Scan barcode
A review by arockinsamsara
Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy
4.0
I started reading this almost with more of a sense of obligation than expectation or excitement. As I read it was always clear why this is considered a masterpiece of American literature, why it is a pinnacle of western and anti-western literature, and why there is continued discussion and exploration of this text now near forty years after its publication. But, for all that, I wasn’t enjoying it, I wasn’t gripped by it. I am such a fan of character, and McCarthy is intentionally devoid of interiority, in this epic/Biblical narrative modality that is pure observation, which feels antithetical to character. And yet, somehow, by the 2/3 mark, I was hooked, and deep. Because the purely observational, the refusal to explore the interiority of the characters, doesn’t mean an absence of character. It makes for characters as mirrors, where we see different aspects of ourselves reflected.
I finished the story, and it weighed heavier in my mind than a lot of other fiction has, precisely because that lack of interiority forces us to fill in so much. Really, why? Why did these men, and our “protagonist” the kid especially, continue doing this? There are so many opportunities for him to change course, for him to give up this lifestyle which seemed to have more times of being starved and near death than it did times of excess or gluttony. And yet we find ourselves constantly dancing with the darker part of our natures, the part that insists violence and might make right, that anything not under your heel is about to trample on you. This is a journey of loneliness, searching for identity and worth in a land that doesn't care about you, and when blood and violence are so ready at hand they seem like suitable stand-ins for meaning, for substance, for knowing oneself.
I read a decent amount of dark, somewhat nihilistic fiction. Yet McCarthy disguises what feels like a nihilistic examination of human nature in a much more colorful wrapper. Acts of violence and depravity don’t feel shocking, because we aren’t told how the characters feel about or experience these things, we only have this knowing observation of their actions. Inhumanity becomes disguised as the mundane, and we are hiding the teeth and claws of our inner monstrosity with the manufactured delight/distraction of a dance, twirling and high-stepping while a family searches the streets for a lost young girl who was mourning her murdered pet.
I finished the story, and it weighed heavier in my mind than a lot of other fiction has, precisely because that lack of interiority forces us to fill in so much. Really, why? Why did these men, and our “protagonist” the kid especially, continue doing this? There are so many opportunities for him to change course, for him to give up this lifestyle which seemed to have more times of being starved and near death than it did times of excess or gluttony. And yet we find ourselves constantly dancing with the darker part of our natures, the part that insists violence and might make right, that anything not under your heel is about to trample on you. This is a journey of loneliness, searching for identity and worth in a land that doesn't care about you, and when blood and violence are so ready at hand they seem like suitable stand-ins for meaning, for substance, for knowing oneself.
I read a decent amount of dark, somewhat nihilistic fiction. Yet McCarthy disguises what feels like a nihilistic examination of human nature in a much more colorful wrapper. Acts of violence and depravity don’t feel shocking, because we aren’t told how the characters feel about or experience these things, we only have this knowing observation of their actions. Inhumanity becomes disguised as the mundane, and we are hiding the teeth and claws of our inner monstrosity with the manufactured delight/distraction of a dance, twirling and high-stepping while a family searches the streets for a lost young girl who was mourning her murdered pet.