Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy Review

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A summary of the evening redness in the west - A praise chorus in sotto voce - The Judge judged - A deeper meaning questioned - A master prose stylist - An experiment in chance - A middling verdict on a soon-to-be-established classic - People who’ve read the novel will know what I’m doing here

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The first half of the 19th century on the American frontier and the Indian wars are in full swing. The Kid joins a group of scalphunters - scumbags collecting bounties on any Indian scalps - to both scalp Indians and Mexicans, whose scalps could pass for Indian. Also part of the posse is a monstrous creature called Judge Holden who delights in violence. Together they cause chaos on the bloody prairie.

Cormac McCarthy wrote a few famous and well-received novels in his time - The Road was his biggest hit (and most overrated and one of his worst) and No Country for Old Men (his best novel, accompanied by an incredible film adaptation) - but I have a feeling that Blood Meridian may turn out to be his most enduring one.

It’s an ok novel, and as bleak as The Road, but more imaginative and mysterious, and in recent years it certainly feels like the discourse surrounding it is far greater than anything else he wrote and its reputation seems to be growing every year.

And up to roughly the halfway point, the novel is really good. We meet the teenage Kid who’s meandering through life, joining a renegade army captain called White and his filibusters on an ill-fated foray into Mexico, then witnessing atrocity after atrocity surrounding Indians - we’re talking a literal tree of dead babies and beheadings galore. The reputation this book has of graphic barbarity is well-earned.

There’s a scene where the Glanton gang are in the middle of nowhere being pursued by Indians but can’t fight back because they’re out of gunpowder and the Judge somehow makes some out of the weirdest ingredients to enable a slaughter. It’s such a powerful and intense episode.

It’s around this halfway point though that the novel’s lack of plot feels really noticeable. Because a good chunk of the novel then becomes the Kid, the Judge, Glanton and his gang, perennially wandering the prairie, engaging in one skirmish after another with one group after another, over and over and over - the repetition and general feeling of stasis wore down my interest until it was practically evaporated.

But McCarthy knows who is the biggest draw in this book and that’s why he ensures that the Judge pops up every other chapter to keep the audience at least somewhat engaged. The Kid may be the main character whose perspective we experience the story from, but he’s not much of a character - really, none of them are, except for the Judge; Toadvine and Tobin are just names to me, not distinct personalities - whereas the Judge is basically the main reason why Blood Meridian is notable at all.

Judge Holden - along with Glanton - are the two characters loosely based on real people in the novel. There’s a description of the Judge from a history book, which McCarthy runs with and creates his character from. Physically, the Judge is enormously strong, disturbingly hairless, brutally vicious and shockingly intelligent - what a lethal combination!

McCarthy’s Judge is presented as practically supernatural, a demonic presence on the page who spreads death and suffering wherever he is, and remains unkillable and unaging - a potent, awful force of nature. He’s undeniably compelling and I got the distinct impression McCarthy wants us to think he’s the devil itself. But I resist that interpretation because I really hate it. Man is more than capable of committing the most vile atrocities to men, women and children without some cartoon devil goading us on. By suggesting “the devil made me do it”, it undermines the impact this novel has, of the hell on earth humanity can easily create under its own volition.

That does seem to be all the novel has going for it though: a consistent theme of grim nihilism, which reminds us of how the west was really won - by men like Glanton and Judge Holden doing evil things to the indigenous peoples in the name of westward expansion/”manifest destiny”. But you get that point long before the end so there isn’t really a big finale, thoughtful exploration or a deeper message to be had here, which feels a bit shallow for a novel of such repute.

And as nasty as the novel delights in describing the things the Kid sees, the gratuitous violence becomes banal and ineffective after a spell - but maybe that’s the point, to make us feel like the Kid feels?

If you don’t know McCarthy’s writing style, he doesn’t do traditional grammar, eschewing speech marks, although the prose is well-written enough to be very accessible - you know exactly when someone is speaking vs the narrative voice. I didn’t like the untranslated Spanish dialogue though - it’s not a huge part of the novel but it felt unnecessarily oblique to me, as someone who doesn’t speak Spanish. Just translate it or add footnotes!

But McCarthy does write really well. The lexical choices he makes on literally every page gives the novel such a rich texture. I consider myself fairly articulate but I was continually stumped by the words that he would throw in. To prove my point, I’ve taken my copy of Blood Meridian and flicked to some random pages to find a word on that page that I have either never seen before or rarely seen and don’t understand:

Purlieu (p.28); terra damnata (p.64); slagland (p.138); eitherhanded (p.142); clangorous (p.198); demiculverin (p.244); ecliptic (p.270); eventuating (p.322).

Honestly, there wasn’t a single page I flicked to that I skipped because I knew all the words on that page. Those choices just make for that much more of an engrossing read, if you’re a reader than enjoys unusual vocabulary.

There’s a lot to praise Blood Meridian: the first half is really strong with some very memorable scenes. The Judge is a great character throughout, and the writing is nearly always virtuoso-level. The ending is good and unsettling and strange as well. But it also doesn’t have the legs and falters for long, interminable stretches in the second half, felt all the more keenly in the absences of the Judge. And, for such a lauded book, it doesn’t feel especially deep or meaningful.

Blood Meridian for me was pretty bloody middling. No Country remains his best book - the most consistently exciting narrative Cormac McCarthy ever wrote, that I’ve read (and I’ve read 7 of his books, including most of his famous ones). Its reputation for violence and the figure of the Judge intrigued me enough to pick it up and I’m glad I finished it and can say I’ve read it. But large chunks of this book will test your patience while other parts do deliver in terms of entertainment and high art. You’ll have to decide if it’s right for you, but if you haven’t read No Country for Old Men, and you want to read Cormac McCarthy, I’d start there and if nothing I’ve said has put you off and you do pick up Blood Meridian, go in with the mindset of a marathon rather than the kind of enjoyable run you get with No Country.