Comments on: Blood Meridian–Cormac McCarthy

By: berks

berks — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 03:56:07 +0000

i love mccarthy for his spiritual feel. i feel a part of everything and nothing at the same time. as for jesse dont post dissertations please

By: Biblioklept

Biblioklept — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 01:09:15 +0000

Hi, Mary,
Have you read Suttree yet? It’s really fantastic, I think—maybe my favorite (outside of Blood Meridian). I reviewed it here:

http://biblioklept.org/2010/11/27/suttree-cormac-mccarthy/

As far as writers like McCarthy—I think he’s following Faulkner and Melville, and you can’t go wrong with either, in my humble.

There’s also a really cool dystopian book called A Canticle for Leibowitz that is Blood Meridianesque.

And George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books are as violent as Blood Meridian.

Cheers,
Ed Biblioklept.

By: Mary Cate

Mary Cate — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:09:42 +0000

I read an excerpt in my senior English class of The Crossing about 4 years ago and was immediately hooked. I decided then and there the The Crossing would be my choice for our final paper/project. Since then I have done my best to get my hands on all of McCarthy’s books. I’ve just finished Blood Meridian, definitely one of his best works in my opinion, and now I can’t wait to crack open another masterpiece by McCarthy. It’s so refreshing to find actual writers in this day and age where books are no more based on poetic, metaphoric language and stories to leave a reader pondering the philosophy in its pages. Where can I find more writers like Cormac McCarthy???

By: Biblioklept

Biblioklept — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 19:50:00 +0000

Ardin, next week will be “Blood Meridian Week” at Biblioklept in honor of the book’s 25th anniversary. I’m actually re-reading it right now.

By: Ardin Lalui

Ardin Lalui — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 17:45:45 +0000

I love your review. Great post. I completely relate to your restarting Blood Meridian when you were half way through. I have restarted every McCarthy book I’ve ever read at about the fifty page mark. It’s just something I find I have to do. And McCarthy is the only writer I do it for.

By: Emese from Hungary

Emese from Hungary — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:59:57 +0000

This is the first McCarthy book what I read. The Blood Meridian fascinated me!!! I read it in Hungarian and I wanna read it in English. Where do I find this Book on internet??? If Somebody knows it, writes me PLS! …plsPLsPLS…!!!
My e-mail: honcsi93@citromail.hu

By: Harold Bloom on McCarthy’s Blood Meridian « biblioklept

Harold Bloom on McCarthy’s Blood Meridian « biblioklept — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:58:44 +0000

[...] posted a great interview with master critic Harold Bloom this week. Bloom speaks at some length on one of our favorite books, Cormac McCarthy’s violent opus Blood Meridian, which was AV Club’s “Wrapped Up In Books” book club selection for June (pretty [...]

By: Jesse

Jesse — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:13:17 +0000

There is now an excellent philosophical analysis of Blood Meridian and the border trilogy available online. I always found the philosophical view in McCarthy’s books especially difficult to coherently organize without the crutch of some kind of politics (most of the literary criticism of these works falls far short as far as comprehensiveness goes). So needless to say, this really got me excited:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2928341/HEGEL-MODERNITY-AND-TELOS-IN-CORMAC-MCCARTHY

Really great stuff for anyone interested.

By: Jesse Waite

Jesse Waite — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:51:30 +0000

The Border Trilogy (All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain) is pretty good. It’s a really unusual transition for the writer of Blood Meridian, but that’s sort of the point, the saving grace of the three later novels. If B.M. is a story of total negation, the border trilogy is probably the author’s attempt at overcoming that negation. In some ways they aren’t that great (especially if Blood Meridian is your first standard of this author’s writing) but they contain some really good considerations of history as well as some pretty hard-hitting ironies about borders (national, internal, symbolic, etc.) Some criticize their anachronistic qualities, but still definitely worth reading. I’d like to know of other authors who deal with the same range and depth of ideas as McCarthy, but sadly I haven’t found any yet.

By: ed biblioklept

ed biblioklept — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:57:30 +0000

All the Pretty Horses was the first McCarthy book I was exposed to. I was a senior in high school and one of my friends was reading it (surreptitiously under his desk in our crazy-ass stat class, no less). I asked him what it was; he told me it was “supposed to be really good,” but it looked, as the kids like to say, totally gay to me. “All the Pretty Horses”–not tough (I was heavily into Hemingway, Salinger, Wm Burroughs, Vonnegut, Bukowski, Henry Miller, Kafka, etc. at the time). It seemed like a kind of cowboy romance, like Lonesome Dove or something. I completely dismissed it, and for years believed McCarthy was, like a sappy romance Western novelist (the movie w/ Matt Damon certainly didn’t help this prejudice). When The Road started getting so much press for being apocalyptic, etc., I was really shocked, but figured I essentially had to read it. I’m actually rereading it right now, after finishing Blood Meridian, until I can get a hold of something else. I actually found a copy of Horses though, that I ganked from my school. Should I read it? Or earlier McCarthy?

By: Dave C.

Dave C. — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 02:39:21 +0000

I thought All the Pretty Horses was great, too. Some people think that it might be overly sentimental, but I thought it was beautiful. You might want to try that as well

By: Mike

Mike — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 17:57:33 +0000

ah now i’m much more stoked about reading this. I actually looked for “The Road” in the library yesterday but they were all checked out. i’ve been looking for an entry point to McCarthy so i might just make this it. good stuff.

By: Dave C.

Dave C. — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 15:51:11 +0000

I went through this book slowly. Because I had so many other things to do, it took months to get to the end. I was numbed by the violence. The real genius of the book, for me, was in the last 20 pages. A quiet, beautiful conclusion.

Good post.

There’s an even earlier novel of his about a kid who is orphaned and has to raise himself in the forest (or something like that). I’ve heard rave reviews about it even if I can’t remember the title.

By: Cliff Burns

Cliff Burns — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 15:00:04 +0000

This is the first McCarthy book I read, suggested to me by none other than William Gibson.
I met him at a SF convention in Vancouver where we were both guests and asked him what he was reading (writers love this question). His eyes lit up and he rhapsodized about BLOOD MERIDIAN–I went out later that day and found a copy and haven’t looked back.
Good post…