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dosgatosazules, September 1, 2006

I really, really wanted to finish this book ...

... but I couldn't.

As a lover of literature, I consider myself a pretty patient -- even stubborn -- reader. I don't give up easily on books, even when I have decided it's not the book I thought it was, or even if I've determined the writing isn't very good or the plot uninteresting. I've slogged through 700- and 900-page novels before out of sheer determination, even if halfway through I knew it probably wouldn't be worth it, and never once skipped to the end to get the "payoff". I have a great deal of respect for the journey the author wants us to take, and choose to trust the author for the one or two or even twelve hours I am spending with their creation.

I say all that to say that Blood Meridian, not even 400 pages, beat me. There's a lot that's good about it: McCarthy has a unique and very compelling style (something that's all too rare in today's literature) and his imagery is stark and memorable: I still remember the incredibly written scene where the Indian tribe roars into view, shouting terrible war cries and decorated with war paint and bones and in all other ways appearing so ferocious they strike fear into the heart of their supposed conquerors.

And yet after about 20 or 30 pages in, it became a chore to get through each page. I had to make myself read a few pages at a time and then let myself have a break. Finally, I gave up at about the 100-page mark, trying several times to make myself pick it back up, and failing.

I don't know if it was the run-on style of writing that forced me to pay close attention to every word: it meant that I could never catch the novel's rhythm and escape into the world the author had created. (Imagine trying to enjoy a song that stops and starts every 10 seconds, and you'll get some of what I mean.)
It might have been the relentless violence: I'm not squeamish, but there was no relief, no redemption, barely a pause. If the characters went to a town, I knew better than to hope there'd be a moment of peace or even a moment of reflection -- on their part on on the part of the reader -- but more likely they'd start a fight and slaughter the townspeople instead. I began to dread each page.

It might have been the fact that there was not one character to root for in the novel. I'm not saying novels have to contain at least one "positive" or "good" character -- it's one of the skills of a great writer to make a character sympathetic even if the reader neither likes nor agrees with that character. But I couldn't feel any of that for a single character -- all I felt was revulsion.

But I think it was actually the combination of all of those things that finally beat me -- I realized that, if I kept reading, I was in for more than 250 pages more of relentless violence and horror; I realized there'd be no character who changed or transformed, and that nobody I could identify with was going to come onto the scene. So I began to ask myself what was the tradeoff for suffering through so much more of it.
From what I could glean of the book's message, it was this: the border at that time was a dehumanizing, monstrous place that produced soulless, amoral humans capable of unthinkable destruction. And I could see that McCarthy was portraying all "sides" -- the Indians, the Mexicans, and the Americans-- as equally guilty. For the first part of the message, I don't know why it would be necessary to take hundreds of pages to simply repeat, over and over and over, the events and horror that McCarthy wants to use to make such a point. A well-written 40-page short story would have done just fine. And as for the second part -- that all the parties were the same -- I just can't agree. Were the Apaches, who were resisting the theft of their land by both the U.S. (and before that, by Mexico), on an equal par with those stealing their land? All sides committed bloody, vicious acts, but to portray things as if they were all equally wrong is to be untruthful. And I don't remember who I'm quoting with this, but: "Fiction tells lies to tell the truth." Everyone knows that fiction is not "true" in one sense: they know the characters and events didn't actually exist, they know there's no Captain Ahab or Iago or Kid in real life. But fiction is, ultimately, saying something about the world, through all the elements of its story, and I feel that nobody should use the power of their pen to tell what in actuality amounts to lies -- not the "lies" of the fiction they create, but an actual lie that comes through in what they are ultimately saying about their subject or the world at large. Would anyone want to read, for example, a novel that argued that the horrific rubber trade in the Congo (where the colonists chopped off the hands of those that didn't bring in enough rubber) was good for the native peoples? Or a novel that ultimately argued that there is no global warming, no environmental problem, and that actually the earth is doing just fine and dandy?
I admire the author's style, and even further admire his setting out to depict the border and the wars of conquest in a way that does not romanticize or even identify with the conquerors, as so much fiction set at that time and place do. And furthermore, I can appreciate that so much of what made the book hard to read -- the run-on style, the spare brutality of its prose, the amoral and vicious characters, the endless violence and sense of dirt and filth that the reader can almost taste -- are part of the world the author is depicting. But I just couldn't see putting myself through so many more pages of one of the more horrifying books I'd ever read, for a message I had already grasped 30 pages into it. Maybe there was more I would have gotten out of it if I'd stuck with it -- and maybe one of these days I'll make myself try again.
Hopefully my own story will help you decide for yourself if this book is worth it -- but know what you're getting into.

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