Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthyRead about another entry on the list.
Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian is another great novel from the master of the unsettling postmodern Western in that the plot is spare but full of dread and violence. Western? Dread? Violence? How is this, one of McCarthy’s best reviewed and enduring novels, not a movie? Oh, how Hollywood has tried. After the book about 19th century Old West unsavories was first published in 1984, many big-name movie folks have not quite gotten Blood Meridian off and running. Ridley Scott, Tommy Lee Jones, Martin Scorsese, and James Franco have all put in attempts, but each and every time it was scrapped while in development. The extreme violence might be the hold-up. Or it’s the lack of a cinematic friendly linear narrative. Ah, but that didn’t stop Cloud Atlas.
Blood Meridian is one authority's pick for the Great Texas novel; it is among Sarah Porter's five best books with unusual demons and devils, Chet Williamson's top ten novels about deranged killers, Callan Wink's ten best books set in the American West, Simon Sebag Montefiore's six favorite books, Richard Kadrey's five books about awful, awful people, Jason Sizemore's top five books that will entertain and drop you into the depths of despair, Robert Allison's top ten novels of desert war, Alexandra Silverman's top fourteen wrathful stories, James Franco's six favorite books, Philipp Meyer's five best books that explain America, Peter Murphy's top ten literary preachers, David Vann's six favorite books, Robert Olmstead's six favorite books, Michael Crummey's top ten literary feuds, Philip Connors's top ten wilderness books, six books that made a difference to Kazuo Ishiguro, Clive Sinclair's top 10 westerns, Maile Meloy's six best books, and David Foster Wallace's five direly underappreciated post-1960 U.S. novels. It appears on the New York Times list of the best American fiction of the last 25 years and among the top ten works of literature according to Stephen King.
--Marshal Zeringue
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