Cormac McCarthy has staked a formidable name on a long list of literary achievements, but his novel Blood Meridian (1985) remains regarded as his masterpiece. How, exactly, does one categorize it, though? A fair enough question without a single answer, for it is at once an historical novel, a striking grotesque, and a heaving and ambitious American book of enormous scope; moreover, it is a heightened rumination on the violence that McCarthy sees as potential in any gathering of human beings, be it an entire civilization or a ragtag, multicultural band of commissioned scalpers, such as Blood Meridian’s Glanton Gang, who gallop across a blood-soaked, nightmare vision of the American Southwest and Mexico during the period …
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Citation: Hage , Erik . "Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 26 March 2013 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=31208, accessed 07 October 2024.]