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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence
challenging
sad
tense
slow-paced
Yeeesh. Dark, macabre, and epic, this explores many of the same themes as his better known 'The Road.' It's certainly not family friendly or as accessible as Oprah's book club pick and definitely without the last glimmer of hope in that novel, but 'Blood Meridian,' through its brutal and bleak redefinition of the American West, is all at once better-written and more insightful.
I wanted to give this 3.5 but I guess I can't do halves?
The first quarter of the book was captivating to me. Then the middle was fairly repetitive and I honestly had trouble keeping interest. The last quarter started out grabbing my attention again but kind of fizzled out at the end. I enjoyed the realism and brutality McCarthy presented, as it stayed true to historical facts. All in all not a bad book but it just didn't have that "can't put it down" feel for me.
The first quarter of the book was captivating to me. Then the middle was fairly repetitive and I honestly had trouble keeping interest. The last quarter started out grabbing my attention again but kind of fizzled out at the end. I enjoyed the realism and brutality McCarthy presented, as it stayed true to historical facts. All in all not a bad book but it just didn't have that "can't put it down" feel for me.
challenging
dark
medium-paced
I should probably reread this someday. I am so excited for the new Cormac McCarthy novels this fall. As for this novel, the descriptions are unbelievable, and the horror and violence in the story is unthinkable. It is definitely not for the faint of heart.
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
toadvine would be a sick knuc tatt if the book was good
I have unfortunately read this book now. Technically I skimmed through it. It is difficult to summarize what I so despise about it because it is not merely a matter of poor writing - though that is true. It gets down to values, what a story can and should be, and what is acceptable. I can only share my thoughts partway through because I wrote three pages in a word doc and do not care to repeat. Please note that these are not the only possible criticisms.
I am confused so far by the book. I do not understand what is being conveyed, if anything, except for the depravity caused by unaccountability, yet even that would need to be covered in the book to be something more than a stretchy extrapolation. If a full twenty percent or more of a book is spent on something, it should pay off, mean something, in itself and as a part of a story. For well over twenty percent of Blood Meridian, a rogue gang goes around shooting and scalping everything that moves. They entered Town X and tomorrow there would be no one left, or so goes the usual pace of events. If the point is that they are depraved, that was well made the first time. If the point is that the depravity is endless and the land vast, that point is well made. If there is some connection to the greater story, frankly I lost the plot (literally) a long time ago because there has been so much time spent on slaughtering innocents. I have no idea where the gang is going or why. Maybe something about catching up to Gomez, or going to California, or at this point nothing really except wanton mass murder. I really do not know what is going on, so why should I care about any of it? I plug on.
Things are most fully known in contrast, so I must compare BM to some of my favorite books. I think Children Of Time and Wayfarers will do. Without getting into the details too much, each has clear messages to convey and the plot and characters are means to that end. To have the end in sight during the writing process we can term vision. Only through appropriate vision can each piece, arbitrary on its own, be placed rightly. If anything exists, it is for the furtherance of the vision; all else is cut. Record Of A Spaceborn Few has something like six perspective characters or protagonists, each with a reason for being, representing a different way of interacting with the same society to color it in as many lights that they converge into white light. No one is left alone in purposelessness, nor killed off unnecessarily. If they could be disappeared so easily and meaninglessly, they were never essential. Children Of Time may not be pinned down to a single theme or a single character, but rather covers a litany of themes, ultimately converging on a question of the worthiness of humanity from an outside, alien perspective. Even when a book has many themes, they can with unparalleled vision be corraled into one coherent story, one purpose. Part of what I find distasteful about Blood Meridian is the apparent incoherence of it all. Events are told, declaratively, in sequence, but it is difficult to ascertain connective tissue if it exists. It is not clear that there is a joining vision. I know that they go to a place and kill people, and to another and kill more people, but why? Does it convey a theme? Not clearly. Does it further a plot? Not clearly. In fact, when there is a conversation (rare in itself) that starts to get at a theme, somewhere around 65% in, it is jarring, surprising. It is gone as quickly as it comes and so I doubt whether it was something intentional and not spontaneous. Some stories are more about characters, so it is possible that all of my criticisms are moot and we are getting a character study.
Well, no. There are a few “characters,” such as the judge and Glanton, but they do not have any clear motives. The judge is a mysterious figure by design, so there is little that can be known about him or his motivations, and Glanton is violently insane, so that’s neat. That is all. I said earlier that with vision each part can be made to serve the end. This in a way makes characters vehicles, means for storytelling rather than independently existing entities, though a successfully immersive story tends to create that illusion. In the case of Blood Meridian, there is no illusion, no depth to characters. They are indeed plot vehicles, but the difference is that they enter and exit any scene just insofar as they are useful to that scene, without consideration for them as aspects of the story or for the scenes themselves as they contribute to the overall plot.
As best as I can tell, McCarthy was going for something of a vibes story, slowly and very painfully constructing a picture of a place and time. It does not matter whether a character has any depth because they and anything they could contribute are not the point. There is no thematic development or moral message, as far as I am aware. There is not even much of a plot. None of that is the point. The story is told in a way like that of Forrest Gump: “the kid” stumbles through life in a sequence of events much bigger than him, and by this method is told the story of a time and a place. Forrest Gump is of course a great success at this method, so clearly it can work. However, it must be noted that Forrest is not empty or boring in himself, a mere vehicle rather than a functional one. A significant appeal of that movie is him. The Kid is not such an interesting character. He starts off with something of a small motivation running from home, but elsewise turns to violence and crime rather quickly, which path draws him down south to Mexico, where he joins with people of his kind: murderous, as they sweep across the bone-dry desert encountering natives, soldiers and citizens, cities and small towns. That itself might be the focus of the book. I hope not, because none of the events or places are obviously significant, nor can they be since everyone gets murdered and the towns burned.
What kind of story do I like? One that is thematic, openly philosophical, with significant character development, in this way both informationally dense and humanly significant. It should mean something and be a pleasure to read, at least in a vague sense, since some great stories are devastating, haunting or frightening. Fiction is imaginative, creating new scenarios and examining them often through familiar perspectives, or at times using unfamiliar perspectives to examine ordinary scenarios; in either case there is a mix of familiar and unfamiliar things to create the contrast which clarifies the subject. Imagination is thusly useful for conveying a subject artistically, that it might resonate with a person as an experience rather than being written at them in the form of a five-page essay, though that might be useful in an academic setting. Art produces understanding in a way that raw, unguided information does not. What is the difference? One might say vision. Artistic vision connects simple data through a single lens so that it all comes out the other side uniformly colored while retaining conceptual separation.
Furthermore, I am heavily reminded of that unfortunate trend called grimdark fantasy. In those books the moral is nonexistent and therefore nihilistic. As the plot goes, everyone dies, the end. If something bad happens, it is not fixed, nor does anyone prevent it from happening again; in fact, they make it happen more. It is indeed grim and dark because the message is that evil is inevitable and all that is good will crumble. My most notorious example is Joe Abercrombie’s Last Argument Of Kings, the third of a trilogy. For two and a half books various characters who were each in their own way hopelessly corrupt, cruel, violent or otherwise vicious very slowly worked toward a better life, and in the end of the third book they all reverted back to their old selves, undoing all of the development Abercrombie put the effort into writing, which was a very conscious decision on his part, an active rejection of the sort of story in which that would happen, and therefore of the message of such a story, that better things are possible and worth believing in, fighting for and achieving. Another example is the near-uniformity of pessimistic science fiction. The vast majority of depictions of the future that I have encountered are bleak dystopias. That is indicative of a general social gloom: we see the state of the world and know that it is bad. Our imaginations are stunted by the severity of our conditions, which means that the things we create with our imaginations are likewise stunted. I must reject the idea that fiction, especially visions of our future, should be bleak. In fact, in my ideal world most such stories present hopeful visions, better paths, so that when many people read them they gain wider imaginations and know what a better world worth fighting for would look like even in broad strokes. In short, I do not appreciate bleakness as a message. Call me soft, but I rather like and value more positive stories, though I do acknowledge that it can be done well, as in Psycho-Pass. If I were of Plato’s persuasion, I would say that pointlessly, nihilistically bleak art is harmful to the soul.
So why do I dislike BM? Because it contradicts my vision of what a story can be and should do. It is unguided, blind and therefore incoherent. It does not convey some profound theme, nor any profound emotions. It is not even a pleasure to read, being awkwardly written in a strange style that makes conversations both rare and confusing. There is not apparently anything behind it, and if there is, it is unpleasant.
I am confused so far by the book. I do not understand what is being conveyed, if anything, except for the depravity caused by unaccountability, yet even that would need to be covered in the book to be something more than a stretchy extrapolation. If a full twenty percent or more of a book is spent on something, it should pay off, mean something, in itself and as a part of a story. For well over twenty percent of Blood Meridian, a rogue gang goes around shooting and scalping everything that moves. They entered Town X and tomorrow there would be no one left, or so goes the usual pace of events. If the point is that they are depraved, that was well made the first time. If the point is that the depravity is endless and the land vast, that point is well made. If there is some connection to the greater story, frankly I lost the plot (literally) a long time ago because there has been so much time spent on slaughtering innocents. I have no idea where the gang is going or why. Maybe something about catching up to Gomez, or going to California, or at this point nothing really except wanton mass murder. I really do not know what is going on, so why should I care about any of it? I plug on.
Things are most fully known in contrast, so I must compare BM to some of my favorite books. I think Children Of Time and Wayfarers will do. Without getting into the details too much, each has clear messages to convey and the plot and characters are means to that end. To have the end in sight during the writing process we can term vision. Only through appropriate vision can each piece, arbitrary on its own, be placed rightly. If anything exists, it is for the furtherance of the vision; all else is cut. Record Of A Spaceborn Few has something like six perspective characters or protagonists, each with a reason for being, representing a different way of interacting with the same society to color it in as many lights that they converge into white light. No one is left alone in purposelessness, nor killed off unnecessarily. If they could be disappeared so easily and meaninglessly, they were never essential. Children Of Time may not be pinned down to a single theme or a single character, but rather covers a litany of themes, ultimately converging on a question of the worthiness of humanity from an outside, alien perspective. Even when a book has many themes, they can with unparalleled vision be corraled into one coherent story, one purpose. Part of what I find distasteful about Blood Meridian is the apparent incoherence of it all. Events are told, declaratively, in sequence, but it is difficult to ascertain connective tissue if it exists. It is not clear that there is a joining vision. I know that they go to a place and kill people, and to another and kill more people, but why? Does it convey a theme? Not clearly. Does it further a plot? Not clearly. In fact, when there is a conversation (rare in itself) that starts to get at a theme, somewhere around 65% in, it is jarring, surprising. It is gone as quickly as it comes and so I doubt whether it was something intentional and not spontaneous. Some stories are more about characters, so it is possible that all of my criticisms are moot and we are getting a character study.
Well, no. There are a few “characters,” such as the judge and Glanton, but they do not have any clear motives. The judge is a mysterious figure by design, so there is little that can be known about him or his motivations, and Glanton is violently insane, so that’s neat. That is all. I said earlier that with vision each part can be made to serve the end. This in a way makes characters vehicles, means for storytelling rather than independently existing entities, though a successfully immersive story tends to create that illusion. In the case of Blood Meridian, there is no illusion, no depth to characters. They are indeed plot vehicles, but the difference is that they enter and exit any scene just insofar as they are useful to that scene, without consideration for them as aspects of the story or for the scenes themselves as they contribute to the overall plot.
As best as I can tell, McCarthy was going for something of a vibes story, slowly and very painfully constructing a picture of a place and time. It does not matter whether a character has any depth because they and anything they could contribute are not the point. There is no thematic development or moral message, as far as I am aware. There is not even much of a plot. None of that is the point. The story is told in a way like that of Forrest Gump: “the kid” stumbles through life in a sequence of events much bigger than him, and by this method is told the story of a time and a place. Forrest Gump is of course a great success at this method, so clearly it can work. However, it must be noted that Forrest is not empty or boring in himself, a mere vehicle rather than a functional one. A significant appeal of that movie is him. The Kid is not such an interesting character. He starts off with something of a small motivation running from home, but elsewise turns to violence and crime rather quickly, which path draws him down south to Mexico, where he joins with people of his kind: murderous, as they sweep across the bone-dry desert encountering natives, soldiers and citizens, cities and small towns. That itself might be the focus of the book. I hope not, because none of the events or places are obviously significant, nor can they be since everyone gets murdered and the towns burned.
What kind of story do I like? One that is thematic, openly philosophical, with significant character development, in this way both informationally dense and humanly significant. It should mean something and be a pleasure to read, at least in a vague sense, since some great stories are devastating, haunting or frightening. Fiction is imaginative, creating new scenarios and examining them often through familiar perspectives, or at times using unfamiliar perspectives to examine ordinary scenarios; in either case there is a mix of familiar and unfamiliar things to create the contrast which clarifies the subject. Imagination is thusly useful for conveying a subject artistically, that it might resonate with a person as an experience rather than being written at them in the form of a five-page essay, though that might be useful in an academic setting. Art produces understanding in a way that raw, unguided information does not. What is the difference? One might say vision. Artistic vision connects simple data through a single lens so that it all comes out the other side uniformly colored while retaining conceptual separation.
Furthermore, I am heavily reminded of that unfortunate trend called grimdark fantasy. In those books the moral is nonexistent and therefore nihilistic. As the plot goes, everyone dies, the end. If something bad happens, it is not fixed, nor does anyone prevent it from happening again; in fact, they make it happen more. It is indeed grim and dark because the message is that evil is inevitable and all that is good will crumble. My most notorious example is Joe Abercrombie’s Last Argument Of Kings, the third of a trilogy. For two and a half books various characters who were each in their own way hopelessly corrupt, cruel, violent or otherwise vicious very slowly worked toward a better life, and in the end of the third book they all reverted back to their old selves, undoing all of the development Abercrombie put the effort into writing, which was a very conscious decision on his part, an active rejection of the sort of story in which that would happen, and therefore of the message of such a story, that better things are possible and worth believing in, fighting for and achieving. Another example is the near-uniformity of pessimistic science fiction. The vast majority of depictions of the future that I have encountered are bleak dystopias. That is indicative of a general social gloom: we see the state of the world and know that it is bad. Our imaginations are stunted by the severity of our conditions, which means that the things we create with our imaginations are likewise stunted. I must reject the idea that fiction, especially visions of our future, should be bleak. In fact, in my ideal world most such stories present hopeful visions, better paths, so that when many people read them they gain wider imaginations and know what a better world worth fighting for would look like even in broad strokes. In short, I do not appreciate bleakness as a message. Call me soft, but I rather like and value more positive stories, though I do acknowledge that it can be done well, as in Psycho-Pass. If I were of Plato’s persuasion, I would say that pointlessly, nihilistically bleak art is harmful to the soul.
So why do I dislike BM? Because it contradicts my vision of what a story can be and should do. It is unguided, blind and therefore incoherent. It does not convey some profound theme, nor any profound emotions. It is not even a pleasure to read, being awkwardly written in a strange style that makes conversations both rare and confusing. There is not apparently anything behind it, and if there is, it is unpleasant.
challenging
dark
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
once you read, it never leaves your mind.