Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West (Modern Library (Hardcover))

The “masterpiece” (Michael Herr) of theNew York Timesbestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author ofThe Road, No Country for Old Men,and the upcomingThe PassengerandStella Maris “Cormac McCarthy is the worthy disciple both of Melville and Faulkner. I venture that no other living American novelist, not even Pynchon, has given us a book as strong and memorable.”—Harold Bloom, from his Introduction “McCarthy is a writer to be read, to be admired, and quite honestly—envied.”—Ralph Ellison Widely considered one of the finest novels by a living writer,Blood Meridianis an epic tale of the violence and corruption that attended America’s westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the “Wild West.” Its wounded hero, the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennessean, must confront the extraordinary brutality of the Glanton gang, a murderous cadre on an official mission to scalp Indians. Seeming to preside over this nightmarish world is the diabolical Judge Holden, one of the most unforgettable characters in American fiction. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s,Blood Meridianrepresents a genius vision of the historical West, one whose stature has only grown in the years since its publication. An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridian brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west." Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving. 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