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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
A discombobulated gore-fest of staggering prose and scattered thought, Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian takes enormous artistic liberties at the cost of a linear narrative. Does it pay off? The answer is somewhere between "sort of", and a very tentative yes. Honestly, I cannot accurately describe the plot of this novel to someone else. It's that unfollowable. I read around a chapter a day, and that chapter would usually leave me feeling very confused and/or bored. Chapters consist of characters meandering the desert for pages upon pages, observing random artifacts of scenery, only to culminate in a very sudden and frankly disgusting scene of extreme violence, whether it's swinging babies among rocks to smash their supple heads open or buying an innocent pair of puppies only to toss them into a raging river and sadistically shoot off their heads, the excruciating process, graphically described, of scalping entire villages of innocent men and women, McCarthy does not withhold any punches. And it doesn't really work.
The endless violence surely emphasizes the senselessness of the greed-driven actions of the Delawares the Kid travels with, but McCarthy provides no reason for the audience or even the Kid to reflect on these acts. Things happen. They move on. Maybe this qualifies as some obscure form of art, but it makes for pretty dull reading. Only towards the end of the book does McCarthy begin to add a shred of meaning to the horrific mess of the previous chapters, that almost justifies how difficult it was to slog through as he finally reveals the elusive nature of the Kid's motivations for the journey and how his interplay with the judge leads to the legitimately, stunningly beautiful description of the dance that humans are caught in. And then the book ends. The effect? Meh. I can appreciate McCarthy's skillful usage of complex prose, but I cannot say that I found any truly profound commentaries or well-written statements that resonated with me, aside from the dancer monologue. And that was like 2 pages. So I can't safely recommend it to friends, unless they are looking forward to a relatively dull book that has some solid scraps of meaning in its endless pages of senselessness and monotony.
The endless violence surely emphasizes the senselessness of the greed-driven actions of the Delawares the Kid travels with, but McCarthy provides no reason for the audience or even the Kid to reflect on these acts. Things happen. They move on. Maybe this qualifies as some obscure form of art, but it makes for pretty dull reading. Only towards the end of the book does McCarthy begin to add a shred of meaning to the horrific mess of the previous chapters, that almost justifies how difficult it was to slog through as he finally reveals the elusive nature of the Kid's motivations for the journey and how his interplay with the judge leads to the legitimately, stunningly beautiful description of the dance that humans are caught in. And then the book ends. The effect? Meh. I can appreciate McCarthy's skillful usage of complex prose, but I cannot say that I found any truly profound commentaries or well-written statements that resonated with me, aside from the dancer monologue. And that was like 2 pages. So I can't safely recommend it to friends, unless they are looking forward to a relatively dull book that has some solid scraps of meaning in its endless pages of senselessness and monotony.
adventurous
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I'm never ever reading this book again.
challenging
dark
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I need to come back to this at another time, maybe reading a physical copy. I was having a hard time following along, and was not in the mood to read something like this!
“War is the truest form of divination… war is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence.
War is god”
War is god”
Incredible style (though the prose is over wrought to the point of being distracting) but this is unrelentingly grim to the point of absurdity. I'm glad to have finished.