I can’t believe it’s been two years since the Great One died. Time flies when you’re a miserable sack of shit. And there’s been a lot that has come out about McCarthy’s personal life in the time since. Honestly, there’s nothing too surprising about these revelations. He was a voracious reader, which stands to reason. A book hoarder. AND he carried out a “relationship” with an underaged girl back in the 70s while he himself was in his 40s. So in other words, Cormac McCarthy was a dirtbag. There’s no skating around it.
But I give little shit about his personal life. The only thing I mourn is the that there will be no more McCarthy novels. Because my fundamental assertion stands: he was the greatest American writer of all time. And I might go a step further. It’s possible that he’s the greatest writer of English literature. Initially what annoyed me with his obituaries was the constant citing of No Country for Old Men and The Road as his most known books when obviously his greatest work is Blood Meridian. And I stand by that. But that’s my assertion from a critical and historical perspective. It’s not my personal favorite of his.
Blood Meridian, his fifth book, was a turning point in McCarthy’s career when he shifted from the “southern gothic” genre into the western. And I’m gonna be honest with you: I prefer the earlier work. Not to say that I don’t appreciate the westerns. Every work from McCarthy is a treasure. Blood Meridian is obviously a masterpiece. Some of his finest prose can be found in the Border Trilogy starting with All The Pretty Horses. In fact, many McCarthy heads will call the second in the trilogy, The Crossing, his best work. And I say that the conclusion to Cities on the Plain is the most moving. But as a personal preference, my two favorite of McCarthy’s are his third and fourth books: Child of God and Suttree respectively.
Next to his first book, The Orchard Keeper, Child of God might be his least appreciated work. I don’t know if it’s due to it being centered on the heinous acts of a serial killer or what. Next to Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men, it might be McCarthy’s most nihilistic novel. But I think it’s McCarthy at his most stripped down and it sets up many of the themes that we’d find in his later work, notably No Country for Old Men. After Child of God, he followed it up with his most personal novel, Suttree, which along with his last books The Passenger/Stella Maris, might be the biggest outlier.
In the two years since McCarthy’s passing, Blood Meridian has been recognized as one of the great American novels. In fact, his Reddit board is now mostly artistic renderings of the novel’s antagonist, Judge Holden. So in short, Blood Meridian has entered the zeitgeist. But I want to make it clear, although Child of God and Suttree are my personal favorites, it could be argued that any one of McCarthy’s books is the greatest American novel.
The Internet Ruined Everything 