Wow. This was fantastic. The story of "the kid" and his coming of age and traveling across the old west. He teams up with the fantastic and horrific Judge Holden and the Glanton Gang. The novel is violent and savage and brutal and describes the Westward expansion and the hunting of Indians and Mexicans. The Judge is an enormous (he weighs 24 stones), completely hairless man who speaks at least 5 languages, knows how to make gunpowder, and catalogs everything. He feels that (I'm paraphrasing here but) anything that he is unfamiliar with or is unaware of exists without his permission. The story also focuses on the kid who is sort of the representation of morality / reason. The book started off a little slow, but once the kid found himself riding with the Glanton Gang it really moved. I think that McCarthy is my favorite writer today, and I'm sure that there are many levels that I'm missing in the book.

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This was one of the most difficult books I've ever tried to read. The story is gory, about a sharp-shooter kid who joins up with the Glanton Gang hunting scalps along the Texas-Mexico border around 1850. The violence begins on the second page and doesn't let up throughout the entire book. I couldn't read more than a few pages at a time, all the carnage and baseless hatred was exhausting. There's another character called The Judge and also Holden (most characters in the book are referred to at least a couple different ways, which is confusing) who is evil incarnate; I think he's supposed to be the devil, "he never sleeps and he says he will never die," and little children and animals go missing and are brutally murdered whenever he's around.

If I had the chance to start over reading this, I would have skipped Harold Bloom's ridiculously intimidating intro. I want to read The Road and No Country For Old Men but I think it's going to take some years to get the bad taste of Blood Meridian out of my head. (shudder)

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