On Monday I couldn’t wait any longer, and ordered the recent works of Cormac McCarthy, "The Passenger" and "Stella Maris." McCarthy reportedly died the next day.
In the three days since, there has been an outpouring of literary obituaries and reviews of his life work, and rightly so—he is one of the few greatest American novelists, often compared to Faulkner.
In these three days of accolades, much has been made of his novels "All the Pretty Horses" and "No Country for Old Men," and "The Road"—but not so much about "Blood Meridian" which many consider to be his finest work. Researched and written with the proceeds of his MacArthur “Genius Grant,” Blood Meridian was published in 1985 and is the bloodsoaked tale of a gang of bounty scalp-hunters roaming Texas and Mexico collecting brown skin black haired scalps to sell to “the powers that be.” Although it is beautiful poetic writing—wonderful, terrible, loved it, hated it for its dark cruelty and "bad dream" state—I reached maximum Cormac (escape velocity) at the end, and recovered by reading nothing else that McCarthy wrote.
Quoted by Dwight Garner in his New York Times obituary printed January 13, 2023 as illustration of his writing style, McCarthy described the bloody gang as “a legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners.”
Reading that quote I thought…wait, doesn’t that describe the gang that attacked the United States Capitol Building on January 6, 2021?
I find that interesting…what do you think is goin on here?
So, I will forge ahead and read "The Passenger" and "Stella Maris"—and maybe then I’ll drop back and read "All the Pretty Horses." I will let you know.
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This piece was edited June 19, 2023 to correct a mis-spelling and to clarify the next to last paragraph.
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If you would like to see my collection of Carolina Lowcountry memories—"Magnolia Elegy: Place In the Edisto Fork," you can view the book trailer here, and see the book page here on the publisher's website. The book is also available from Amazon, B&N, and your independent local bookseller.