Couldn't fall asleep last night, finally turned the light back on and read Blood. I intended to pick up where I left off but was looking over the last few pages and decided to go back to the beginning and re-read. I had been curious: Now that I believed Blood a great book and McCarthy a great writer would I still judge the first three chapters so harshly?

So I re-read. There were things I missed, of course, but I was surprised: It didn't read any better on re-read! The first three chapters are not good, not well-written, McCarthy seems to have had a devil of a time getting all that moving on in motion. I could not think of any other book I had read that started worse than it became.

First chapters for great writers are worked and reworked like finely tuned leather: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times;" "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." McCarthy's first sentence in Blood is good: "See the child." But then we see the child in stilted, implausible scenes of his Creator's creation to get the child to the Glanton gang in chapter four and it just doesn't work. When we see the child with the Glanton gang it works, that's the beginning of Blood Meridian the great book.

That took me to about 1:30 am.