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> Did you get that feeling reading these books? Not gonna lie: Blood Meridian deals in some very grim and violent subject matter. There are no heroes in that s

> Did you get that feeling reading these books? Not gonna lie: Blood Meridian deals in some very grim and violent subject matter. There are no heroes in that story. Its about a gang of scalp hunters (the Glanton Gang. They actually existed if you can believe it...) so I'll leave you to draw your conclusions about what a story like that would entail. The way McCarthy makes those types of scenes digestible is by almost always describing them in the past tense. You the reader come upon them after they happened. He also writes with a detachment to the event and speaks of some downright unspeakable acts almost matter of factly. I am pretty squeamish and I could handle it so you'll probably be fine because of that. The Road I found harder to read than BM. Its less violent (although there are a couple spots that get pretty gruesome) but just unrelentingly bleak and grim. I needed to lie down after reading it. Again his detachment from the events happening make it bearable. Worth it IMO. Assuming you haven't read them, I'd recommend digging into All The Pretty Horses or No Country For Old Men. Both are incredible stories that have the same scenes of elemental good vs evil that crops up in McCarthys work over and over again but are less... intense.

jschrf 10y ago
If you read Blood Meridian backwards, it's about a band of merry fellows travelling east, towards the sunrise, delivering toupees as they make their way.
- magic_beans 10y ago
  This is one of my favorite comments on HN.
mr_overalls 10y ago
For me, the violence is made palatable - even interesting - by the sheer beauty of McCarthy's language. It's earthy and archaic, and yet strangely phantasmagoric. It's a bit trite to say, but McCarthy talks a bit like William Faulkner on acid, exploring a hardscrabble alien planet. > . . . and he saw men lanced and caught up by the hair and scalped standing and he saw the horses of war trample down the fallen and a little whitefaced pony with one clouded eye leaned out of the murk and snapped at him like a dog and was gone. . . And now the horses of the dead came pounding out of the smoke and dust and circled with flapping leather and wild manes and eyes whited with fear like the eyes of the blind and some were feathered with arrows and some lanced through and stumbling and vomiting blood as they wheeled across the killing ground and clattered from sight again. Dust stanched the wet and naked heads of the scalped who with the fringe of hair below their wounds and tonsured to the bone now lay like maimed and naked monks in the bloodslaked dust and everywhere the dying groaned and gibbered and horses lay screaming.

jschrf 10y ago

If you read Blood Meridian backwards, it's about a band of merry fellows travelling east, towards the sunrise, delivering toupees as they make their way.

magic_beans 10y ago
This is one of my favorite comments on HN.

mr_overalls 10y ago

For me, the violence is made palatable - even interesting - by the sheer beauty of McCarthy's language. It's earthy and archaic, and yet strangely phantasmagoric. It's a bit trite to say, but McCarthy talks a bit like William Faulkner on acid, exploring a hardscrabble alien planet. > . . . and he saw men lanced and caught up by the hair and scalped standing and he saw the horses of war trample down the fallen and a little whitefaced pony with one clouded eye leaned out of the murk and snapped at him like a dog and was gone. . . And now the horses of the dead came pounding out of the smoke and dust and circled with flapping leather and wild manes and eyes whited with fear like the eyes of the blind and some were feathered with arrows and some lanced through and stumbling and vomiting blood as they wheeled across the killing ground and clattered from sight again. Dust stanched the wet and naked heads of the scalped who with the fringe of hair below their wounds and tonsured to the bone now lay like maimed and naked monks in the bloodslaked dust and everywhere the dying groaned and gibbered and horses lay screaming.