I am about 25% into this book and I am struggling. Not that I don’t like it. I’m struggling with the language. Between the vocabulary words and the frequent dialog in Spanish I am either stopping way too frequently to look up words, or just trying to glean the context. I consider myself fairly well read and it bugs me that I am having such a hard time. The only other McCarthy book I’ve read is The Road and I don’t recall having as much of an issue.
For others who have read this, am I having a unique experience? I (mostly) am able to follow the story, but I feel like I am missing a lot of detail and nuance.
I’m not looking to discuss the story itself (as I mentioned I am only a quarter through it), just the language and difficulty level.
I went through a Cormac McCarthy phase and have read most, if not all of his works. I don’t remember having a particularly difficult time with Blood Meridian, but he does have a very quirky, unique style of writing, to be sure. Seems like the hardest time I had reading his work was when he had long segments of dialog- it wasn’t always made clear who was supposed to be speaking. All I can suggest is to keep reading and hopefully you’ll get more familiar with his style and reading it will go easier.
I stopped reading 1/3 the way. His style of writing in this book sucks and is a chore. This from someone who made it through James Ellroys American Tabloid trilogy.
Same here. The books I liked best were the LEAST McCarthyish - Suttree, All the Pretty Horses. My issue w/ BM was the - well, I don’t want to say anything that could be a spoiler. Some of his books - like the Crossing, impressed me as more challenging.
I don’t think using quotation marks is a bad thing.
I also think he flexes his - admittedly impressive - vocabulary in ways that do not aide the story telling or reading experience.
I read quite a bit, and have a pretty decent vocabulary. But I can’t think of another writer whose works required that I consult my dictionary as regularly as CM’s. And, when I looked the words up, they didn’t impress me as really necessary - nor did I perceive how the ten-dollar word enhanced the mood/flow.
Eager to hear what you think of it when you finish. Have you read any others of his?
I don’t know why, but this is one of those books that I re-read frequently despite having some frustration with the general punctuation and the needless use of obscure words. It’s strange to me how immersed I become in the story.
One thing that I’ve wanted to buy to accompany this is the book “Notes on Blood Meridian” by John Sepich. It’s supposed to be well-researched and gives some background on the locales and characters mentioned in the book. The only thing that kept me from buying it was it’s high price and limited availability due to its being out of print, but I see that Amazon is now carrying it in paperback and on Kindle.
McCarthy is my favorite author, and it took me three tries to make it through Blood Meridian. I stopped the first two times for much the same reason as you, it was just too much of a struggle. On my third try, I finally gave up on trying to understand every word and instead appreciated the poetry. When reading one of the innumerable 100+ word sentences, don’t try to follow it all. Take this one for example:
A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained wedding veil and some in headgear or cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses’ ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse’s whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.
It’s not necessary to know what a dragoon or pauldron is for the stream of words to evoke the frantic energy and terror of the attack. Appreciated at this level, it’s become one of my favorites of his books.
I did find BM to be his most challenging book to read. All the Pretty Horses and No Country for Old Men are more similar to The Road in their difficulty level. The Crossing, my #1 favorite, is somewhere in between.
I always love it when I encounter such extreme examples of - tastes differ. For a while, I woulda considered CM one of my faves. Didn’t consider BM all that challenging - just not worth the effort. And your fave - the Crossing - I never made it through despite repeated efforts, and it likely made me lower my assessment of CM in my personal pantheon.
Of course, a likely explanation is that I like plot and character, and am not generally fond of poetry.
I often find it interesting to reread authors at various stages of my life. Around the same time I enjoyed CM (maybe 30 years ago), I also read and enjoyed all of Walker Percy and Don DeLillo. Recently tried to reread a couple of Percy’s, and couldn’t imagine what I previously enjoyed so much. One author from that period who still holds up from me is Jim Harrison.
Good thing there are so many books out there for al of us to read, and they keep making more!
I’ve read Blood Meridian, Outer Dark, and the Road. I found BM the most challenging by a distance. Then OD then the Road which wasn’t challenging at all.
If pages of untranslated text in a different language isn’t challenging, what is?
It’s been a while - I guess I forgot. In my opinion, when an author fails to translate, he’s basically saying, “Fuck you” to his readers.
I’d imagine that at some point, I just didn’t care enough to be bothered by that. Figured it was unlikely to contain anything more worthwhile than the shit I COULD read!
Gotta admit, tho - the dead babies in the trees is an image that has stuck w/ me - FWIW!
I finished this today. I enjoyed it more after I realized I did not have to understand and analyze every sentence. Anyone have a clue as to what the epilogue was all about? Also, what do you think the judge represented (if anything)? Satan?
