Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West. New York: Random House, [1985]. First edition of the author's fifth novel. Presentation copy inscribed by McCarthy on the front free endpaper: "For John Sheddan/at Saxon Oaks Manor/In April of 1985/All the Best, old friend/Cormac".  Octavo. [x], 337, [3, blank] pages. Publisher's red cloth backstrip over red paper boards, spine ruled in red and lettered in gilt, dust jacket. Light rubbing and toning to jacket, Some rubbing to binding, indentation to cloth spine, some foxing to edge of text block. Skewed. Still, a near fine copy with an excellent inscription.
"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, 2009, University of South Carolina Press, p. 196). From the collection of I.D. "Nash" Flores III.