I am blown away by Cormac McCarthy's writing. Blood Meridian was the first book, i read by him. The novel mainly takes place in 1840s in south-of-Texas and south western united states where the scalp trade was thriving. It is a novel about journey set in an unforgiving terrain which haunts and overwhelms the travelers who are out to kill and claim material possessions, lucre. But it is also, a novel set in a biblical space where questions about the nature of Man and his propensity to violence and questions about Nature itself haunts the murderers who are out to move out West in their contractual obligations to kill as many native Indians as possible.
"Is it? Where is yesterday? Where is Glanton and Brown and where is the priest? He leaned closer. Where is Shelby, whom you left to the mercies of Elias in the desert, and where is Tate whom you abandoned in the mountains? Where are the ladies, ah the fair and tender ladies with whom you danced at the governor's ball when you were a hero anointed with the blood of the enemies of the republic you'd elected to defend? And where is the fiddler and where the dance?
...I tell you this. As war becomes dishonored and its nobility called into question those honorable men who recognize the sanctity of blood will become excluded from the dance, which is the warrior's right, and thereby will the dance become a false dance and the dancers false dancers. And yet there will be one there always who is a true dancer and can you guess who that might be?
...Only that man who has offered up himself entire to the blood of war, who has been to the floor of the pit and seen horror in the round and learned at last that it speaks to his inmost heart, only that man can dance."
--Blood Meridian
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