Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West.

MCCARTHY, Cormac.

$48,000.00

Item Number: 93522

New York: Random House, 1985.

First edition of the author’s classic fifth novel. Octavo, original half cloth. Association copy, inscribed by the author in the month of publication on the front free endpaper, “For John Sheddan At Saxon Oaks Manor In April of 1985 All the best, old friend Cormac.” The recipient, John Sheddan was a close friend of McCarthy’s. “Some of McCarthy’s friends claim that the character Gene Harrogate (a character in McCarthy’s novel, Suttree), or at least his watermelon venture, was based in some way on John Sheddan, “scholar, schemer, hustler, melon paramour” (Gibson 23)….However in a letter of response to Gibson’s article, Knoxvillian Buzz Kelley writes that Sheddan was “probably McCarthy’s best and most loyal friend from the Knoxville crowd,” holder of two master’s degrees, and not at all “a violator of vegetables nor one to fornicate with fruits” (Dianne C. Luce, Reading the World: Cormac McCarthy’s Tennessee Period). Near fine in a near fine dust jacket with light wear. Jacket design by Richard Adelson. Jacket painting by Salvador Dali. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. Next to the dedication copy, this is the best association possible.

"Blood Meridian seems to me the authentic American apocalyptic novel, more relevant even in 2000 than it was fifteen years ago. The fulfilled renown of Moby-Dick and of As I Lay Dying is augmented by Blood Meridian, since Cormac McCarthy is the worthy disciple both of Melville and of Faulkner. I venture that no other living American novelist, not even Pynchon, has given us a book as strong and memorable as Blood Meridian" (Harold Bloom). McCarthy can only be compared with our greatest writers, with Melville and Faulkner, and this is his masterpiece" (Michael Herr).