I wasn't that familiar with McCarthy's peculiar vernacular, certainly didn't get every reference, but he had me at "See the child" and the payoff for going with it was huge. Have you ever read Russell Hoban's "Riddley Walker"? Wonderfully worth the effort of struggling with Riddley's narration. It's ultimately beautifully moving and is an irreducible part of that world and those characters. It's interesting to deconstruct these kinds of mastery of language and, of course, it's subject to critical analysis and no one has to like it or even acknowledge its objective merit. I had the instinct to just keep reading and not be distracted by the elements that I didn't fully understand or deverted into trying to lock in each passage's meaning line-by-line. It's high art, not an instruction manual. I don't imagine I'll ever fully understand Blood Meridian but I look forward to reading it again.

It can be like when someone gets hung up on Vermeer's painting technique - - the quality of the work invites that sort of interest - - but that's not the first or most striking thought when you look at "View of Delft".