Blood Meridian; Or the Evening Redness in the West
Price: $6,500.00
Hard Cover. New York: Random House, 1985. First Edition. About Fine / Dust Jacket Included.
First edition, first printing. Publisher's red cloth-backed red boards with titles in gilt to spine, map of the Old West to title page and verso; in its original maroon dust jacket designed by Richard Adelson, with "The Phantom Cart" painting by Salvador Dali to front panel with titles in red, photo of McCarthy taken by Mark Morrow to rear panel. About fine book, with just a light indentation to front board, crisp and unread; about fine unclipped dust jacket, with a light mark to front panel matching the indentation on book. Overall, a fantastic copy of this towering work of literature. Blood Meridian, set in the mid-19th century West, tells the story of a 14-year old boy called "the kid" who joins The Glanton gang, a ruthless group commissioned by the Mexican governor to collect Apache scalps. None embody the disturbing ethos of the gang better than its second-in-command, Judge Holden, who's described as a "massive, hairless, albino man" and is the story's primary antagonist. While writing the novel, McCarthy moved to Texas and taught himself Spanish to immerse himself in Western culture. The sections on the Glanton gang are derived from My Confessions: The Recollections of a Rogue by Samuel Chamberlain, a first-hand account of Chamberlain's experiences riding with the group that includes references to the real-life Judge Holden. The book is widely considered to be Cormac McCarthy's greatest work, and one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. Renowned literary critic Harold Bloom called the novel the "ultimate Western," and "worthy of Herman Melville's Moby Dick." Item #CMC027
