#139 “Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness In The West” by Cormac McCarthy

This month, we decided to take a break from our normal routine of using a random number generator on Google to pick our book. Instead, Aaron hand selected a title from the list to honor the passing of one of his favorite novelists.

Cormac McCarthy began publishing novels in 1965. In the fifty-eight years that have lapsed since his initial book, he has published twelve novels, two plays, five screenplays, and three short stories in addition to non-fiction essays. He is the winner of a Pulitzer Prize, The National Book Award, The National Book Critics Circle Award, and a James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He is one of Aaron’s favorite novelists of all time.

Blood Meridian, our selection for this month’s discussion (and #139 on our alphabetized list) is Cormac McCarthy’s fifth published novel. It is an epic historical novel, set in the American frontier. It is rightly considered one of the “great American novels”, but it is not for the faint of heart. It is unrelenting in its brutality, unapologetic in its violence, and cryptic in its ultimate message. Please don’t judge Aaron too harshly for loving this novel as much as he does.