Still my favorite book of all time. Plenty of mystical and crazy in the 1850s southwest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Meridian
Blood Meridian; or, The Evening Redness in the West is a 1985 epic historical novel by American author Cormac McCarthy, classified under the Western, or sometimes the anti-Western, genre.[1][2] McCarthy's fifth book, it was published by Random House.
Set in the American frontier with a loose historical context, the narrative follows a fictional teenager from Tennessee referred to as "the kid", with the bulk of the text devoted to his experiences with the Glanton gang, a historical group of scalp hunters who massacred American Indians and others in the United States–Mexico borderlands from 1849 to 1850 for bounty, sadistic pleasure, and eventually out of nihilistic habit. The role of antagonist is gradually filled by Judge Holden, a physically massive, highly educated, preternaturally skilled member of the gang with pale and hairless skin who takes extreme sadistic pleasure in the destruction and domination of whatever he encounters, including children and docile animals.
Although the novel initially received lukewarm critical and commercial reception, it has since become highly acclaimed and is widely recognized as McCarthy's magnum opus and one of the greatest American novels of all time.[3] Some have labelled it the Great American Novel.[4] After multiple unsuccessful attempts to adapt the novel into a film, New Regency is currently set to produce a feature film based on the novel.
This is my favourite novel of all time. It's interesting how the conversation is always about if it's adaptable into film, where many famous novels are accepted as totally unable to be adapted.
Part of it comes from McCarthy's very external style of writing. It's basically impossible to covert the layers of subtext in Ulysses to screen, or the introspection of The Bell Jar.
Hell in university I adapted the first chapter into a screenplay to pass the time and I was super happy with the outcome. I'm paraphrasing here but when the Coen Brothers adapted No Country for Old Men they made a joke that the adaptation was as simple as Ethan turning the page and Joel writing the words. McCarthy's work screams to be adapted.
On the flipside, Blood Meridian's meandering, epic nature may be what makes it unable to be adapted, not it's cruelty. Any and all adaptations for screen would need to reimagine swathes of the book, which is a disservice to it's structure. Many novels have this difficulty in adaptation but for reasons I struggle to explain, it feels it would hurt this novel more than most. Even if it were to be adapted into a 10 or 20 episode high budget show, I'd doubt it would adapt naturally in it's flow.
On a totally unrelated note, chapter 14 is such a great chapter. I often pick the book back up to read that chapter again. It's got fantastic prose, a great monologue from the judge, and covers in my opinion the most critical point of choosing evil for the Glanton gang.