![]() Burroughs may your classic literary experimenter/ne'er do well. For "Blood Meridian," Wallace wrote just three words: "Don't even ask." When the late David Foster Wallace was asked to list his five most underappreciated novels since 1960, he offered careful non-reductive descriptions of four of them. ![]() Most of us are caught in between these two worlds and another world that looks like it may never cool enough to be inhabitable again. However, make no mistake these are not the cliched "sins of the past." Using The Bible as a ballast for this terrifying tale, "Blood Meridian" never takes the moral high ground (also very Milton-ian) and uses the interpersonal relationships and their chosen revealing of details as those today might use in a boardroom, office, or political arena. This is not even a "Gothic Western." Lives end without provocation and life is there to be taken by the next person you encounter no matter who you are and who they are with. Every turn of the screw feels authentic and as dystopic as his later novels. While it may seem to be mostly without a plot, it is far from aimless. It flows like a river in the American Southwest, cutting through the uncharted territory in places leaving behind new paths for other writers to follow. The insertion of internal rhyme and rhythmic writing balances balletic against its Grand Guignol level of violence. The passages that are repeated, are done so with a reason. While it diagrams this lurid and nearly unwritten history of the Old West, it is written as if every word must be perfectly placed. One that bravely satiates his need for Faulknerian prose while traversing the lines of art, history and classic literature (allusions range from "The Iliad," through "Moby Dick"). Nearly forty years later, "Blood Meridian" is McCarthy's most outstanding literary work. Was it a question of timing? The Los Angeles Review of Books 1985 review appears on the page as Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove." Was it simply too well-written to be understood? Walter Sullivan in The Sewanee Review questioned "What do we make of this phenomenon, a mind that dwells unremittingly on evil and a prose that conveys these thoughts with the tongue of an angel?" Or was it too far ahead of its time - or behind it? Terence Moran of The New Republic dismissed it immediately saying "This novel, despite its chronicling of appalling horrors and straining for apocalyptic effects, is boring." Upon release in 1985, "Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness In The West" was met with a lukewarm reception. So with that support, he moved to El Paso, Texas to finish his long-simmering novel "Blood Meridian." ![]() McCarthy still acquired enough great reviews to receive a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in the Eighties. He was making it even harder by staunchly refusing to do any press or readings. Born in Rhode Island and raised in Tennessee, McCarthy barely made enough to move from novel to novel after his first work, "The Orchard Keeper" in 1965. As far as Post WWII writers, no one took the longest path to discovery and success while staying true to the craft remaining uncompromising. Just weeks short of his 90th birthday, we lost Cormac McCarthy this week.
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