Devil's and Dust

Revisiting Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece Blood Meridian on tha dawg

"Horse operas they used to call them, evoking stories of blood feuds, gambling and butchery. It's a fitting title for the finest westerns: whether that's the Zen and laissez-faire savagery of Sergio Leone, the kamikaze nihilism of Sam Peckinpah or the stunning expansive paintings of John Ford. Cormac McCarthy's visions have the same grandeur and punch as these luminaries whilst also being almost incomparable. He shatters our preconceptions of the West, not just the classic Manifest Destiny propaganda of cowboy's good, Indians bad but also its recent antithesis - the liberal revisionism of Native Americans as noble primitives. In McCarthy's novels, nobility, if it ever existed, was shot in the back or staked out under a Texan sun. His is a Wild West as envisaged by John the Revelator and Blood Meridian is arguably his finest moment."