Cormac
McCarthy is, to say the least, a divisive author. I know many readers (and
writers) who, like me, admire his books. And I know many equally capable
readers and writers who do not like him, for a variety of reasons.
McCarthy has
little respect for the conventions of punctuation. He’s big on ambiguity. He
often circles around a scene and sneaks up on you rather than confronting you
head-on. He is not easy.
But, to
quote Kurt Vonnegut, another author I admire, “So it goes.”
Blood Meridian, Or, The Evening
Redness in the West, is among
my favorite books and my favorite by McCarthy. Professor, author, and literary
critic Harold Bloom calls it “the ultimate Western, not to be surpassed.” This,
despite the fact that he was so overwhelmed by the book’s violence he set it
aside twice before finally finishing it.
And there’s
no question it is a violent book. It’s based on history—the exploits of a band
of murderous scalp hunters operating in the American Southwest and northern Mexico.
Whether it’s
violence or just about anything else he’s writing about, McCarthy has a way of
saying things that’s unsurpassed. His descriptions are so spare, yet vivid,
they surprise you—forcing me, at least, to re-read passages for their beautiful
language.
Bloom also
has this to say about Blood Meridian:
“The book’s magnificence—its language, landscape, persons, conceptions—at last
transcends the violence, and converts goriness into terrifying art, an art
comparable to Melville’s and to Faulkner’s.”
Not bad
comparisons for a Western novel.
Ditto here on "Blood Meridian." What a book. There are some images I have never forgotten. A movie would be simply impossible, thank goodness. My Spanish Brand series (fourth book out next month) has lots of Comanche violence, which some readers object to. Just realistic.
ReplyDeleteViolence is a difficult thing to read, and to write. But, sometimes, it's just the thing that's needed. Thanks, Carla.
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