BLOOD MERIDIAN

McCarthy, Cormac

ISBN 10: 039454482X / ISBN 13: 9780394544823

Published by Random House, New York, NY, 1985

About this Item

Octavo, 337 pages. In Very Good condition with a Very Good condition dust jacket. Burgundy spine with red and orange lettering. Dust jacket is wrapped in a mylar covering, price is uncut "$17.95", has mild shelving wear along the extremities and a small closed tear along the rear tail edge. Boards have mild age-toning along the head and tail edges. Textblock has a small stain on the "Books by" page and mild shelving wear along the edges. DL consignment. Shelved in Case 7. An early copy, without the usual later remainder mark. "Blood Meridian" was Cormac McCarthy's fifth novel, a dark and bloody western which, though well recieved by some critics, was an immense commercial failure, with fewer than 1,500 selling of a 5,000 book run. However, after the success of McCarthy's "The Border Triolgy", many revisited his older works, "Blood Meridian" in particular gaining immense popularity. Today, "Blood Meridian" is hailed as McCarthy's magnum opus with many considering it one of the greatest American novels ever written. "Blood Meridian" has seen several attempts at a film adaptation since 1995, it's most recent attempt happening in 2023 headed by John Hilcoat, who had previously adapted McCarthy's novel "The Road" 1391938. Shelved Dupont Bookstore. First Edition, First Printing, First Issue Dust Jacket.

Seller Inventory # 1391938

Bibliographic Details

• Title: BLOOD MERIDIAN
• Publisher: Random House, New York, NY
• Publication Date: 1985
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 039454482X
• ISBN 13: 9780394544823
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
• Seller catalogs:
  • Literature
  • Dupont Circle

About this title

Synopsis

Based on incidents that took place in the southwestern United States and Mexico around 1850, this novel chronicles the crimes of a band of desperados, with a particular focus on one, "the kid," a boy of fourteen

Review

"The men as they rode turned black in the sun from the blood on their clothes and their faces and then paled slowly in the rising dust until they assumed once more the color of the land through which they passed." If what we call "horror" can be seen as including any literature that has dark, horrific subject matter, then Blood Meridian is, in this reviewer's estimation, the best horror novel ever written. It's a perverse, picaresque Western about bounty hunters for Indian scalps near the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s--a ragged caravan of indiscriminate killers led by an unforgettable human monster called "The Judge." Imagine the imagery of Sam Peckinpah and Heironymus Bosch as written by William Faulkner, and you'll have just an inkling of this novel's power. From the opening scenes about a 14-year-old Tennessee boy who joins the band of hunters to the extraordinary, mythic ending, this is an American classic about extreme violence.