Of the novels I have read from Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West is perhaps the most difficult to describe. It is a harrowing epic following a gang of scalp-hunters across the US-Mexican border in the 19th century. Unlike Homeric epics, however, it has little plot, little drive to move the action from one scene to the next. There is plenty of action, but it seems to arise organically and for no human reason like lava from the ground or like water particles gathering overhead into storm clouds. The kid, who is the closest thing to a main character in the story all but vanishes from the narration for a large swath of the book — he is present in the gang, but McCarthy allows him to fade into the group. As in all McCarthy’s fiction, it reads like a prose poem. The book is perhaps the most violent thing I have ever read and it has little direct commentary on the violence. In other words, Blood Meridian is a nightmare. It does not fit in the genre of horror. It is horror.

McCarthy does not offer horror as Hollywood gives it to us. This is not voyeurism, nor does the book try to make us jump with twists and turns and monsters who show up outside our window. People like to go to horror movies to feel momentarily frightened, but then realize that they are really safe. McCarthy does not let the audience feel safe afterward.

There are monsters in this novel and they are the people inhabiting the wild West. McCarthy removes any last hint of romanticism from the 19th century frontier. No one gets off clean: not the rampaging Glanton gang in search of scalps, not the Mexican towns that hire them for protection only to regret that decision later, not the marauding Apache tribes whose attacks lead the Mexicans to hire the Glanton gang. All are seen as blood-thirsty. They either want revenge, their land, or simply violence. In powerfully descriptive scenes, McCarthy introduces new tools — Colt pistols — that only increase the efficiency with which the Glanton gang can inflict death. The Mexican town initially pays the Glanton gang for each Apache scalp, but when the gang realizes that one scalp looks like another, no matter who’s head it comes from, they begin raiding towns and villages and ambushing peaceful Indian tribes. Perhaps the most frightening aspect of this novel is that it is loosely based on history — the Glanton gang actually existed.

McCarthy gives us some of his most iconic characters from the aforementioned kid, who was born under the Leonid meteor shower and seems to have violence in his DNA, to Toadvine whose earless and tattooed face carries the scars of violence, to Tobin the ex-priest who now finds enlightenment in violence instead of in God, to Glanton himself, a calculating and amoral figure, to finally Judge Holden, a hairless, white giant. If you are familiar with McCarthy’s work, Judge Holden comes across as the great-great grandfather of Anton Chigurh, the unstoppable hired gun with a frightening philosophy in No Country for Old Men. While Holden was an historical figure who apparently did participate in the massacres and was known to kill children, McCarthy turns him into a demonic incarnation. He seems otherworldly beyond his ghostly appearance. The kid first sees the judge during a tent revival when Holden stands up and impugns the preacher’s character with fabricated crimes. Tobin informs the kid that every man in the Glanton gang has a story of encountering the judge before they joined the ravaging troop. His appearance is like an evil apparition calling men to give their souls to violence and greed. We read of the time when the judge met the gang and saved them from Apache pursuers by creating a batch of gunpowder using sulfur and urine on the side of a dormant volcano. While the gang belongs to Glanton, the judge is its spiritual leader. He is not acting out of some uncontrollable drive. We never see him licking his chops like a monster in a Hollywood horror film. Judge Holden believes he is acting in the only sensible way because, as he says,

“[W]ar is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them and is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.” (249)

McCarthy’s prose and philosophical discussions have always kept his novels from becoming gratuitous. The bleak worldviews do not make the violence in the his writing palatable, but we see that there is a reason behind the terrors we read. In fact these worldviews make the violence that much more frightening. Reading McCarthy is for the most part, not a life-affirming experience — The Road is so far the only exception I have encountered. McCarthy seems to say that life is violence. What we read about in Blood Meridian is not so much an historical anomaly. McCarthy seems to say that such violence is in our bones and still among and within us today.

Blood Meridian is often hailed as McCarthy’s masterpiece, and I can see why. For my money, however, I would give that title to The Road. Regardless, this challenging, frightening, and strangely beautiful book is worth the read. Be forewarned, however, it is difficult and graphic in its depiction of the relentless violence contained within.