Blood Meridian

by Cormac McCarthy

[jamiereadthis]

I can’t remember the last time I had to renew a book from the library to chew my way through it. For Blood Meridian to take two weeks and counting: well, there lies the beginning, and only the beginning, of my praise for it; this is just one hell of a book. I said it would take only one more novel to prove McCarthy my generational gap soulmate; it took less than that to seal for himself a top slot on my favorite authors of all time.

Grueling, gutsy; expansively dense. McCarthy doesn’t waste a spare letter, space, or excised apostrophe. Take this passage, for example, early in the book, one of the few less soaked with blood:

“They moved on and the stars jostled and arced across the firmament and died beyond the inkblack mountains. They came to know the nightskies well.”

Make it “ink black,” pull apart “night skies,” and the passage is appropriately lyrical; exorcise those two innocent spaces and you’re wrestling a beast that will knock you flat to the ground.

And my favorite, my favorite of all, what McCarthy does best: dialogue that with a one-two punch turns the passage on its head.

Books lie, he said.
God dont lie.
No, said the judge. He does not. And these are his words.
He held up a chunk of rock.
He speaks in stones and trees, the bones of things.
The squatters in their rags nodded among themselves and were soon reckoning him correct, this man of learning, in all his speculations, and this the judge encouraged until they were right proselytes of the new order whereupon he laughed at them for fools.