting to read about then to actually read it. It's quite simple really, there's just way too many run on sentences. I don't care how revered or great of a writer you think Cormac McCarthy is, you are entitled to your opinion. At the same time it is also ridiculous that they simply allowed him to have so many sentences that just used the word and 15 times, and have that single sentence take up over half the page. It's just unacceptable. How do you unironically expect the readers to develop any sort of flow or pace reading your novel if it's this choppy?

    It sounds like a minor nitpick, but it was genuinely miserable reading this novel at times. So many times I'd go over a sentence, tell myself "what?," and then go reread it again because it was part of these dumb half page sentences. You just have to do better. The worst part is, when he drops this gimmick, the writing is actually good. Do you want to know my favourite parts of reading Blood Meridian? It's by far when the judge speaks, and he's basically eulogizing about the world, humanity and violence at large. That's the real meat and potatoes of the novel, and it works because he doesn't use a sentence that lasts half a page. So it's not like I think McCarthy is a bad writer, but this genuinely made me not excited to read the book at times.

    My favourite part of the book was in the last third, when Glanton and the gang take over the ferry, and for the sake of, I don't know, progressing the story McCarthy actually drops the gimmick and I can finally read in peace as the lord intended? I just cannot in good faith recommend this book because of how frustrating it is to read. And I know people say my generation can't read anyways, but I do think it's enough of a detriment to this novel to rant about this much, because the truth is, the book's pretty interesting otherwise. That's why I said it's more interesting to read about the book than the book itself.

    Like I said before, the Judge drew me in, and the Judge kept me interested. I kept on wondering was Judge Holden some supernatural being, perhaps the devil himself, or just the world's most terrible man, who loved getting naked, especially with children, and basically incited all of the violence the gang goes through. His stance on life and his generally nihilistic if not pessimistic take on reality is interesting to read about, it's interesting to see people interpret it online, it's really captivating, but the process of going through the book itself is cumbersome to say the least.

    If for some reason you are interested in reading this book, it basically follows the "protagonist" the Kid as he joins up with the Glanton gang and they slowly devolve into more and more immoral acts of debauchery, violence and general cruelty. I put protagonist in quotation marks because at times it can definitely feel as if he's just a spectator or a bystander to all of these depraved acts, but that's also kind of the point. Even though the Kid might argue with the Judge at the end of the novel talking about how his viewpoint is still fake, and he hasn't won, at the same time the Kid helped these monsters commit these atrocities. Even if he was the only one with even a little bit of  "clemency" as the judge put it, he couldn't just quite extinguish it out of the kid.

    This is literally the issue right there. I had more fun thinking about the book and writing that paragraph above compared to the actual act of reading the book. I'm just glad I finished it and now I understand the story, even if frankly it was confusing at times. I feel like I had to go back and double check, especially with all the members of the Glanton gang. I'm not saying it's a herculean task to get through this book, I'm just saying it's painful.

Final Score: 40 or 45/100 (I couldn't decide)

    I saw some people complain that this book just kind of felt too indulgent, especially with the gore. The reason I looked for these complaints was because by the first 50 pages or so, or perhaps 100 pages, I still was really not feeling this book and was debating dropping it. Like I mentioned before it only really picks up steam in the last 100 pages or so, and that last section was by far the one I read the fastest just by virtue of it feeling like the best section. Also on a random side note can someone explain the etymology of scalping to me. I never made the connection between the modern definition of selling items for outrageous prices to the scalping they do in this novel of literally cutting of the scalps of their enemies to sell. Even still, the connection between these two practices seems pretty thin at best, and also simply not reported by too many sources so I'd actually love to figure out how this came to be, especially if it turns out the modern term can directly be drawn back to the pretty barbaric practice all those years ago.