>>5081McCarthy is "Southern Gothic" in the line of Faulkner and O'Connor. This genre observes the destitution of the Civil War South. McCarthy is artistically and politically closer to Faulkner who I dislike because he was a liberal. O'Connor was a real Southerner and the better writer. Faulkner was very performative in his Southernness. He leaned too heavily into his celebrity status. McCarthy was a liberal up until No Country and the Road.
Blood Meridian is overrated. The language is artsy and pretentious. Melville's Moby Dick thematically dominates the book. It really is a transcription of Moby Dick onto the Wild West. Melville was a nigger loving Yankee and McCarthy prepares room in BM for some nigger triumphalism.
No Country takes Blood Meridian and inverts its racial moral dichotomy while also emptying BM's rhetorical contrivances, all of which gives the book a more realistic effect. It's my favorite.
ATPH and the whole "border series" are strangely innocent books in the context of McCarthy's work and were obviously written for mass consumption. He needed the money and it brought him a lot of public recognition.
I haven't read his two latest books and may never will if the tranny character rumor I heard is true.