Bloody, Bloody Texas: A Radar Review
They rode out on the north road as would parties bound for El Paso but before they were even quite out of sight of the city they had turned their tragic mounts to the west and they rose infatuate and half fond toward the red demise of that day, toward the evening lands and the distant pandemonium of the sun.
Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
Blood Meridian is a complicated book.
On one hand, it’s a book everyone tells you read. The kind of book your co-workers frequently leer at you and ask, “So what part are you at?”
On the other hand, it’s one of the more haunting, difficult contemporary novels you’ll read.
Everything about this book is hard to digest. The diction, the characters, the plot and the action. The violence, the language, the exalted monologues of characters trying to justify their nature. Blood Meridian reads less like the gritty western everyone sells it as and more like a religious parable. The actions in this book feel as though they take place 2,000 years ago instead of just 150. It’s this esoteric rhetoric, this mystic “otherness” that permeates the novel is what makes this book work.
In fact, it's hard to talk about Blood Meridian without explaining what happens in the plot. If someone were to ask, "What's this book about," you'd be at a loss. You'd stammer and admit, "Well, a kid gets beaten with cudgel a few pages in." That’s the kind of book this novel becomes.
The “what” is decidedly simple to explain: It’s a violent western epic told as though Homer were some fiddler in Chihuahua City. The “why” of this novel is far more difficult. Themes converge and they aren't so much threaded together as twisted in a knot. Much like the characters, you forgo looking for an explanation for the cycle of violence and devastation, but merely accept that you are lost in a land that was once teaming but is now just an expanse of salt and bones. As thought the land itself has crossed some terrible threshold from which it can never return.
The majority of Blood Meridian takes place in Northern Mexico not long after the Mexican-American War. One side is a struggling Mexican population in the last throes of feudalism and the other side an overzealous, “Manifest Destiny” population of white Americans that wish they annexed all of Mexico when they had the chance. And between these two rests the Native peoples in the rural alcoves of the land, raiding and striking out in a terrible cavalcade that sweeps up the any who cross their path.
The language in Blood Meridian is arguably McCarthy’s best. It blooms more than the Border Trilogy, and is entirely unbridled, unlike the more reserved language of The Road. And like all McCarthy works, there is a great amount of poetry in his writing. In the loud, action-y moments, the language cements the scene with narrative detail and McCarthy’s knack for finding perfect adjectives and verbs. These make for some of the most memorable (and haunting) images you’ll ever experience in a novel. The quiet moments, however, is where McCarthy’s craft shines. As the novel slows down, it launches itself into this elevated plane of impressionist, yet concrete, poetic movement. The plot serves a set piece for the intangible something that has been driving the story. These moments showcase the themes, evoking response from within the audience in a slow boil as only poetry can.
In a way, Blood Meridian isn't complicated at all. You know everything about this book, so much so you can feel it. But when you try to explain it, you can’t. It’s like trying to tell someone about a nightmare you had last month. You can remember the pit it left behind, but the exact reason why is obfuscated or outright gone.
Another reason why this novel is so difficult to digest is because McCarthy forces you to reckon with it. There is no distinct pattern the story follows. The long-term goals of the characters are hazy at best, and often subject to change in the chaotic world in which they inhabit. Even Blood Meridian takes that typical McCarthy “left turn,” in which the vehicle you think is going to drive the narrative is upended and completely abandoned. If you've read The Crossing, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
You also have to reckon with the characters actions, or lack there of. Hell, you have to reckon with the characters themselves. The protagonist is an unnamed 14 year-old and he's brooding and says little. You can’t really call him the hero. He does little throughout the book, neither good nor ill. And while I've read reviewers knock the novel because of this, I think it's okay. The kid is essentially the audience, unaware of what he got himself in to and struggling to understand the world around him. He only acts when the tilt of this world swings his way, and once it’s safe he assumes his indifference again. He’s a non-hero, the “Ishmael” around which the story revolves, a catalyst. He's less the protagonist and more the bookmark to keep us from getting lost.
More often than not, you’ll have to reckon with the kid’s companions; Glanton’s hypocrisy and inability to see they’re more the “Savage” than the Apache they’re hunting; the sideshow madness of some companions and the megalomania of others; the random acts of violence; the devastated landscape; McCarthy’s “othering” of the Apache and the Yuma; the fact every non-white person is novel is verbally branded “nigger” in way that would make Faulkner blush.
And then there’s the judge, whose very existence comes from without. Whose presence is so alien, he become the dark star, the anti-matter of Blood Meridian's universe.
This book is hard to stomach. It'll sit in your gut like a stone. You’ll have to grasp the indifference that colors every action and reckon with being led through the ruins of a land you know were once full with life and civilization and trade. You’ll get the feeling this world is constantly churning in on itself, all violent undertow and upwelling. Your experience with this novel never ends, really. You’ll find yourself playing scenes over and over because they will have burned themselves into your memory.
And you know what?
When you finish, you’re going to take your copy and shove it in the hands of your co-worker and tell them they have to read it. And when you see them reading it in the break room, you will leer at them and lean in and ask, “So what part are you at?”
Radar Reviews are an analysis of novels, short stories, and poetry collections, as well as obscure or out-of-print texts, old timey masterpieces or contemporary classics that I finally got around to reading. These reviews tailored to introduce you to new books you may have missed and older works you’ve been pretending to read for years.
--David Schuller