Blood Meridian
Harold Bloom called it "the greatest single novel published by an American writer since Faulkner." Set on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it is a relentless, biblical meditation on human violence. The Judge is among literature's most terrifying figures. McCarthy published it in 1985 to little fanfare; its reputation has only grown.
Violence without variation becomes weather. McCarthy's scalpings and massacres arrive in the same majestic register for three hundred pages, the kid barely registers as a consciousness, and there is no plot, only westward slaughter. The Judge gets speeches; everyone else gets killed. Whether the biblical prose ennobles the carnage or launders it is a question the book refuses to answer.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
