i dont think mccarthy likes people to put political meaning behind his books. I remember someone saying that his book 'the road' was a warning about nuclear warfare, and a call for peace. Mccarthy's response was that it was a book about a father who loves his son.

Y'all get ready bc the next video in your queue is about to BLOW YOUR MF EAR DRUMS OUT

Blood Meridian was better than I could have ever expected. It’s Shakespearean, Odyssean, and honestly biblical in it’s proportion as an American western epic. I wouldn’t even consider it a novel on its own - rather, it’s pure poetry with the length and characteristics of a novel. Every sentence is packed with rich, vivid language and rare words not only appropriate in their places in passages throughout the text, but well-suited to the time period the novel finds itself in. I’m just surprised someone in our lifetime could write at such an elevated level.

Blood Meridian isn't a judgement or a stance on guns and violence. It's an exploration of violence. It's meant to search deep within the reader about their darkest times, and reflect back. Brilliant novel.

Blood Meridian and Moby Dick are the two novels that have taken up residence in my brain. I think about them daily and  still re-read them.  To me they just seem to be perfect literature.

I really think while it is very American it definitely speaks to something in everyone

Damn, I've read Blood Meridian almost as many times as Bloom. There are three things I read and re-read constantly. The Complete Montaigne, Runciman's History of the Crusades and Blood Meridian. It is the most powerful thing I have ever read.

Yes, it is a challenging read. But also rewarding and certainly thought provoking.

The book Blood Meriden delivers the endless chaotic gore that the movie Apocalypse Now promised. In the jungles and and coiling rivers of the Mekong Delta and the Vietnam War, it is the End of reason ( the Doors reference) and the heart of the monsters reaped by the sleep of reason ( Artist Francis Goya reference). The sleep of reason we do not inquire at, but multiplies in our primal fears.

I think people in this thread are misunderstanding the way Bloom is talking about Blood Meridian and gun control. The morals and themes of Blood Meridian can be applied to America and the gun issues, Blood Meridian is not about gun issues.

You've done something silly. You heard someone mention modern politics alongside a discussion of a book you really like and took umbridge with this. But you didn't think it through. Bloom isn't saying McCarthy is writing exclusively in regards to modern politics, he's saying the theme of violence (evidently seen in the book) operates as a jumping point into the American psyche; both past and present. He is affirming what McCarthy says about human nature. Well, one reading of the text.

Suttree is a masterpiece, All the Pretty Horses is a masterpiece, Outer Dark is a masterpiece, The Road is a masterpiece, Child of God is a masterpiece, Blood Meridian is the masterpiece of American literature.

McCarthy didn’t write about current going ons, everything he wrote could have been based anywhere at anytime, downright universal in its application

McCarthy is certainly our finest living novelist. I feel he transcends Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

I found the vocabulary in this book very challenging.

when i read the book. a lot of words i didn’t know, i didn’t bother to look up 98% of the time because i didn’t want to break the rhythm. and i figured with the spanish, the kid doesn’t speak spanish and maybe that’s what was intended just to infer what was said. i figure it would be nice to know spanish. and i remember later keeping words in my head and lookin them up. i think that made for a better read, my first time. the first quarter of it was like what the hell i can’t read but man after awhile i got the rhythm of it and man. i’ll be smokin me a joint and readin it and i’ve never been more immersed in a world. that book has me filleted in two after i finished it just this week.

There is nothing above politics? That can be disproved simply by the intense aesthetic admiration of this book by people who have vastly different views on government policy. I believe for the most part that we all want the same thing, but we have great differences about how to get there. This is where we get stuck in terms of politics. And art takes us right through to that place of synergy and mutuality, where all things are possible, if only for a little while.

Haven't yet read Blood Merridian..but glad he mentioned Roth's American Pastoral....my favorite novel

I was wandering around a bookstore during lunch one day. I saw the title and it drew my eyes. I picked up the book. I bought the book. I began my experience with Cormac McCarthy. I cried. I read it again. I stopped.  Just could not finish it the 2nd time.Thank you for this video which I found on this 2nd day of January, 2023

Well said. I do think Bloom's sudden veering into gun control was a bit awkward. But your general point is completely correct.