October '10 Reading: Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

[Scheherazade]

In October we will be reading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.

Please post your comments and questions in this thread.

[Virgil]

Oh great. I got my book and i'm starting this evening.

[Dark Muse]

Hahah glad you found your book. I just started reading today.

[katelbach]

Just read the first 2 chapters. Is there a set date for discussion to begin (i.e. the last week of the month) or can we just start whenever we like?

[Dark Muse]

You can join in whenever you like.

[Dark Muse]

Thus far I have to say I have rather mixed feelings about the sparseness of the prose in which this story is written. There is something about it that one the one hand intrigues me, and I think it does said up the atmosphere of the book. You can really feel the starkness of it. Yet on the other hand I also find that it makes the story a bit hard to follow at times, becasue it seems to jump around so much, and is written in a way that feels almost fragmented, it is hard to keep track of what is going on within the story, because I cannot acutally form a clear picture of events, places, characters in my mind.

Also, what do people think about the way the dialogue is set up? How there is nothing to distinguish it from the rest of the story. To me it gives the story an almost impersonal feelings, setting up an aloofness between the reader and the characters, there is less of a feeling of interaction.

I do not know if this make sense or not, but in a way the story has much more of a feeling as if you are being told a story. Usually when I am reading a really good and engaging book, I will be sucked up into it, and it will come to life for me, and I will have strong emotional reactions to the characters, and it will be as if I have become a part of that world. But with this book, it feels more like you are sitting around the campfire listening to someone tell you a story, which perhaps is appropriate considering the Old West setting. There is almost something folkloric in the way the story is told.

[Virgil]

Read the first two chapters and wow on the prose. And the narrative is really intense. I haven't picked up on the themes yet, but I have to say that McCarthy is the finest American prose writer of my life time.

[Dark Muse]

I am curious of what people think of the little outlines which are given at the beginning of each chapter. As certainly there is a reason why McCarthy choose to do this. Do you find that it bares any particular significance to the story, or the way in which the story is narrated? And has it enhanced your reading at all, or do you find the slight spoilers to be a distraction?

I find that because of the sparseness of the prose, at times it does help as a guideline in helping me to follow what is going on within the story and track the events. Sometimes when I start to feel as if I am getting a little lost in what is supposed to be going on, I will flip back to reread what it says at the beginning to give me a better frame of mind for the story. There is also something about it that reminds me of News Paper headlines.

[Virgil]

I am curious of what people think of the little outlines which are given at the beginning of each chapter. As certainly there is a reason why McCarthy choose to do this. Do you find that it bares any particular significance to the story, or the way in which the story is narrated? And has it enhanced your reading at all, or do you find the slight spoilers to be a distraction?

I find that because of the sparseness of the prose, at times it does help as a guideline in helping me to follow what is going on within the story and track the events. Sometimes when I start to feel as if I am getting a little lost in what is supposed to be going on, I will flip back to reread what it says at the beginning to give me a better frame of mind for the story. There is also something about it that reminds me of News Paper headlines.

Not sure what to think of them. Reminds me of some classical works where there is a little summary at the beginning. I've been ignoring them for the most part.

[Rores28]

I will say that the first three pages of the book I have probably read something like 15 or so times because I think it really is that good. However, for me the prose does not stay consistently amazing. There is plenty in there that is just mediocre, but when he's on he is really on.

I agree too with the idea that you feel as if you are being told a story, and the sparseness definitely sets what I think is a very appropriate mood, unlike a recent Poe story that I read....

The plot so far is decent, though not stunning, I'm on page 55. But I've generally found this to be the case with McCarthy... I'm reading less for the plot and more for the prose and ambiance.

**Spoiler**

The scene where the natives attack the rag tag army and the imagery of all the horses dying and people getting scalped is pretty haunting.

[Dark Muse]

The plot so far is decent, though not stunning, I'm on page 55. But I've generally found this to be the case with McCarthy... I'm reading less for the plot and more for the prose and ambiance.

**Spoiler**

The scene where the natives attack the rag tag army and the imagery of all the horses dying and people getting scalped is pretty haunting.

I agree about the ambiance, the story is very atmospheric, I have to say I am currently on the fence about what I think about the prose, I do not dislike like yet I do not know if I can quite say I love it either. There is something about which intrigues me, but I have not come up with a definitive opinion about it.

I myself just finished chapter 4 and I really loved the vividness and chaos of that scene, I loved the way in which he descried the Comanche warriors, and the way in which they were dressed.

[plainjane]

This is my second attempt to read Blood Meridian. The first time I made it to about page 81, this time I simply picked up at that page and am now on page 105, middle of Chapter 8.

I love McCarthy's prose, for example [at random]...the first sentence of Chapter 5....."With darkness one soul rose wondrously from among the new slain dead and stole away in the moonlight."
Wow. When one considers all the ways that scene could have been written, it stands out like a diamond among paste.

So, it isn't McCarthy's prose that gives me problems, I just have trouble slogging through all the mindless violence and hideous blood shed. I'm sure that is the way it was, at least many times, but the enumeration of each casual act of violence is mind numbing.

I read The Road a couple of years ago, and thoroughly enjoyed it, the bleakness didn't bother me, and the violence was somehow different in The Road.

[Virgil]

So, it isn't McCarthy's prose that gives me problems, I just have trouble slogging through all the mindless violence and hideous blood shed. I'm sure that is the way it was, at least many times, but the enumeration of each casual act of violence is mind numbing.

Maybe for some and I would assume on a limited basis. No one could live a life with repeative violence like that. Certainly not the average person or even most extreme persons. And you don't get such violence from any of the authors who lived in that time. McCarthy is looking in retrospect and mythologizing to some degree. That is not to say such violence didn't exist. McCarthy takes it to an extreme.

I agree with the rest of your points by the way.

[JuniperWoolf]

Mine's on the way.

[Dark Muse]

Maybe for some and I would assume on a limited basis. No one could live a life with repeative violence like that. Certainly not the average person or even most extreme persons. And you don't get such violence from any of the authors who lived in that time. McCarthy is looking in retrospect and mythologizing to some degree. That is not to say such violence didn't exist. McCarthy takes it to an extreme.

I agree with the rest of your points by the way.

While it may be true that the violence within this book is portrayed in a more extreme sense than the actuality, in my feelings of reading the book I did not so much view it as mythologizing the time period, but I saw it more as de-Romanticizing the ideal in which the Wild West is often portrayed. Showing a side of it which is generally ignored in the movies and more modern day portrayals of that period of time.