Book Review: "Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthy

By Patrick Van Gorder

On the day that followed they crossed a lake of gypsum so fine that the ponies left no track upon it. The riders wore masks of bone-black smeared about their eyes and some had blacked the eyes of their horses. The sun reflected off the pan burned the undersides of their faces and shadow of horse and rider alike were painted upon the fine white powder in purest indigo. Far out on the desert to the north dustspouts rose wobbling and augered the earth and some said they’d heard of pilgrims borne aloft like dervishes in those mindless coils to be dropped broken and bleeding upon the desert again and there perhaps to watch the thing that had destroyed them lurch onward like some drunken djinn and resolve itself once more into the elements from which it sprang. Out of the whirlwind no voice spoke and the pilgrim lying in his broken bones may cry out and in his anguish he may rage, but rage at what? And if the dried and blackened shell of him is found among the sands by travelers to come yet who can discover the engine of his ruin?
-Blood Meridian, p. 111

Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian follows the gruesome exploits of the historical “Glanton Gang,” a brutal gang of American mercenaries contracted by Mexican authorities to deliver the scalps of Native Americans during the 1840s and ’50s.

The protagonist is a young unnamed runaway, called simply “the kid.” The kid is possibly a stand in for Samuel Chamberlain, who claimed to have been a part of the Glanton Gang in his autobiographical My Confessions, a work that served as McCarthy’s primary historical text.

That work contains the only known reference to Glanton’s second-in-command, a huge, hairless anomaly called Judge Holden, or more often “the judge.”

The plot is a vehicle for this fascinating character. Like most of McCarthy’s characters, we know little of his past, only that the gang found him sitting alone on a solitary rock in the desert, as if he’d “brung it with him.”

The judge is a vastly learned figure, with a preternatural dearth of knowledge on many complex subjects, ranging from astronomy and chemistry to biology and philosophy. In the vein of the explorer, he collects samples of fauna and sketches birds he’s never seen before. When queried about this, he explains that anything that exists without his consent exists without his permission – an affront that he will not suffer.

Pages of the novel are renditions that tired genre convention of the campfire talk after a hard day’s ride. But these scenes are made fresh by the depth and mystery of the characters, mainly the judge. He holds forth on the nature of the world, and of war. The judge is the high prophet of war; he claims that while it has fallen out of favor, war and violence are the true catalysts of progress, and the only way that a man can justify his existence.

Reading the prodigious Blood Meridian is like trying to decipher the coded history of a bloody and alien world. The novel is excessively violent, chronicling massacres, scalping, and execution. Whereas other western novels are quick to glorify violence, McCarthy’s characters preach a gospel of violence while his brutally authentic scenes argue convincingly for peace.

These scenes of violence are interspersed with long descriptions of the band against the vast backdrop of the rough and empty terrain of 19th Century Texas and Mexico. In these scenes, in the vivid landscapes he paints of an alien – and gone – world, McCarthy’s prose excels.

It took me weeks to read the book, some days only conquering a few of its dense pages a day. Blood Meridian is many things, but it is certainly not an easy read. But from its biblical density derives its power. Each passage, each word is a testament to McCarthy’s mastery of the craft, and the power of language.

The vocabulary alone is incredibly immense. I quickly took to reading with a dictionary handy and was almost embarrassed by how frequently I consulted it. Even with the dictionary’s help, certain passages escaped me, their sentences hinged on nouns too archaic to still be referenced, moved by verbs equally antiquated.

That’s not to say it is unreadable. Far from it. McCarthy’s prose is a national treasure, and anyone familiar with more accessible (and popular) recent works like No Country for Old Men and The Road will see his distinct style shine brighter than ever in Blood Meridian. The work is considered by many literary critics, including myself, to be McCarthy’s masterpiece. In 2006, the New York Times named Blood Meridian the third most important book of the previous 25 years, based on a poll of writers and critics. Only Beloved by Toni Morrison and Underworld by Don DeLillo were rated higher.