Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

ISBN-10: 1529077168

ISBN-13: 978-1529077162

Publisher: Picador

• Character dialogue has no quotation boundaries and scant use of apostrophes. This aint my first rodeo 
• The Judge makes some shit up to stir a crowd against a reverend. He buys everyone a drink and they laugh when he tells them it was a lie.  
• The Kid gets into a fight with a free Black man (Toadvine) and then they make up by mutilating someone and setting a hotel ablaze. 
• The Judge: smile nod meme 
• Some ex-slave driver hermit offers the Kid a place to sleep and I think he steals something from the Kid?? Not too clear, but they do eat moldy rabbit meat :^) 
• The mule’s hooves are cracking and its ribs are showing :^( 
• The Kid does a good for once but then gets fucked over so he has to show the bartender that he’s him 
• I CANNOT SPEAK SPANISH 
• Colonel Sanders Captain White is so impressed with the Kid for killing the bartender that he recruits him 
• Captain Morgan White gives the Kid a speech about something something we need to colonize savage Mexico something. The Kid is like, “okay as long as I get new drip I’m down for whatever.” 
• The mule is given a new life god bless 
• They’re wandering for 40 days and 40 nights in the desert or some shit and then they come upon some warriors who quickly snatch their wigs. I only feel bad for the horses. 
• This is what racists think anti-imperialism and self-determination will lead to lmao There will be war against the colonists (because they will not step down peacefully), but not human rights abuses, not torture. 
• I have read various volumes yet there are words here I’ve never experienced in my life and I find myself mesmerized by my ignorance. At the same time, I recognize McCarthy’s abuse of jargon. To someone who is not a regional expert, it all begins to gloss over. I appreciate the attention to fauna, geology, anthropology, etc… but that I can not know these terms and still understand what’s happening may or may not lend to their not needing to be included as frequently (as opposed to not at all, which I don’t encourage). 
• I also dislike the frequency of similes. Makes the otherwise beautiful prose clunky. 
• Oh yeah before they get jumped out in the open like buffoons, a guy prays for rain and then it rains as though there haven’t been distant thunderstorms all over the place checkmate atheists  
• The Kid survives, as does about eight others, but he ends up traveling alongside another man named Sproule. Notably, the Kid isn’t an entirely selfish being and offers assistance to Sproule. Sproule is dying of infected wounds yet the Kid remains with him. 
• They come across a massacred Spanish/Mexican settlement. Many died in their church–it did naught to protect them from the wrathful indigenous warriors. Only Sproule can express indignation; but why? His God is WHITE. 
• Impaled infants. Dracula lives. 
• They encounter a band of Mexicans who mock them for being helpless yet give them water. 
• The heat is making them see shit. Where the big booty bitches??? 
• They hitch a ride to a Mexican(?) town but get arrested. Sproule kicks the bucket, and the Kid sees that Cap’n Crunch has been beheaded and jarred. 
• People pissing and shitting just any ol’ where, huh? 
• McCarthy uses run-on sentences in a fun way. 
• The Kid gets thrown in the Bastille then moved to another town and thrown into pre-Covid Wal-Mart.  
• The Kid reunites in Wal-Mart with Toadvine. They chummy up with a veteran and then all three of them are released on the pretense that they are skilled scalpers. 
• The Judge is riding with a troupe of scalpers, this is the group the Wal-Mart Trio joins. 
• In the party, there are two people named John Jackson, but one is a Black man and the other is White. They have a feud and people are trying to determine who’s going to kill who. 
• Gov. Glanton tests some pistols on unsuspecting animals, blowing them off the face of the earth like Fat Boy and then complains that the guns cost too much???????????? 
• Some unfortunate family of circus performers asks to come along because they’d like protection while traveling. I have an inkling they are going to regret this. 
• So it turns out that when all your company consists of unorganized habitual murderers, it’s hard to stay calm because they’re always saying and doing something nuts. 
• Glanton asks the circus family to tell fortunes but when they do, it just gets everyone wound up and irate. 
• Judge Holden is incapable of answering questions in a language his audience can comprehend. 
• I figured they were stinky but I forgot that they wouldn’t be cutting their nails 
• Speaking of which, there’s no mention of them suffering malnutrition like scurvy, or having their teeth fall out, etc. and I’d think those would be insightful details. 
• Black Jackson says he’s the wroooong nigga to fuck with and beheads White Jackson for being a racist bastard. Nobody seems bothered to get revenge for their fallen White comrade, so it seems thieves’ law is more prevalent here than racists’ law. 
• Stop fucking with me, though, you can’t clean sweep somebody’s head off with a Bowie knife LMFAO Totally underestimating the neck muscles and the spinal cord. 
• Every now and then I recognize one of the archaic words McCarthy uses and I’m like, “AHA!!!” 
• They come across some squatters in a mine and I think it’s implied that the Judge rapes or at the very least kills a naked tween boy. 
• The Judge might be a mythical beast or some shit, the ex-priest Tobin is telling tales about him to the Kid like, “I once saw him turn into an eagle after three days of no water and two puffs of injin tobacco on gawd that shit was wild.” 
• They light the shit out of a bear and while I know these aren’t modern guns, it still seems like an overestimation to have the bear drag off a man and disappear. 
• The Delawares don’t discuss their brother being snatched, though they do search for him. This why yall got trauma.  
• Judge Holden wants to draw everything because he wants to destroy everything.  
• Somebody calls the Judge out on his poetic ramblings and is like, “I s2g bro draw me in your book imma act a fool.”  
• I guess Glanton isn’t entirely an animal hater. He rescues an abandoned dog and gives it a ride on his horse when it’s tired. 
• They massacre a village and sprinkle in some Hosea-verse.  
• The barber-butcher-surgeon is an untouchable because of his necessary but hated trade. The Kid is the only one who helps him pull an arrow from his leg, and then the ex-priest chides him like they all didn’t just massacre a village. 
• They kidnap a baby Apache but treat it like their own baby until the Judge scalps it. This disgusts even brutal Toadvine, who draws his gun, but the Judge is like, “I triple-dog dare you, bitch!!!!” 
• They’re welcomed back into a town and these stank mofos finally have a bath. Unfortunately, they go full Caligula mode and like…burn down the place and waste all their prize money. 
• THE WHEEL KEEPS ON TURNIN 
• Toadvine is starting to become disillusioned with killing unoffending people, but like any good imperialist he keeps on butchering because how’s he supposed to live otherwise????? 
• Black Jackson gets dazed n confused during their constant pillaging. 
• I know these aren’t upright individuals and that it’s the 18th (?) century, but damn, after riding fearlessly with them, they don’t stop calling Black Jackson a nigger.  
• Honestly how are these muthufuckas not shitting their brains out from drinking raw-ass lake water ppl back then were built absolutely different 
• Judge Holden and the Vandiemandielandieman drown and kill some puppies, showing us that they’re really bad guys. It’s become an eye-roller in modern days to make a person kill helpless animals to instill their irredeemable qualities. I could have done without it, given the Judge has already scalped an infant (and if you weren’t convinced of his crookedness by that point, you are a racist). 
• Take a drink every time you see:
  • Someone spit 
  • Pale 
  • Bone 
  • Some Spanish your stupid ass isn’t going to translate so you rely on context 
  • The same noun more than twice in a sentence  
  • A simile using “like” 
• My complaint isn’t that McCarthy uses words lmfao It’s that for all of his figurative language–some of which is genuinely beautiful–much of it feels sloppy 
• The Judge is offended that other things exist ok go off buddy 
• So you’re just going to kill all the birds? Bud, you’re going to need a small loan of a million dollars first. 
• Saying the women are ugly for wearing makeup by comparing them to non-human apes and drag queens/trans women is equally sexist, racist, and transphobic. I expect the characters to be immoral but better judgement from the author. 
• The boys are DEHYDRATED  
• I’m a little surprised these guys don’t think to drink piss or blood merely as a survival tactic. Look, they’re marauding savages, but that’s where they draw the line!!! 
• Where is Glanton’s dog–I’M SCARED 
• So does the Kid have frostbite or what. No mention of purple or blackened extremities despite his length in the cold. 
• Once again, though HE NEEDS TO EAT, Tobin warns the Kid of helping Judge Holden slaughter a horse. 
• Oh the dog is fine nvm 
• As if this is a joke, Glanton says he doesn’t like seeing Whites go crazy. Sir are you projecting  
• Their scouts got turned into Cannibal Holocaust props 
• Shit, they’ve got three days to get the Apaches a barrel of whiskey or else they’re gunna turn into 80s horror film extras, too. 
• The Judge finds a dinosaur bone and he’s both like, “this is cool” and “this doesn’t matter.” Lmfao 
• So they get some recruits from another town as well as a man, Cloyce, who has his disabled brother in a cage, rolling in his filth. Again, Glanton is disgusted as if suddenly offended on the behalf of women. 
• Either because the gang is so dirty or because they have black men in the company, the bartender tells them to sit at the colored-folks’ table or else he won’t serve them. They put him up to challenge Jackson and get him killed. 
• I thought Toadvine was black, but I’m not entirely sure after this exchange. 
• When the Judge learns that the disabled man, Robert, is Cloyce’s brother, he starts feeling Cloyce’s head like he’s trying to determine the neurological roots holy shit lmfao  
• Glanton does not want his dog associating with Robert 
• They take over a ferry and start extorting passengers 
• Some women are disgusted at Cloyce’s treatment of Robert. They free him from the cage and burn it. They give him a bath. The Judge “befriends” Robert. 
• Okay, I’m glad something immediately bad doesn’t happen to Robert just let the little guy have a time 
• Robert is hardly called by name, usually he is referred to as “the idiot” or some sort…I could do without this continued ableism. I recognize the historical context for disabled people here, and expect the characters to speak accordingly, it just seems egregious for McCarthy to use him as an allegory or describe him relentlessly as so. 
• David Brown acts a fool in some town and then butchers a jailer he tricks into helping him escape. 
• Glanton and a good portion of the gang, including Jackson, get jumped by Yumas natives and butchered. The dog doesn’t make it. 
• The Kid gets an arrow to the knee thigh and he’s damn lucky, like he’s escaped frostbite and infection?? What kind of plot armor does this cracka have???? 
• Tobin keeps goading the Kid to shoot Judge Holden, but he won’t do it. The Judge is fucking walking them down and being a menace. 
• For profit healthcare strikes again and the doctor is like…surprised the Kid shows up wasted buddy you asked him for a hundred bucks of course he’s inebriated  
• David Brown and Toadvine are later hanged. 
• Tobin just kinda disappears into the ether never to be seen again 
• Many moons pass 
• A group of orphan children approach the Kid, now “the Man”, on the desert. One has a mouth on him and gets his Lil stupid-ass shot. 
• The Judge and the Man meet again at a cantina.  
• Where is Robert what did you do with Robert you bald bastard 
• The ridiculousness of the Judge kind of drives me nuts but maybe that’s the point. I don’t know, maybe I’ve accidentally seen too many contemporary fans dick-riding him for being cool and scary even though I don’t find him to be either. 
• The Man gets some nookie  
• What’s in the shed? WHAT’S IN THE SHED??? 
• Holes starring Shia LaBeouf 
• Sometimes I think my writing might not be coherent enough and then some guy writes fucking Blood Meridian  
• The moral of the story is don’t come to America because it’s still like this–there are no human rights. /HYPERBOLE 
• So I just learned that McCarthy groomed a 16-year-old girl. Unlike the other weirdo dude-bros who glaze this man’s work, I am ready to state that this is morally reprehensible.