Dark & Twisted
I spend all day five days a week listening to books on CD on my iPod. I've written about it before. But a couple weeks ago I "read" something that just stopped me in my tracks and rendered me unable to move on.
When I read The Road I thought I had read some hard, dark stuff. We're talking about a book where the world is over (over, like OVER, it's not coming back) and the few people that remain eat babies and keep people in basements, carving off portions of their frame just to survive.
Seriously fucked up shit.
Over the last couple weeks I read Blood Meridian, it took me weeks because I couldn't bring myself to finish it. It should have taken two days but ended up taking 12.
The darkness, the horror that I thought was so perfectly rendered in The Road was turned up well past 11 in Blood Meridian.
If you picked up this book, opened it to any page someone or something would be being raped, killed, scalped, stabbed, shot, murdered, trampled, burned alive, decapitated....just pick an act of violence; it's in there. It was so jolting I felt like I couldn't go on reading it. I had to take a break.
All of that being said, this is a pretty good book. I wouldn't recommend it as a book for people new to McCarthy to start with but it's worth reading, or at least trying. McCarthy writes in the most lyrical, fascinating way. Using arcane words in ways that fit so well you can't help but do it yourself from time to time after reading his work.
I've read that it is one of top 100 books written in the last 100 years and is packed with imagery and allusions. I'm not deep or educated enough to understand even 1/4 of that stuff. I've got theories about somethings but in order to confirm them I'd need to re-read the book and to be perfectly honest I don't think I can do it again.
Great book, but not worth reading unless you are a McCarthy completist or looking to push your boundries.
