About bloody time.

Ok. Finished.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy… it’s pretty much about the life of The Kid, who joins an army of Scalp-Hunters in the 1840s. The rest of the “gang” are outlaws and lowlifes. The most interesting character – in the essence that he is the creepiest effing character in the WORLD – is The Judge. He is a giant oaf of a man who apparently has alopecia. Who may or may not be entirely insane. That likes to brutally kill people. Oh, and he is also a molester. No biggie.

I don’t think I can tell you how hard it was for me to finish this. Like I said before, I am not faint of heart, but some of the gruesome images I saw in my own head were a little too much for me to take.

Also, I felt like this story really never had a plot. I never knew where it was going. I knew I was following The Kid, but where was I following him to? What was to be the ultimate goal of the novel? All I knew was that I was bound to see more gore, more blood, more heartbreaking imagery. I knew it would be like “Oh look, someone else beheaded or slain. Someone else’s entrails pulled out to shrivel in the sun. Awesome!” Good thing McCarthy didn’t let me down, I guess.

My biggest gripe (besides the sort of anti-plot going on) was the amount of dead dogs I had to read about. I can read about dead humans – but dogs are a whole different story. I mean, how can I read about dogs being thrown off bridges, or shot, or burned to death, when I have this snoring right next to me:

But, I can say this - although this book was difficult for me to get through, there were some really endearing qualities to it. There was one particularly striking passage that McCarthy wrote -  The Kid has come upon a massacre, there are dead bodies mutilated and decapitated all around, and he notices an old woman kneeling in an inlet with her eyes cast down, “he reached into the little cove and touched her arm. She moved slightly, her whole body, light and rigid. She weighed nothing. She was just a dried shell and she had been dead in that place for years.”

Dreadful yet fascinating. Just like the rest of the novel.

On to reading!