I've read all of Cormac McCarthy's earlier books set in Tennessee, such as "The Orchard Keeper" and "The Outer Dark" and I've read his "Border Trilogy" which contained the wonderful, "All the Pretty Horses." Nothing, however, that this wonderful author has written can prepare the reader for the sheer brutality and the sheer lyricism of "Blood Meridian."
The Old West portrayed in "Blood Meridian" is not the Old West of Zane Grey or even of Larry McMurtry. Images of the most horrific abound in "Blood Meridian," (charred human bones, blood-soaked scalps, a tree hung with the bodies of dead infants), all rendered in McCarthy's gorgeously lyrical writing.
As far as I'm concerned, "Blood Meridian" is McCarthy's best book, by far. It doesn't have the "feel good" qualities sometimes found in "All the Pretty Horses" but I didn't expect it to. "Blood Meridian" is the book in which McCarthy makes crystal clear the one theme that runs through all of his writing: the undeniable presence of evil in the world. The fact that he writes about this evil in language so lyrical and so elaborately beautiful only intensifies the horror of it all. We feel as though we have left the real world behind and entered into some surreal place from which no escape is possible.
"Blood Meridian," which takes place in 1847, is loosely based on actual events and is the story of a fourteen boy, known only as "the Kid." Drifting through the American Southwest, the Kid joins a disparate and bloodthirsty band of Indian-hunters-for-hire led by a mysterious and learned man called, Judge Holden.
It is after the Kid joins Judge Holden and his band that McCarthy really hits his stride. Juxtaposed next to descriptions of the most horrific and grotesque are images of the most sublime beauty. Consider this description of a group of Indians, "...wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery...one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a blood stained weddingveil." That's prose most authors would kill for.
McCarthy, unlike most writers who portray horror, concentrates not on the horrific images themselves, but on his characters' reactions to them. I'm not at all surprised at this, for McCarthy is not a horror writer; he is a writer of literature of the very highest order.
Although many people would have expected McCarthy to keep his emphasis on the Kid, he chooses to concentrate on the character of Judge Holden instead. Anyone who has read this book knows it was a good choice for the Judge is the dominant personality in "Blood Meridian" and all the other characters in this book are defined only in relation to the Judge. It is also the Judge who exemplifies McCarthy's major themes and it is he (the Judge) who becomes a metaphorical and spiritual father to all of McCarthy's later characters.
This is not a typical "Western novel," not even a very, very good "Western novel." In this book, the line between the victims the perpetrators of evil is subtlely drawn...if it is drawn at all. McCarthy seems to be telling us that all men are villains, all men are perpetrators, all men are bloodthirsty...if only the reward is high enough. And for some, evil, itself is its own reward.
I am giving nothing away by saying that the ending of this book is a sophisticated and stylistic masterpiece involving both the Judge and the Kid. The last image we have of the Judge is one that epitomizes the sheer lunacy of the man. In a saloon where a trained bear dances on the stage, we see the Judge, "...naked, dancing...He says that he will never die." In a beautiful and enigmatic epilogue, however, McCarthy skillfully denies the Judge the last word in the novel.
This is a sophisticated and complex book, far more complex that it would appear on the surface or even after one reading. It is filled with the Faulknerian prose that has become a McCarthy trademark (though McCarthy employed it less in "The Border Trilogy"). These convoluted sentences, (in my opinion, far better than anything Faulkner ever wrote), can be difficult, since they contain within them the seed of all of McCarthy's writing.
This brilliant novel is more than just a book; it is an experience. It is an experience of horror, of beauty, of the insanity of man. Set in a time when man attempted to sanctify himself in the blood of other men, this is, without a doubt the rawest exposition of horror I have ever read, yet, at the same time, it is probably the most beautiful book I have ever read as well. It is something that simply defies description. Read it for yourself and see.
