Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

Bloody, hell.

I don’t mind violence (in its fictional form, you understand) but if it becomes too all-encompassing then the effect is severely blunted. In American Psycho, for example, the horrors are interspersed with long passages of hilarious banality, so the novel’s satirical effects are achieved brilliantly.

In Blood Meridian, McCarthy presents the reader with a seemingly unending catalogue of murder, rape and sundry outrages with no relieving counterpoint. The idea is to present an American history steeped in the twin original sins of genocide and racial subjugation, set in a landscape at once beautiful and drenched in blood. For me it doesn’t work because I became numb to the violence very early on and could find no compensatory interest elsewhere.

This is my third attempt at McCarthy and we still don’t get on, it seems.

I read this because of the rave it got on First Tuesday Book Club. Different strokes, I suppose.