A Ridley Scott version in 1990 could have been awesome as hell. A Ridley Scott version in 2010 would have been, IMHO, incorrigibly lame, considering the movies he's been making lately.

The Replacement Bible
Really enjoyed reading your analysis, Donna. For me, the book definitely hit like a Bunker Buster of the Soul.

"Meridian" also is synonymous with a zenith or acme, with a peak. Certainly it would be fair to describe the events of this book as a "Blood Zenith."

Whoa, whoa, what's with all the hating on poetry? I must warn ya'll, I'm going to get a little impassioned here…

A film version of Blood Meridian is in development with Todd Field at the helm.

Hrmmm…never considered that…..Damnit, I'm just going to have to read this whole book over again…

I think the implication is indeed that Holden has raped/killed her in the course of the action. McCarthy has written multiple episodes where a child seen in the same room as Holden later goes missing, only later to be found murdered. Cuing that process again only compounds the despair permeating that climactic…

@Often Posts: That's a really strong interpretation of that scene. I never had seen it that way, and it certainly is a (slightly) more uplifting perspective than my theory of "Being a good person means diddley shit when you're dying of thirst in the desert." Thanks for the insight.

Word.

I don't think it's coincidental that violence and landscape are given precisely the same attention by McCarthy in terms of descriptive invention, narrative weight, or baroque prose.

Miller, that's a good aside regarding the special contempt Judge Holden holds for Tobin. Throughout the book, Tobin seems to be the one character who is really aware of the fathomless evil that the Judge represents, though he never comes close to distancing himself from it. Is the Judge's ire raised because Tobin at…

I found that the epilogue emphasized continuity and connection more than anything else. The continuity of the holes being regularly driven into the ground, the implicit group dynamic of the "gatherers of bones and those who did not gather", as well as their connection to the landscape and the bones it contains, seem…

@yes I think that: I think you may have misinterpreted part of my earlier post. I find the Judge no more alluring, or attractive, than you do. I am merely positing my personal interpretation of the moral arithmetic at play in McCarthy's novel. Accepting said moral arithmetic for what it is is not the same as accepting…

Oh, this discussion is getting better all the time. Ellen and Leonard, I hadn't paid much attention to the religious implications of the Judge's character (probably due to the wanton puppy drownings and child murders), but you are both spot on about his many biblical trappings.

Roneesh, yeah I'm with you on the dark humor found in the repeated instances of the Gang being welcomed as heroes into a town, only to quickly start tearing it to the ground with drunken whoremongering and random manslaughter. It's sad and ironic that a group sent out to "civilize" the land quickly becomes utterly…

The Idiot served as a living embodiment for how people's attempts to impose a moral order on a chaotic world will always be for naught. Remember how the women in the camp try to "civilize" the Idiot, dressing him up in Sunday clothes, and treating him with far more respect and consideration than he'd ever before…

Touche, Elitist Trash, touche.

That whole final sequence, with the dancing bear, that dwarf whore, and the Judge dancing is perhaps the most powerful section of the book for me.

Littlebluesue, other commentators have touched on how the confrontation between the Kid (or the Man, as it's years after the main events of the book) and that fifteen-year old boy ties into the final showdown between the Kid and the Judge. How only after coldbloodedly killing an adolescent, in front of his brother no…

I was picturing a morbidly obese Vincent D'Onofrio.