When I finished Blood Meridian a couple of months ago, I was firmly convinced that I had stumbled upon Cormac McCarthy's most significant work. It seemed to be the key to his entire oeuvre, the lynchpin of his profound thought, and the perfect vehicle for his deepest reflections on life, death, and the very essence of what it means to be human.

However, now I find myself not so certain. One of McCarthy's many remarkable talents is his ability to make the reader believe that each of his novels is just as profound as the last, if not even deeper, regardless of the order in which they are read.

In The Border Trilogy, McCarthy weaves a truly stunning tale. He combines the trademark artistry of his prose with a more direct narrative style, especially in the first and third books. This gives the overall arc a real sense of adventure and momentum. Set in the desolate landscapes on either side of the USA's border with Mexico, All the Pretty Horses (1992), The Crossing (1994), and Cities of the Plain (1998) are about far more than just the dividing line between two countries.

Tracing the journeys of the young American cowboys John Grady Cole and Billy Parham and their ultimate convergence in the final book, McCarthy offers a powerful and characteristically beautiful exploration. He delves into the blurred lines between man and the wild, the distinctions between good and evil, the tenuous line between life and death, the boundary between two souls, and what passes between them.

All three books are an absolute joy to read, and like all of the author's other novels, I am eager to revisit them in the future. Many reviewers have aptly called the trilogy an "epic," but even that label fails to fully capture the essence of these remarkable books. No single word can truly do them justice.

The Border Trilogy is an exquisitely crafted and deeply moving series that leaves an indelible mark on the reader. Each individual book within the trilogy has the potential to be savored as a standalone novel, yet reading them in sequential order offers the most profound and enriching experience.

It is truly a remarkable case where the sum of the whole far exceeds the value of its individual parts. McCarthy's masterful exploration of fate serves as the bedrock that underpins the entire saga, breathing life into an additional dimension within the fictional world depicted on the pages.

Among the three books, I found The Crossing to be the most captivating. It is filled with some of the most memorable moments I have ever encountered in literature. The mood is somber and the world unyielding, yet the journey it takes the reader on delves into some of the most profound questions one can pose with grace and elegance.

Reading all three books demands a significant commitment, as they total over a thousand pages. However, this investment is well worth it. If you are in search of a literary work that is both intellectually stimulating and beautifully written, The Border Trilogy is an adventure that will prove to be thoroughly rewarding.

Part One:

After having read just two out of the three, I find myself compelled to start. McCarthy's style is truly captivating, luring you into desiring to write in his unique voice - though good luck achieving that. I had read "The Road" and was deeply struck by it, but this latest work has truly possessed me. Just as in "Road," and as seen in the movie "No Country For Old Men," I was well aware of the bleakness in McCarthy's vision. However, in the Border Trilogy, I was able to sense his poetry. Those who criticize his prose should pause and consider his absolute understanding of the lands that stretch from Texas and New Mexico all the way down to Mexico. You can't help but wonder how he knows so much, who he is as a person, and how the language of these people, of this world, his extensive catalogue of flora, and the most obscure rural cowboy accessories, both in America and in Mexico, flow effortlessly from his pen like water. And this doesn't even mention the rest of his vast vocabulary, which is never flaunted but appears precisely when needed.

Could I have relished this as much when I was a young man? I believe that age has granted me a more pastoral mood, the patience to roam the endless plains and mountains with Billy or John Grady and witness what they see.

Mexico is where his philosopher's heart resides, where characters like the blind man, a priest discovered in an old destroyed church, or even the evil Eduardo explore Cormac's shadowy conceptions of life, death, and karma. Yet in both "All The Pretty Horses" and "The Crossing," the protagonists are just teenage boys, but they function as men, skilled vaqueros accustomed to harsh weather, masters with horses, and indifferent to physical hardship. It is their naivete regarding life and life's evil that intrigues McCarthy. The boys are upright, old-school American youth, respectful, and given to very few words, and here he indulges in his wonderfully terse Western humor.

Part Two:

OK, I'm finished. Yes, I shed a few tears at the end of "Cities of the Plain" (said to be a reference to Sodom and Gomorrah). The magnificent knife fight kept replaying in my mind last night. No, I really don't need this in the midst of a pandemic. Yes, the Mystical Episodes considering Reality and Death do tend to be a bit long. If Señor Mysterioso under the freeway overpass had simply related his dark parable with less chit-chat from Billy, the section would have been even more powerful. One could sense a hint of insecurity there, as if Cormac was self-conscious about his epistemological meanderings and felt the need to dilute it with more acerbic cowboyisms.

The greatest writer of our generation? It's hard to dispute that claim. What I find incomparable and so powerful is the combination of McCarthy's immense descriptive powers juxtaposed with the verbal minimalism of his characters. It's like having Miles and Trane in the same body. For example, John Updike, no matter how exquisitely crafted his sentences were, didn't have a character like Billy or John. And Carlos Castaneda, despite having a Don Juan who was mystical, pithy, and profoundly wise, did not wax as poetically about the land of Mexico or display such mastery of the details of the people's lives.

Now I suppose I have to read "Blood Meridian." Maybe after we get a vaccine.

LA TRILOGIA DI McCARTHY, UN WESTERN KANTIANO

If a book from the last decade of the previous century can claim the right to be considered a classic of literature, this is undoubtedly the "Border Trilogy" by Cormac McCarthy. Composed of rough male friendships, solitary rides and bivouacs under the stars, dusty deserts and snow-capped mountains, abandoned villages and (rare) shootouts, it is a gloriously out-of-time crepuscular western (set as it is in the years around World War II), and yet it resembles certain epic films of John Ford, further enlivened by surprising dreamlike snapshots and stunning metaphysical reflections. It consists of three independent novels, but deeply interrelated because the protagonists of the first two (John Grady and Billy Parham) both appear in the last volume (*).

The overarching theme of the trilogy is surely the crossing of that "line of shadow" that Conradianly separates adolescence from maturity. In "All the Pretty Horses", John Grady and friend Lacey Rawlins flee a hopeless present with the aim of "romantically" pursuing, along the same paths that Indian tribes traversed decades before, a noble and independent life, built with their own strengths and capabilities (which is nothing more or less than the eternal myth of the American "self-made man"), beyond the border that divides Texas from Mexico. In "The Crossing" (in which the crossing of the border is already prefigured in the title), Billy Parham instead goes to Mexico for the first time to return to its world a wolf captured near his father's ranch, later together with his brother Boyd to retrieve the horses stolen from their family, and finally to bring back to American soil the remains of his dead brother. Both John and Billy are seventeen years old (even though the events of the second novel take place a few years earlier), and it is no coincidence that McCarthy chose two adolescents as the protagonists of his novels. In a deeply tragic world like that of the "Trilogy", it is they, the young, whom the harshness of life has not yet made obtuse and insensitive, who have the arduous burden of carrying out a process of formation that inevitably involves leaving their native home and family and exploring a wild and hostile environment, in which a magnificent and glorious albeit merciless nature is opposed to human society, cruel and prejudiced even if sometimes capable of unexpected outbursts of humanity.

McCarthy's universe is decidedly Manichaean: good and evil are always and inevitably in play, without nuances and without ambiguity. John and Billy are not born to be paladins of good, but are forced to become so because they do not want to accept the compromise of tolerating evil. McCarthy chooses to geographically locate evil in Mexico, but it is clear that there is no chauvinistic intent in him, as Mexico is, before being a geographical place, a symbolic entity, emblematic of what in childhood fairy tales was the distant forest from home, full of deceptive attractions and fatal dangers, and which here is the arena in which to earn, through struggles and sufferings, scars on the body and especially on the soul, the difficult right to consider oneself men. This eternal and ontological struggle between good and evil is Melvilleanly represented, in "Cities of the Plain", in the fight to the death between John Grady and Eduardo, and it is no coincidence that the encounter leaves no survivors: in fact, one cannot emerge victorious against evil, but one cannot avoid challenges against evil either, on pain of dehumanization, moral corruption or the numbing of the senses.

Here then the destiny of men is to live with pain, inevitable and insuppressible, as the poor people of Mexico that John and Billy meet along their wanderings well know, oppressed beyond imagination by the abuses and violence of soldiers, guards, landowners and bandits, and yet always ready to share their meager food with the two foreigners or to selflessly help them get out of difficulties even at the risk of their own lives (like the peasants who help the wounded Boyd escape from his pursuers). The Mexican people are a Manzonian entity, humiliated, trampled and suffering and yet dignified in their misery. But, unlike in Manzoni, in McCarthy's world God, if he even exists, is distant, hidden, a ghost that hovers in the background. It is not on him that his characters can rely, but at most on the obscure and indecipherable moral law that they have engraved in their hearts, a fragile trace of a distant nostalgia for the divine. McCarthy's protagonists are ultimately driven by what Kant defined as the "categorical imperative". Helping a person met on the road (the boy in "All the Pretty Horses", the young Mexican woman in "The Crossing"), just like returning half a dollar borrowed a long time ago, becomes an essential duty, without the consequences of the act being able to assume relevance in the decision to be made. In this sense, McCarthy's novels are intrinsically philosophical (or religious), without the author ever straying from a "down-to-earth" narration, made up of hard work, sweat, dust and dirt. Baricco writes that "McCarthy's music plays only one song and always that one. It tells of people who with infinite patience try to put the world back in order. To bring things back to where they should be. To correct the impurities of fate. Whether it is a wolf, or stolen horses, or a corpse, or a lost child: what they do is try to bring them back to their place. And there is no room for reasonableness or common sense: it is an instinct that knows no limits, an incurable obsession. If violence is necessary, violence is used. If one has to die, one dies. With the ferocity and obtuse determination of a judge who must rebalance the wrongs of fate, McCarthy's heroes live to recompose the disfigured picture of the world." "It's not always a good idea to do what you can do," Billy tells his brother Boyd, but the instinctive and disinterested adherence to a moral code makes McCarthy's characters always do it, even causing themselves harm or disadvantage. It is this moral code that they stubbornly respect, even though they live in a merciless world that gives nothing to the good and the honest, to be the "message in a bottle" left by the writer to future generations: a feeble ray of light and hope in the darkest and most terrifying darkness.

So what is the meaning of existence for McCarthy's characters? What the writer seems to suggest to us is that man, in order to realize himself, must stubbornly pursue a goal whose ultimate purpose eludes him but to which he cannot escape (such as accompanying a wolf beyond the border to restore its freedom or marrying a prostitute glimpsed in a Mexican brothel). He will never understand what his efforts to correct the injustices that life and fate scatter along his path are for, he will only know that he must do it without looking at its practical consequences, even at the cost of suffering and losing everything that is most dear to him. The meaning of life goes beyond that life, will be transmitted to someone else, we don't know who or when (I think, for example, of the father and son in "The Road", who wander in a desolate and apparently inhuman world, not only to survive at any cost, but to carry forward, blindly, a last glimmer of humanity). If it is the priest that Billy meets in the abandoned city in "The Crossing" who has received from the hermit the meaning of his crazy search and in turn transmits to the protagonist the baton of his own experience with his very long story, in the same way McCarthy's characters seemingly wander without a goal through the desert and timeless landscapes of the border in order to be able to in turn (even if unbeknownst to them) transmit the ultimate meaning of life. The reader is granted this privilege, of being able to discern, in the midst of a spare and essential prose, apparently mechanical and repetitive, precious and stunning gems of philosophy and even of metaphysics.

We come here to talk about Cormac McCarthy's very particular style. In his novels there is no trace of psychology, we never know the thoughts of his characters, but only the (few) words they speak and the gestures they make. And yet they are indelibly imprinted in our minds, until they become our precious traveling companions. How does McCarthy manage to achieve this miracle? McCarthy's secret is the "narrative time". The American writer invents a time all his own to tell the adventures of John and Billy, a dilated, repetitive time, often and willingly non-essential (how many dead times!), apparently boring, and yet in the end so essential and necessary that it makes us recognize that such stories could only be told in this way and in no other way. Let's take, for example, Billy's long journey with the wounded wolf: there are dozens and dozens of pages of the tiniest daily gestures, of banal events, of colorless observations, and yet in those pages, imperceptibly, the relationship between the boy and the animal slowly changes, evolves, transforms, and in the end we discover that what we have read, apparently dull and prosaic, is of a moving poetry and delicacy. Even the nature that surrounds the protagonists, seemingly always the same in its seasonal and meteorological changes, in reality bestows, at intervals of time, unique and unforgettable memories (such as the herons glimpsed by Billy in a flooded field in Mexico, "gray figures lined up one beside the other like hooded monks at prayer"), until it becomes itself a protagonist, without arrogance, but with the incomprehensible force of a silent and constant presence.

McCarthy seems to do nothing to engage the reader: on the morning when Billy finds the wounded wolf and leaves with it for Mexico, he writes that "he left the gate even before his father woke up and never saw him again", and the same thing happens before John's last encounter with Magdalena. He is not interested in winning over the reader with suspense or other overused strategies, on the contrary he insists on underlining that in the end everything has already been determined in advance, that the end is already known, and there can be no plot twist, let alone a happy ending. McCarthy's determinism is deeply tragic (if he grants John and Rawlins an idyllic interlude on a Mexican ranch, it is only to make them immediately plunge into the hell of the most sordid and squalid struggle for survival in a Mexican prison). Nevertheless, even knowing how it ends, we still hope, despite all the evidence, that love and justice will triumph, and that the young Mexican prostitute will manage to escape the slavery of her pimp. If we do this, it is because we cannot resign ourselves, as in the end it must be, to the victory of evil, but McCarthy does not play dirty, he does not use tricks, he does not use suspense and melodrama as easy narrative expedients, he is never consoling. McCarthy is so great that it seems he is speaking to each of us personally, that he is telling us about life as it really is, without euphemisms and without artificial adornments. So the narration can pass drowsily gray and dull for dozens of pages and then perhaps burst into moments of intense drama and pregnant violence; or the dialogues can be for a long time little more than monosyllables, or even written in Spanish, and then suddenly become flowing stories (* *), which can be a compendium of Mexican history better than a history book, or dwell on the concept of truth like a volume of philosophy, or evoke picaresque adventures à la Alvaro Mutis (as in the story told by the strange group of gypsies who wander dragging behind them the wreck of an airplane).

The "Border Trilogy" would not, however, become such a beautiful, moving and sad book (and many other things besides, but above all sad, infinitely sad), if at its base there was not a profound faith in man (and also in every living creature, as can be intuited from the role that horses, wolves and dogs have in the novel, and which would require a separate essay). McCarthy is an authentic humanist, one of the last great humanists of our era, who has the courage, I dare say Dostoyevskian, not to shy away from the inextricable ambiguities of existence, and above all the merit of believing that "every man is more than what he thinks he is".

(*) It is illuminating that already in the second book a gypsy woman reads Billy's hand and tells him that he has two brothers and that he will have a long but painful life, thus anticipating the brotherly relationship that will be established in the next novel with John Grady and his fate as an old cowboy who continues in the last pages to wander without a goal on the roads of America.

(* *) The stories that the protagonists hear from other characters (the hacendado's aunt, the priest of the abandoned village, the old blind man, etc.) have the function both of interrupting their monotonous and unwavering wandering, almost dreamlike suspensions of a reality all too material, storytelling pauses of a world that apparently refuses narration, and of underlining the cruelty and wickedness, I would almost say ontological and without hope, of existence, in which the sufferings of the young protagonists find an echo and an anticipation in those of their interlocutors.

The first novel of the trilogy is All the Pretty Horses.

It presents a vividly depicted world with its own distinct set of rules, located north of the Mexican border.

Life in this region is unforgivingly harsh, yet the people manage to maintain an air of politeness and loyalty.

This fundamental attitude undergoes a significant transformation once John Brady and his friend, both merely sixteen years old, cross the border into Mexico on a seemingly aimless trip.

They simply desire to explore what lies beyond, but John Brady also harbors a deeper longing to uncover his destiny and understand how he is meant to live his life.

However, reality swiftly catches up with the boys, and they find themselves in a perilous situation, fighting for their very lives.

As we accompany them on their journey, the question of destiny gradually recedes into the background.

But in the end, it becomes evident that this is not merely a story about a group of cowboys embarking on an adventure.

Rather, it is a profound tale about the discovery of the main character's true identity.

Have you not read these? Stop. Do it now. Reading is an essential activity that enriches our minds and broadens our perspectives. It allows us to explore different worlds, gain knowledge, and develop our imagination. When we read, we are exposed to new ideas, concepts, and experiences that can shape our thinking and understanding of the world around us.

Moreover, reading is a great way to relax and unwind. It can help us reduce stress and anxiety by transporting us to a different place and time. Whether it's a novel, a biography, or a self-help book, there is something for everyone to enjoy.

So, if you haven't been reading lately, it's time to start. Make it a habit to set aside some time each day to read, even if it's just for a few minutes. You'll be amazed at how much you can accomplish and how much you'll gain from this simple activity.

The title could have been "Never go to Mexico".

There is nothing new about the perils of traveling, with the typical corruption, bad luck, bloodshed, and the evil man who kills young boys and other such scenarios. It's the same as when I watch the news, and I experience exactly the same emotions.

I could adapt to his different writing style, but not to his passion for suffering and cruelty. I had the distinct feeling that whenever he got annoyed with one of his characters, he would simply find a thrilling way to remove them from his book.

For me, it was like driving for hours only to reach a dead-end. It was a disappointing and frustrating experience, leaving me with a sense of dissatisfaction and a longing for something more positive and uplifting. I had hoped for a different kind of story, one that would inspire and move me, rather than one that seemed to revel in the darker aspects of life.

Perhaps I was expecting too much, but I couldn't help but feel let down by the overall tone and content of the book. It made me question whether I should continue reading works that focus so heavily on the negative.

I know a sufficient amount of Spanish to be able to understand the general meaning of what was said. However, it was truly frustrating to read this book. The concept that boys who were only 16 and 17 years old could accomplish what they did was extremely difficult to believe, even if the events were supposed to have occurred early in the 20th century. I simply did not have a favorable opinion of this book. I awarded it 2 stars solely because anyone who takes the time and effort to write a book deserves at least that much recognition.

It seems that the story might have had some interesting elements, but the credibility of the actions of the young characters really detracted from my overall enjoyment. Perhaps if the author had provided more context or explanation, it would have been easier to suspend my disbelief.

Nevertheless, I can appreciate the author's attempt to tell this particular tale, and I hope that future works will be more engaging and believable.

I am seriously never inviting this guy McCarthy over for a dinner party. His stories are filled with such a sense of pain and darkness that whatever goodness and light his characters manage to find at one point in the narrative is ultimately swallowed up. However, I am constantly amazed at the remarkable high-wire act he performs with his words. One would think that I ought to be throwing the book across the room in disgust at the arch and over-developed prose. But, curiously, that's not the case. Instead, I find myself completely lost in it. McCarthy is truly one of the best prose stylists I've ever had the pleasure of reading. His ability to craft sentences and create a unique atmosphere is simply unparalleled. Each word seems to be carefully chosen and placed, building a world that is both captivating and disturbing. It's a strange and wonderful experience, being drawn into his stories despite the overwhelming darkness that pervades them.

Cormac McCarthy is a damn visionary. Once I finished "The Border Trilogy", I became a voyeur of his life.

How can one come up with such a way, parallel and distant, profoundly unique and evocative, while still remaining human? Continuing to do the shopping? Reading the newspaper? Paying the taxes?

"On the curved surface of the dark and lightless earth that supported their figures and raised them against the starry sky, the two young men seemed to ride not beneath but in the midst of the stars, both audacious and cautious at the same time, like thieves just entered into that electric blue, like urchins in a luminous orchard, poorly protected against the cold and the ten thousand worlds to choose from that lay before them."

Mexico is color and suggestion, a world of pure exteriority that McCarthy depicts on his pages in opposition to the pale empire of the USA.

I would never have expected such extreme aesthetics from a Western book. Nothing is showy but everything is well-calibrated, without excesses.

Mexico has an ancient soul. Besides being the border, seen as an infinite possibility of life, it also becomes an infinite possibility of death. The dirt roads become tombs and the red of the sunset takes on the same taste as blood.

"He smiled. He spoke as one who seemed to believe that death was the true condition of existence and life a simple emanation of that."

And before arriving at death, one passes through the wild nature of animals little inclined to domestication.

In Mexico, the only thing that can be kept under control are the memories, the stories told around the fire by travelers without a destination. In Mexico, memories have authority and power.

"Like all stories, this one too begins with a question. The stories that speak to us most intensely have the ability to overcome the one who tells them, and erase from memory him and his reasons. Therefore the question of who is really telling the story is very contingent.

It is not true that all stories begin with a question.

Yes, it is true. Where everything is known, there is no narration."

Good endings to good books should make it hard to sit down.

Each novel of these three has conveyed their kinetic energy to me, and made me feel cramped and trapped in my studio apartment in a city instead of in the mountains.

These are not easy books. His is not an easy style nor any easy content. They are brutal in their gore and their beauty. They are layered in their events and construction. And they leave you with a love of the Western landscape and admiration and terror at the creatures which inhabit it.

I am sure I will pick all of these novels up many times over my life, encounter something new, and be the better for it.

These books have truly had a profound impact on me. The vivid descriptions and complex storylines have made me feel as if I was right there in the Western landscapes, experiencing all the adventures and emotions along with the characters.

The brutality and beauty of the novels are like a double-edged sword, cutting deep into my soul and leaving a lasting impression.

I can't wait to explore these novels again and again, to discover new details and meanings that I may have missed before.

They are not just books, but a source of inspiration and a window into a different world.

The first two books are significantly stronger than the third one.

They possess a certain charm and quality that sets them apart.

The third book, on the other hand, has its own merits but doesn't quite reach the same level as the first two.

Based on the excellence of the first two books, the overall collection gets 4 stars.

It's important to note that each book has its own unique features and contributions.

The first two might excel in terms of plot, character development, or writing style.

While the third book may have its own亮点, it just doesn't measure up as much.

Nevertheless, the 4-star rating indicates that the collection as a whole is still a worthy read.

It offers a diverse range of stories and perspectives that can engage and entertain readers.

Whether you're a fan of the genre or simply looking for something new to read, this collection is definitely worth considering.