The subject of beautiful depiction of disturbing things rises again as I read McCarthy Cormac’s Blood Meridian.
All to the north the rain had dragged black tendrils down from the thunderclouds like tracings of lampblack fallen in a beaker and in the night they could hear the drum of rain miles away on the prairie. They ascended through a rocky pass and lightning shaped out the distant shivering mountains and lightning rang the stones about and tufts of blue fire clung to the horses like incandescent elementals that would not be driven off. Soft smelterlight advanced up the metal of the harness, lights ran blue and liquid on the barrels of the guns. Mad jackhares started and checked in the blue glare and high among those clanging crags jokin roehawks crouched in their feathers or cracked a yellow eye at the thunder underfoot.
The novel relentless floods the reader with beautiful prose. Prose that describes a band of violent men riding murderously through Mexico and the American West. Sometimes they are mercenaries. Mostly they are a swarming pack of malevolence.
If you’ve read The Road you have an idea of what this book is like. However, Blood Meridian makes The Road seem hopeful and cheerful.