[AlotOfReading]

Blood Meridian is absolutely not for everyone, but it's one of the best narrative books on the period that I've ever come across. I periodically recommend it on Askhistorians because it communicates the sheer chaos of the period that (many) people on the ground experienced far better than any academic work I can cite.

[ethbr0]

It's an interesting point that historical chaos can never be truly communicated or appreciated, except through creative art.

The very fact that it's history, and we're looking back with knowledge of how things turned out and a fuller picture of the different parties and their intentions, leaves elusive that contemporaneous confusion that often describes "why" for participants much better.

[darkerside]

It's rare that I wish I had multiple upvotes to give, but this is one of those times. I'm just commenting to raise the visibility of a comment that reads so simply that I feel it could be easily overlooked, and yet says something so profound.

[ethbr0]

We've all just lived through such a moment in ~March 2020, so it probably rings truer than it would otherwise.

[darkerside]

A colleague once grew vociferously angry when I disagreed with his claim that we were lucky to be alive now, and not at say the beginning of the 20th century, living through pandemics and multiple world wars. You stated my point more eloquently than I was able to at the time.

[salty_biscuits]

I love the book, but it is like the apogee of McCarthy idiosyncrasy. Obsessive about guns and death and has a complete absence of women. But it is beautiful for what it is.

[cheese_van]

>it communicates the sheer chaos of the period

For me, it's the sheer chaos of being alive. There's no sympathy in McCarthy's universe, no room for sentimentality. It's bleak as hell. If there's loving, human contact, it's fleeting, and erodes, usually quickly, like the unforgiving landscape of all his books. There's slight redemptive quality just enduring life, enduring existence if you have the strength. He's one of the best American existentialists. "I'm still alive", is both banal and heroic in McCarthy's world.