Blood Meridian

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This article is about the novel. For other uses, see Blood Meridian (disambiguation).

Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West
First edition cover
AuthorCormac McCarthy
LanguageEnglish, Spanish
Genre
PublisherRandom House
Publication date
April 1985
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hard and paperback)
Pages337 (first edition), 351 (25th anniversary edition)
ISBN0-394-54482-X (first edition, hardback)
OCLC234287599
813/.54 19
LC ClassPS3563.C337 B4 1985
Preceded bySuttree 
Followed byAll the Pretty Horses 

Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West (known simply and more commonly as Blood Meridian) is a 1985 epic historical novel by American author Cormac McCarthy, classified as an anti-Western[1][2] and Gothic Western.[3] McCarthy's fifth book, it was published by Random House.

Set in the American frontier with a loose historical context, the narrative follows a fictional teenager from Tennessee referred to as "the kid", with the bulk of the text devoted to his experiences with the Glanton gang, a historical group of scalp hunters who massacred American Indians and others in the United States–Mexico borderlands from 1849 to 1850 for bounty, sadistic pleasure, and eventually out of nihilistic habit. The role of antagonist is gradually filled by Judge Holden, a physically massive, highly educated, preternaturally skilled member of the gang with pale and hairless skin who relishes the destruction and domination of whatever he encounters, including children and docile animals.

Although the novel initially received lukewarm critical and commercial reception,[4] it has since become highly acclaimed and is widely recognized as McCarthy's magnum opus and one of the greatest American novels of all time,[5] with some labelling the work as the Great American Novel.[6]

Plot

[edit]

"The kid" is born in Tennessee during the Leonids meteor shower of 1833. At 14, he runs away and travels across states, arriving in Nacogdoches, Texas, where he enters a tent in which a reverend is giving a sermon. Judge Holden enters and announces that the reverend is a wanted imposter, detailing excessive crimes and inciting the crowd to violence. The judge reveals shortly afterward that he had never met the reverend. The kid escapes, encountering and brawling with Toadvine, but later assists him with arson and assault. The kid sees the judge as he escapes town, and the judge smiles at him.

In Bexar, the kid kills a bartender for refusing him a drink. He is persuaded to join Captain White's company of ill-equipped filibusters. The militia is overwhelmed by Comanche warriors. The kid is eventually picked up by a passing cart. Soldiers later seize the kid and take him to jail in Chihuahua City, where he finds Toadvine. Toadvine arranges for the pair and another inmate to be released into a gang of scalphunters led by Glanton. The judge is in company.

The gang contracts to protect Chihuahua from marauding Apaches, receiving payment for each scalp. However, the gang kills anyone who can provide a passable scalp for a higher share, including residents of Mexican villages. A bounty is placed on Glanton after officials realize the gang's fraud. At the Colorado River, the gang discovers a ferry, appropriating it by conspiring with and betraying the nearby Yumas. The gang settles there, exploiting travelers until they are massacred by the Yumas. Many of the gang are killed, including Glanton.

The kid is injured, but escapes with Toadvine to Alamo Mucho. The pair reunite with Tobin, also of the Glanton gang. The judge joins the trio, naked and unarmed. He bargains for Toadvine's hat, but is unable to bargain for the kid's pistol. Tobin attempts to convince the kid to shoot the judge.

The kid and Tobin depart towards Carrizo Creek. En route, the two encounter gang-member Brown, who was detained in San Diego during the massacre. Brown has two horses and is equipped with two rifles. Tobin informs Brown that Glanton and the gang are dead, but that Toadvine and the judge are behind.

As the kid drinks from the creek, a gunshot hits his reflection. He sees two horses and the judge, now clothed, with a rifle. The kid kills the horses, and the judge shoots Tobin through the neck. The kid and Tobin continue on, pursued by the judge, until the pair are found by Diegueños who feed them at their San Felipe camp.

The kid and Tobin reach San Diego. Tobin searches for a doctor for their injuries, but the kid is arrested before they can reunite. The judge visits him in jail. The kid is released and undergoes surgery. He dreams of the judge while under anesthesia.

Later that year, the kid sees Toadvine and Brown hanged in Los Angeles. The kid buys and wears Brown's "scapular" of human ears. The kid asks around for news of Tobin in San Diego and Los Angeles, but quits his search. The kid wanders the Southwest.

In 1878, the kid, now 45, is referred to as "the man." He invites a lone group of youths to sit at his fire. The boys are interested in the scapular, but the congeniality sours as one of the boys challenges the man and later attempts to shoot him. The man kills the boy.

The man travels to Fort Griffin, Texas, where he enters a bar featuring a dancing bear. He sees the judge, who has not aged. The dancing bear is killed by a bar patron. The judge appears by the man, but he deposes the judge. The man goes to the outhouse, where he opens the door and finds the judge naked. The judge smiles, "gathers" the man against him, and latches the door. Later, a man warns others against entering the outhouse. Another man looks in and is horrified.

In the dance hall, the naked judge is dancing and plays a fiddle. The judge "never sleeps," and says "he will never die."

Characters

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Major characters

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  • The kid: The novel's anti-heroic protagonist or pseudo-protagonist,[7] the kid is an illiterate Tennessean whose mother died in childbirth. At 14, he runs away from his father and sister. He is said to have "a taste for mindless violence" and is involved in brutal actions throughout the novel. He enters inherently violent professions, those primarily being his recruitment into Captain White's filibuster company and later Glanton's gang of scalphunters, thereby securing release from a prison in Chihuahua, Mexico. The kid takes part in many of the Glanton gang's scalp-hunting raids, including those against peaceful agrarian Native Americans and unprotected Mexican villages, but ultimately displays a moral fiber that puts him at odds with the judge. "The kid" is referred to as "the man" in the final chapter of the novel, which takes place in 1878.
  • Judge Holden, or "the judge": A huge, pale, and hairless man who may or may not be supernatural. He is a polyglot and polymath and a keen examiner and recorder of the natural world. He is extremely violent and deviant. He is said to have accompanied Glanton's gang since they found him sitting alone on a rock in the middle of the desert. The judge subsequently saves the gunpowder-less gang from pursuing Apaches by leading them to various natural resources from which he is able to collect and eventually create gunpowder. It is hinted that he and Glanton have some manner of pact. He gradually becomes the antagonist to the kid after the dissolution of Glanton's gang, occasionally having brief reunions with the kid. Unlike the rest of the gang, Holden is socially refined and remarkably well educated; however, he perceives the world as ultimately violent, fatalistic, and liable to an endless cycle of bloody conquest, with human nature and autonomy defined by the endurance and omnipresence of war. His beliefs are expounded upon in speeches and stories throughout the novel.
  • John Joel Glanton, or simply "Glanton": The American leader, or "captain", of a gang of scalphunters who murder Native Americans and Mexican civilians and military alike. Little of his history and appearance are detailed, except that he is physically small with black hair, and has a wife and child in Texas. He is a clever strategist. His last major conquest is the gang's seizure of a profitable Colorado River ferry, which ultimately leads to an ambush by the Yumas in which he is killed.
  • Louis Toadvine, or simply "Toadvine": A seasoned outlaw with whom the kid brawls with, though the kid later assists him with assaulting a man, burning down a hotel in the process. Toadvine has no ears and his forehead is branded with the letters H and T (horse thief) and F (felon). He reappears unexpectedly as a cellmate of the kid in the Chihuahua prison. From there, he mendaciously negotiates the release of himself, the kid, and one other inmate into Glanton's gang. Toadvine is not as depraved as some of the gang, questioning the killing of innocents, but is nonetheless a violent criminal. He is hanged in Los Angeles alongside David Brown.
  • Ben Tobin, "the priest", or "the ex-priest": A member of the gang and formerly a novice of the Society of Jesus. Tobin remains deeply religious. He feels an apparently paternalistic bond with the kid and abhors the judge and his philosophy. He and the judge gradually become great spiritual enemies, and he encourages the kid at multiple junctures to shoot the judge, to no avail. He survives the Yuma massacre of Glanton's gang, but is non-fatally shot in the neck by the judge. He is last seen in San Diego, separating from the kid to search for a doctor for both of their injuries. The kid seeks news of him in San Diego and Los Angeles, but never hears from or meets him again.

Other recurring characters

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  • Captain White, or "the captain": An American veteran soldier and filibuster who believes that Mexico is a lawless nation destined to be conquered by the United States. Captain White leads a patchwork company of militants into Mexico along with the recently recruited "kid." After weeks of travel through the harsh Mexican desert, the company is ambushed by a Comanche war party. Captain White escapes with a few of his "officers," but is ultimately caught and beheaded. Mexican soldiers show his preserved head in a jar to the kid, who disavows any relationship to him.
  • Bathcat, or "the Vandiemenlander": Born in Wales, Bathcat went to Van Diemen's Land to hunt Aborigines. He has three fingers on his right hand. Aside from a necklace (or "scapular") of ears, his most notable trait is a number tattooed on the inside of his forearm, suggesting that he may have been sent to the colony as a convict. He is killed by Native Americans during their travels through Pimería Alta; a fate that was foretold during his introduction.
  • David Brown, or simply "Davy" or "Brown": A member of the Glanton gang who wears a necklace of human ears - likely taken from Bathcat's corpse. He is arrested in San Diego, having been sent there to purchase supplies for the gang's Colorado River settlement. He schemes his own release by tempting a young soldier with the coins in his possession, alleged money buried in the desert, and a plan to overthrow Glanton's profitable ferry operation, but shoots the soldier shortly after the two leave San Diego together. He impliedly deserts the gang and avoids the Yuma attack. He is hanged with Toadvine in Los Angeles. After his hanging, the kid purchases his scapular of ears off a soldier and begins wearing it.
  • James Robert Bell, or "the imbecile," "the idiot": A mentally-disabled man who becomes affiliated with the Glanton gang after his brother, Cloyce, joins. The idiot was shipped in a box into his brother's "care" after the death of their mother. Before the brothers joined, Cloyce kept the idiot in a cage, advertising him as "The Wild Man" and charging money to see him. He is regularly depicted as naked and covered in his own feces. After he is bathed, dressed, and his cage is burned down by a well-meaning group of women at the Colorado River, he enters the river again at night, loses his footing, and nearly drowns. The judge saves him, and the idiot subsequently remains attached to the judge. After escaping the Yuma attack with the help of the judge, the idiot is later seen leashed by the judge. However, by the time the judge visits the kid in San Diego, the idiot is no longer present, leaving his fate unknown.
  • John Jackson, or "Jackson": Two men in Glanton's gang  – one Black and one White – share the name "John Jackson." There is deep-seated hostility between the Jacksons for reasons unexplained, though no one in the gang intervenes. After attempting to intimidate the Black Jackson away from a campfire with a threat of violence, the White Jackson is decapitated by the Black Jackson. "Black Jackson" assumes an integral role in the gang. While still referred to by numerous slurs, Jackson is nonetheless treated as part of a "body" that cannot have any part killed or violated. He appears to have a special relationship with Judge Holden, as the judge goes to great lengths to rescue him after a confrontation on a mountain pass, and he wears the same robes as the judge before becoming the first casualty of the Yuma attack.

Themes

[edit]

Violence

[edit]
Scalping lithograph circa 1850s

A major theme is the warlike nature of man. Critic Harold Bloom[8] praised Blood Meridian as one of the best 20th century American novels, "worthy of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick,"[9] but admitted that his "first two attempts to read through Blood Meridian failed, because [he] flinched from the overwhelming carnage."[10]

Caryn James of The New York Times argued that the novel's violence was a "slap in the face" to modern readers cut off from brutality.[11] Terrence Morgan thought the effect of the violence initially shocking, but then waned until the reader was desensitized.[12] Billy J. Stratton of Arizona Quarterly contends that the brutality is the primary mechanism through which McCarthy challenges the "oppositional structure" of the conventional narrative of the Old West; "[R]eaders encounter characters that are often depicted as more animal than human in their behaviors, participating in a ruthless struggle for fortune and power. It is the absence of a recognizable heroic character along with the negation of the Eurocentric oppositions that McCarthy's deployment of animal imagery is meant to illuminate."[13]

James D. Lilley argues that many critics struggle with the fact that McCarthy does not use violence for "jury-rigged, symbolic plot resolutions ... In McCarthy's work, violence tends to be just that; it is not a sign or symbol of something else."[14] In her aforementioned review, Caryn James noted that McCarthy depicts characters of all backgrounds as evil, in contrast to contemporary "revisionist theories that make white men the villains and Indians the victims."[11]

Epigraphs

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One of the epigraphs entails an ancient scalped skull.

"You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the Devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything"

The Old Hermit, pg. 19

Three epigraphs open the book: quotations from French writer Paul Valéry, from German Christian mystic Jakob Böhme, and a 1982 news clipping from the Yuma Sun reporting the claim of members of an Ethiopian archeological excavation that a fossilized skull three hundred millennia old seemed to have been scalped. Regarding the meaning of the epigraphs, David H. Evans writes that

[t]he taking of scalps, as McCarthy's third epigraph suggests, enjoys a profound antiquity, one coterminous with, perhaps, the beginnings of the species Homo sapiens.[15]

Ending

[edit]

The book does not narrate what happens between the man and the judge in the outhouse (referred to as the "jakes"), and none of the three men who look inside describe what is within. This allusive portrayal, in a book which otherwise depicts violence in explicit detail, has caused much comment. Many critics assert that Holden has murdered the kid.[16] Others propose that the judge instead humiliates the kid by raping him[17] or that the outcome is intentionally unknowable.[18]

Epilogue

The epilogue is likewise cryptic and opaque. It describes a man progressing over the Western plain, digging holes with a tool that is likely a Vaughan post auger. This tool was typically used for digging fence post holes for barbed wire fences, which were erected as settlers built ranches and claimed property throughout the Western United States.[19] The narrator describes how the digging "enkindles the hole" by "hole striking" the stone in the hole, "hole striking" being a metalworking process in which a tool is used to create a depression or hole in a material, typically by striking the tool with a hammer. Fire is a major motif in the novel,[20] and metalworking features prominently in a famous passage wherein the kid dreams of the judge overlooking a metal worker.

Behind the hole digger, among other people, are "bone pickers." This occupation arose in the late 1860s, when the bones of the massive numbers of buffalo slaughtered in the 1800s could be profitably collected and shipped to Eastern United States carbon and fertilizer factories.[21]

Religion

[edit]

Hell

[edit]

David Vann argues that the setting of the American southwest which the Gang traverses is representative of hell. Vann claims that the Judge's kicking of a head is an allusion to Dante's similar action in the Inferno.[22]

Gnosticism

[edit]

The second of the three epigraphs which introduce the novel, taken from the Christian theosophist Jakob Böhme, has incited varied discussion. The quote from Boehme is:

It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost as if in sorrowing. There is no sorrowing. For sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death, and death and dying are the very life of the darkness.[23]

No specific conclusions have been reached about its interpretation nor relevance to the novel.[citation needed] Critics agree that there are Gnostic elements in Blood Meridian, but they disagree on the precise meaning and implication of those elements.

Leo Daugherty argues that "Gnostic thought is central to Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian", (Daugherty, 122) specifically the Persian-Zoroastrian-Manichean branch of Gnosticism. He describes the novel as a "rare coupling of Gnostic 'ideology' with the 'affect' of Hellenic tragedy by means of depicting how power works in the making and erasing of culture, and of what the human condition amounts to when a person opposes that power and thence gets introduced to fate."[24] Daugherty sees Holden as an archon and the kid as a "failed pneuma."[citation needed] He says that the kid feels a "spark of the alien divine."[25]

Daugherty further contends that the violence of the novel can best be understood through a Gnostic lens. "Evil" as defined by the Gnostics was a far larger, more pervasive presence in human life than the rather tame and "domesticated" Satan of Christianity. As Daugherty writes, "For [Gnostics], evil was simply everything that is, with the exception of bits of spirit imprisoned here. And what they saw is what we see in the world of Blood Meridian."[26]

However, Barcley Owens argues that while there are undoubtedly Gnostic qualities to the novel, Daugherty's arguments are "ultimately unsuccessful,"[27] because Daugherty fails to adequately address the pervasive violence and because he overstates the kid's goodness.[citation needed]

Theodicy

[edit]

Douglas Canfield asserts that theodicy is the central theme of Blood Meridian. James Wood took a similar position, recognizing as a recurrent theme in the novel the issue of the general justification of metaphysical goodness in the presence of evil.[28] Chris Dacus expressed his preference for discussing the theme of theodicy in its eschatological terms in comparison to the theological scene of the last judgment.[1] This preference for reading theodicy as an eschatological theme was further affirmed by Harold Bloom in his recurrent phrase of referring to the novel as "The Authentic Apocalyptic Novel."[29]

Writing

[edit]
Cormac McCarthy in 1980, by which time he had already been working on Blood Meridian for about five years

McCarthy began writing Blood Meridian in the mid-1970s.[30] In a letter sent around 1979 he said that he had not touched Blood Meridian in six months out of frustration.[7] Nonetheless, significant parts of the final book were written in one go, "including the astonishing 'legion of horribles' passage".[7]

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 [...].

— Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, IV.

McCarthy worked on the novel while living on the money he received from his MacArthur Fellows grant in 1981. It was his first attempt at a western and his first novel set in the Southwestern United States, a change from the Appalachian settings of his earlier work.[7]

Edward S. Curtis – Canyon de Chelly (1904)

In 1974, McCarthy moved from his native Tennessee to El Paso, Texas, to immerse himself in the culture and geography of the American Southwest. He taught himself Spanish, which many of the characters of Blood Meridian speak.[7] McCarthy conducted considerable research to write the book. Critics have repeatedly demonstrated that even brief and seemingly inconsequential passages of Blood Meridian rely on historical evidence. The book has been described as "as close to history as novels generally get".[31]

The Glanton gang segments are based on Samuel Chamberlain's account of the group in his memoir My Confession: The Recollections of a Rogue. Chamberlain rode with John Joel Glanton and his company between 1849 and 1850. Judge Holden is described in Chamberlain's account but is otherwise unknown. Chamberlain writes:

The second in command, now left in charge of the camp, was a man of gigantic size who rejoiced in the name of Holden, called Judge Holden of Texas. Who or what he was no one knew, but a cooler-more blooded villain never went unhung. He stood six foot six in his moccasins, had a large, fleshy frame, a dull, tallow-colored face destitute of hair and all expression, always cool and collected. But when a quarrel took place and blood shed, his hog-like eyes would gleam with a sullen ferocity worthy of the countenance of a fiend ... Terrible stories were circulated in camp of horrid crimes committed by him when bearing another name in the Cherokee nation in Texas. And before we left Fronteras, a little girl of ten years was found in the chaparral foully violated and murdered. The mark of a huge hand on her little throat pointed out him as the ravisher as no other man had such a hand. But though all suspected, no one charged him with the crime. He was by far the best educated man in northern Mexico.[32]

McCarthy's Judge was added to his manuscript in the late 1970s, a "grotesque patchwork of up-river Kurtz and Milton's Satan" and Chamberlain's account.[7]

McCarthy physically retraced the Glanton Gang's path through Mexico multiple times, and noted topography and fauna.[7] He studied such topics as homemade gunpowder to accurately depict the Judge's creation from volcanic rock.

Style

[edit]

McCarthy's writing style involves many unusual or archaic words, dialogue in Spanish, no quotation marks for dialogue, and no apostrophes to signal most contractions. McCarthy told Oprah Winfrey in an interview that he preferred "simple declarative sentences" and that he used capital letters, periods, an occasional comma, a colon for setting off a list, but never semicolons.[33] He believed there was no reason to "blot the page up with weird little marks".[34] The New York Times described McCarthy's prose in Blood Meridian as "Faulknerian".[35] Describing events of extreme violence, McCarthy's prose is sparse yet expansive, with an often biblical quality and frequent religious references.[citation needed]

Reception and reevaluation

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Blood Meridian initially received little recognition, but has since been recognized as a masterpiece and one of the greatest works of American literature. Some have called it the Great American Novel.[6] American literary critic Harold Bloom praised Blood Meridian as one of the 20th century's finest novels.[36] Aleksandar Hemon has called it "possibly the greatest American novel of the past 25 years".[37] David Foster Wallace named it one of the five most underappreciated American novels since 1960[38] and "[p]robably the most horrifying book of this [20th] century, at least [in] fiction."[39]

Time magazine included Blood Meridian in its "Time 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005".[40] In 2006 The New York Times conducted a poll of writers and critics regarding the most important works in American fiction from the previous 25 years, and Blood Meridian was a runner-up.[41]

Literary significance

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There has been no consensus in the interpretation of the novel. Americanist Dana Phillips said that the work "seems designed to elude interpretation".[42] One scholar has described Blood Meridian as:

Lyrical at times, at others simply archaic and recondite, at still others barely literate: the dissociative style of Blood Meridian defies accommodation to conventional assumptions. And that's the point.[31]

Nonetheless, academics and critics have suggested that Blood Meridian is nihilistic or strongly moral, a satire of the western genre or a savage indictment of Manifest Destiny. Harold Bloom called it "the ultimate western". J. Douglas Canfield described it as "a grotesque Bildungsroman in which we are denied access to the protagonist's consciousness almost entirely".[43] Richard Selzer declared that McCarthy "is a genius – also probably somewhat insane."[44] Critic Steven Shaviro wrote:

In the entire range of American literature, only Moby-Dick bears comparison to Blood Meridian. Both are epic in scope, cosmically resonant, obsessed with open space and with language, exploring vast uncharted distances with a fanatically patient minuteness. Both manifest a sublime visionary power that is matched only by still more ferocious irony. Both savagely explode the American dream of manifest destiny of racial domination and endless imperial expansion. But if anything, McCarthy writes with a yet more terrible clarity than does Melville.

— Steven Shaviro, "A Reading of Blood Meridian"[45]

Attempted film adaptations

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An attempt to adapt the novel by Ridley Scott ultimately faltered.

Since the novel's release many have noted its cinematic potential. The New York Times' 1985 review noted that the novel depicted "scenes that might have come off a movie screen".[35] There have been attempts to create a motion picture adaptation of Blood Meridian, but all have failed during the development or pre-production stages. A common perception is that the story is "unfilmable" due to its unrelenting violence and dark tone.[46] In an interview with The Wall Street Journal in 2009 McCarthy denied this notion, with his perspective being that it would be "very difficult to do and would require someone with a bountiful imagination and a lot of balls. But the payoff could be extraordinary."[47]

Screenwriter Steve Tesich first adapted Blood Meridian into a screenplay in 1995. In the late 1990s, Tommy Lee Jones acquired the film adaptation rights to the story and subsequently rewrote Tesich's screenplay with the idea of directing and playing a role in it.[48] The production could not move forward due to film studios avoiding the project's overall violence.[49]

Following the end of production for Kingdom of Heaven in 2004, screenwriter William Monahan and director Ridley Scott entered discussions with producer Scott Rudin for adapting Blood Meridian with Paramount Pictures financing.[50] In a 2008 interview with Eclipse Magazine Scott confirmed that the screenplay had been written, but that the extensive violence was proving to be a challenge for film standards.[51] This later led to Scott and Monahan leaving the project, resulting in another abandoned adaptation.[52]

By early 2011, James Franco was considering adapting Blood Meridian, along with a number of other William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy novels. After being persuaded by Andrew Dominik to adapt the novel, Franco shot 25 minutes of test footage starring Scott Glenn, Mark Pellegrino, Luke Perry, and Dave Franco. For undisclosed reasons, Rudin denied further production of the film.[49] On May 5, 2016, Variety revealed that Franco was negotiating with Rudin to write and direct an adaptation to be brought to the Marché du Film, starring Russell Crowe, Tye Sheridan, and Vincent D'Onofrio. However, it was reported later that day that the project dissolved due to issues with the film rights.[53]

In 2023, Deadline reported that New Regency is adapting Blood Meridian as a feature film. John Hillcoat, who previously directed an adaptation of McCarthy's novel The Road, is set to direct. Alongside his son John Francis, McCarthy was set to serve as an executive producer on the film;[54] he will retain a posthumous credit following his death on June 13, 2023.[55] John Logan was later announced to be adapting the story.[56]

In a 2024 interview, Hillcoat said he and McCarthy spent extended time discussing the film, which the author once volunteered to write and envisioned as a "Faustian tale, the journey of the Judge trying to win the soul of the kid, and consume everything in his path." McCarthy had rejected a miniseries proposal, finding television lacks a "kind of grandeur about it, an element of scale."[57]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b Hage, Erik. Cormac McCarthy: A Literary Companion. North Carolina: 2010. p. 45
  2. ^ a b Kollin, Susan (2001). "Genre and the Geographies of Violence: Cormac McCarthy and the Contemporary Western". Contemporary Literature. 42 (3). University of Wisconsin Press: 557–88. doi:10.2307/1208996. JSTOR 1208996.
  3. ^ a b Bassoff, Jon (June 20, 2023). "The Western Gothic In Film, Music, And Literature: A Primer". crimereads.com. Lithub. Retrieved August 2, 2025.
  4. ^ "Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian". Gothic Western. December 27, 2017. Retrieved January 8, 2025.
  5. ^ "Harold Bloom on Blood Meridian". The A.V. Club. June 15, 2009. Archived from the original on June 18, 2009.
  6. ^ a b Dalrymple, William. "Blood Meridian is the Great American Novel". Reader's Digest. Archived from the original on July 28, 2020. Retrieved April 22, 2020. McCarthy's descriptive powers make him the best prose stylist working today, and this book the Great American Novel.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g Shannon, Noah Gallagher (October 6, 2012). "Cormac McCarthy's Surprisingly Emotional First Drafts". Slate.
  8. ^ Bloom, Harold (2001). How to Read and Why. New York City: Simon and Schuster. p. 254. ISBN 978-0684859071.
  9. ^ Bloom, Harold (September 24, 2003). "Dumbing down American readers". The Boston Globe.
  10. ^ Bloom, H. (2010), Introduction, in McCarthy, C. Blood Meridian, Modern Library, Random House, NY, 9780679641049, p. vii
  11. ^ a b James, Caryn (April 28, 1985). "'Blood Meridian,' by Cormac McCarthy". The New York Times.
  12. ^ Owens 2000, p. 7.
  13. ^ Stratton, Billy J. (Autumn 2011). "'el brujo es un coyote': Taxonomies of Trauma in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian". Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory. 67 (3). Tucson, Arizona: Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of University of Arizona: 151–172. doi:10.1353/arq.2011.0020. S2CID 161619604.
  14. ^ Lilley 2014, p. 19.
  15. ^ Evans, David H. (Winter 2013). "True West and Lying Marks: 'The Englishman's Boy, Blood Meridian,' and the Paradox of the Revisionist Western". Texas Studies in Literature and Language. 55 (4). Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press: 406–433. doi:10.7560/TSLL55403. S2CID 161028723.
  16. ^ Shaw 1997, p. 103.
  17. ^ Shaw 1997, p. 117–118.
  18. ^ Peter J. Kitson (ed.). "The Year's Work in English Studies Volume 78 (1997)", Kitson, p. 809.
  19. ^ Wanamaker, George (November 10, 2015). "The Post Auger That Helped Build the West". Farm Collector.
  20. ^ Yarbrough, Scott D. (January 2012). "Tricksters and Lightbringers in McCarthy's Post-Appalachian Novels". The Cormac McCarthy Journal. 10 (1). Scholarly Publishing Collective: 46–55. doi:10.2307/42909437. JSTOR 42909437. Retrieved September 6, 2025.
  21. ^ Barnett, LeRoy; State Historical Society of North Dakota (1972). "Buffalo Bone Commerce On The Northern Plains". All About Bison.
  22. ^ Vann, David (November 13, 2008). "American inferno". The Guardian. London. Retrieved June 1, 2020.
  23. ^ Mundik, Petra (May 15, 2016). A Bloody and Barbarous God: The Metaphysics of Cormac McCarthy. University of New Mexico Press. p. 32. ISBN 978-0-8263-5671-0. Retrieved August 25, 2018.
  24. ^ Daugherty 1992, p. 129.
  25. ^ Daugherty, Leo. “Gravers False and True: Blood Meridian as Gnostic Tragedy.” Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy. Ed. Edwin T. Arnold and Dianne C. Luce. University Press of Mississippi: Jackson, 1993. 157-172.
  26. ^ Daugherty 1992, p. 124.
  27. ^ Owens 2000, p. 12.
  28. ^ Wood, James (July 25, 2005). "Red Planet: The sanguinary sublime of Cormac McCarthy". The New Yorker. New York. Retrieved August 25, 2018.
  29. ^ "Interview with Harold Bloom". November 28, 2000. Retrieved August 25, 2018.
  30. ^ Shannon, Noah (2012-10-05). "Cormac McCarthy Cuts to the Bone". Slate Book Review, 5 October 2012.
  31. ^ a b Mitchell, L. C. (2015) ‘A Book "Made Out of Books": The Humanizing Violence of Style in "Blood Meridian"’, Texas studies in literature and language, 57(3), pp. 259–281. doi: 10.7560/TSLL57301.
  32. ^ McNabb, Max (January 16, 2019). "The Monster Who was Real: Judge Holden of Texas, Scalp-hunting Giant". Texas Hill Country.
  33. ^ Lincoln, Kenneth (2009). Cormac McCarthy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 14. ISBN 978-0-230-61967-8.
  34. ^ Crystal, David (2015). Making a Point: The Pernickity Story of English Punctuation. London: Profile Book. p. 92. ISBN 978-1-78125-350-2.
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Bibliography

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  • Canfield, J. Douglas (2001). Mavericks on the Border: Early Southwest in Historical fiction and Film. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-2180-9.
  • Daugherty, Leo (1992). "Gravers False and True: Blood Meridian as Gnostic Tragedy". Southern Quarterly. 30 (4): 122–133.
  • Lilley, James D. (2014). "History and the Ugly Facts of Blood Meridian". Cormac McCarthy: New Directions. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 978-0-8263-2767-3.
  • Owens, Barcley (2000). Cormac McCarthy's Western Novels. University of Arizona Press. ISBN 0-8165-1928-5.
  • Schneider, Christoph (2009). "Pastorale Hoffnungslosigkeit. Cormac McCarthy und das Böse". In Borissova, Natalia; Frank, Susi K.; Kraft, Andreas (eds.). Zwischen Apokalypse und Alltag. Kriegsnarrative des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts. Bielefeld. pp. 171–200.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  • Shaviro, Steven (1992). "A Reading of Blood Meridian". Southern Quarterly. 30 (4).
  • Shaw, Patrick W. (1997). "The Kid's Fate, the Judge's Guilt: Ramifications of Closure in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian". Southern Literary Journal: 102–119.
  • Stratton, Billy J. (2011). "'el brujo es un coyote': Taxonomies of Trauma in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian". Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory. 67 (3): 151–172. doi:10.1353/arq.2011.0020. S2CID 161619604.

Further reading

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