You Said What Now?

Tell McCarthy if I see him I'll shoot his fuckin' balls off

In recent years, two close friends - one of them Perseus - have, separately and independently, urged me to to read Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. I read it. It went something like this:

They rode out under a still night across the plain and towards the mountain the fires of the enemy no longer visible in the grotesque barrenness of a country belonging to neither man nor god and they rode through the intense heat of a day without speech to interrupt the noise of the silence of the land and then at night stopped and made a fire and slept again and then the next day rode across another plain and fought the enemy and brains spilled all over the dust and babys heads were smashed on rocks and the kid the main character who I had forgotten to mention for several hundred pages sat on his steed and looked blankfaced across the plain hamfisted and tightlipped and the heat drove them into the shade where they built a fire and slept and then they rode into a town where all the doors were locked and they entered a cantina and got in a fight and shots were fired and blood spilled in the dust and the kid stood and looked without fear nor envy and the enemy rode nearer and blood was spilled in the dust and i might throw in some words here that will have readers reaching for the dictionary such as kakidrosis and edea and transhume and perhaps ill try to write the longest sentence ever without punctuation or proper grammar and might even make up some words and theyll call it unique instead of poor prose and the kid stared into the night across the plain as they made another fire.

It was ok. But I think I'll go back to Hemingway.