Blood Meridian

Key Takeaways

Kyle, in 2024 in Books: I’ve enjoyed a lot of Cormac McCarthy from The Road to the Border Trilogy. So much so that I tried to convince my wife to name our fourth son Mac. And Blood Meridian had been on my list for awhile even though I didn’t really know what it was about. But upon reading it, I discovered I was reading the Great American Novel. I also learned that my habit of reading fiction via audiobook doesn’t work for books that are almost as much poetry as they are prose. As a result, as much as I enjoyed this book I most certainly need to read it again with the actual page rather than with a narration.

Connections

Books: Cormac McCarthy’s fiction — The Road and All The Pretty Horses (same author); grouped with Lonesome Dove and Streets of Laredo in the settlement-of-the-West reading. The Dream of the Great American Novel is Lawrence Buell’s study of the category Kyle put this book in on first reading.

Lectures: Aaron Gwyn (@AmericanGwyn) published a free six-part lecture series on the novel on YouTube — part one — announced December 8, 2025 and saved for the re-read in progress.