n  Death of the Old West, Cowboys and the Frontiern
Cowboys like smoky old pool rooms & clear mountain mornins,
Little warm puppies and children and girls of the night.
Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys, Bruce, 1975.

Go west young man, haven't you been told
California's full of whiskey, women and gold
Should've Been a Cowboy, Keith, 1992.


I found this by far the most readable of Cormac McCarthy's novels. All the Pretty Horses is in many ways an elegiac novel about the death of the Old West and cowboys and the western lifestyle as a way of life. Thus it differs substantially from McCarthy's typical view of the world as cesspool.

The novel opens in 1949 with the funeral of the grandfather of sixteen year old John Grady Cole. His grandfather's 2,300 acre cattle ranch has been in the family since 1866. His mom intends to sell it though. His parents have been split for 7 years, since dad returned from WW II. Dad says he and JG's mom shared a love of horses and he thought that was enough to make their marriage last. Now Mom lives down in San Antone with an 18-year-old studmuffin.

In the twilight after granddad's funeral, JG rides out to the edge of the ranch and imagines painted horses and riders pledged in blood and thinks he can hear the heavy breathing and hooves of the horses in the north wind. He pines for the days of the open range and living by the horse and loving the women.



JG and his friend Rawlins (both 16) set out about 130 miles toward the Rio Grande where they cross into Mexico and embark on a romantic (maybe quixotic) journey to live the cowboy life full of cattle, vaqueros, horses, run-ins with the law, burritos and a forbidden love.

If someone had McCarthy on her/his bucket list, but abandoned another McCarthy novel due to the "failure to appreciate" his normal bleak exceedingly abstruse journey into a vortex of violence and despair, you should read this rumbling book of romanticism.



“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.” McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

Uz ChatGPT, pojavila se i gomila novih autora, kojima je životna želja bila da izdaju svoju knjigu. Sad su se ostvarili; ova veštačka inteligencija izgleda da ostvaruje snove - na Amazonu se pojavljuju dečije ilustrovane priče, životni saveti... Sve prilično površno i naivno, bez neke vrednosti, ali koliko je na Amazonu ljudskim umom osmišljenih knjiga, koje su iste takve?

S druge strane, pitao sam se kad ćemo mi ovde, na Goodreadsu, postati nerelevantni? Na Redditu već imaš osećaj da je deo komentara generisan od strane ChatGPT? Probao sam na ovom primeru. Ako ništa drugo, barem su naši mali jezici bezbedni još neko vreme.

Prompt:
Napiši relativno pozitivno mišljenje/komentar (ocena 4 od 5) knjige "All the pretty horses" od Cormaca McCarthyja na srpskom. Neka bude napisano iz ličnog ugla, ali u literarnom stilu, koristi poređenje stila sa stilom drugih autora. Navedi 2 interesantna primera/anegdote iz knjige

Recenzija:
"All the Pretty Horses" od Cormaca McCarthyja je knjiga koja mi se dopala svojim surovim i iskrenim prikazom Divljeg zapada. Stil pisanja autora nije bezbedan, a njegova jezgra odražava neukrotivu silu i ljepotu krajolika i naroda koje opisuje. Poređenja sa autorima poput Hemingveja i Faulknera su neizbežna, jer McCarthy u svojim knjigama istražuje duboke teme, kao što su smrt, ljubav i nadanje, sa sličnom poezijom i brutalnošću.

Dva primera iz knjige su scena kada glavni junak John Grady Cole upoznaje misterioznu i lepu Alejandru i kada se suočava sa sudbinom svog kolega Rawlena. Ova dva trenutka su živa ilustracija McCarthyjevog jakog talenta za kreiranje zanimljivih i upečatljivih likova i za razbijanje srca čitalaca sa neizbežnim sudbinama njegovih junaka.

Ukupno, "All the Pretty Horses" je knjiga koja se čita s uzbuđenjem i nesigurnošću, ali i sa nadom da će se glavni junaci naći na pravom putu.

Hm.
Bio sam ubeđen da će na engleskom ovo zvučati mnogo bolje. I zapravo ne zvuči loše, uz malo izmenjen prompt. Da se čovek još malo potrudi sa instrukcijama u promptu, ko zna...

Prompt
Write relatively positive commentary and review for Goodreads (rating 4 of 5) of the novel All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. The review should have a personal note, but use highly literaty style. Avoid clichees, I want it to sound like it was written by a professional literary journalist. Use comparisons with other known authors, especially on a level of style. List some interesting anecdotes or stories from the novel and how they affect the reader. Please write it in a more creative way, but keep main messages from the above. Also, recommend some other similar books to readers who liked this one.

ChatGPT recenzija:
"All The Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy is a stunning example of literature that transports the reader to the rugged frontier of the American West. The writing is raw, real and unapologetic, as it presents a world that is both beautiful and brutal. The themes of death, love, and hope are masterfully woven into a tapestry of poetic prose that echoes the works of literary giants such as Hemingway and Faulkner.

Two scenes that particularly stand out are the introduction of the enigmatic Alexandra and the moment when John Grady Cole confronts the destiny of his friend Rawlins. These moments showcase McCarthy's remarkable ability to craft complex and memorable characters, as well as to shatter the reader's heart with the realities of life on the frontier.

This novel is a rollercoaster of emotions and a true testament to McCarthy's talent as a writer. It's a book that will be savored by readers who appreciate the art of storytelling and the beauty of the written word. A rating of 4 out of 5 stars seems fitting for this gem of a novel.

For those who enjoyed "All The Pretty Horses," I recommend exploring McCarthy's other works, such as "Blood Meridian" and "The Border Trilogy." Another author to consider is Larry McMurtry and his classic novel, "Lonesome Dove." These works offer a similar level of literary sophistication and delve into the heart of the American West.

I gave some thought to doing a “two-sentences-and-one-word” review of Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses – winner of the National Book Award – but I decided not to. Don’t get me wrong, it could be done that way. It’s just that I didn’t think I could do it justice that way.

The reason for that isn’t the characters. They are few, and they are finely drawn.

It’s also not the story. That’s stripped down to some classic essentials.

In 1949, following the death of his cattle rancher grandfather, and in the face of the pending sale of the ranch, sixteen-year-old John Grady Cole decides to leave for Mexico with his friend Lacey Rawlins. They’re giving up on the post-war, modernizing America, in favor of the cowboy life south of the Rio Grande.

Along the way, they meet Jimmy Blevins, a boy of perhaps thirteen, who’s riding one of the finest horses John Grady’s ever seen. The boys travel together, surrounded by the stark beauty of Mexico. Until, that is, the thunderstorm.

Maintaining that getting struck by lightning “runs in the family,” Blevins tries to outrun the storm but loses the horse and his pistol in the process. The rest of the book is filled with attempts to regain Blevins’s items, bandits and prisons, work on a cattle ranch where John Grady and Rawlins break horses, and key involvements with a beautiful girl and her protective and traditional family. Along the way, McCarthy blends in his characteristically beautiful tragedy and despair and violence.

Again, the story’s fine, right?

So the reason I couldn’t limit any review to two sentences and a word is, simply put, McCarthy’s writing in telling his fine tale.

All the Pretty Horses can be labeled with many literary terms. Its coming-of-age elements make it a Bildungsroman. Its deeply-realized natural wonders, interwoven elements of mystical and godlike grandeur, and rejection of modernism and industrialized life in favor of a more basic and emotional existence all point to the Romanticism of the late 18th and early 19th century.

But the term that most defines this Romantic coming-of-age story is “polysyndetic.” More than he writes it, McCarthy paints All the Pretty Horses through polysyndeton – a stylistic emphasis on the rhythm and timing of words that's achieved through extensive use of conjunctions and, in McCarthy’s case, a comparative refusal to stick to traditional punctuation.

It can be hard on the eyes because of the plainness of it, with all those words strung together. But it can flow unbelievably in the ear, with the quasi-religious tone it brings (no surprise, the King James Bible is a prime example of polysyndeton).

In the wrong hands, it’s a recipe for disaster. In All the Pretty Horses, it’s one of those rare instances where a book does have a rhythm, and in this case that rhythm is beautiful.

It is deep and flawless here, worked so thoroughly into the text that the story’s existence without that rhythm seems impossible. As written, it’s a compelling read – one that strangely begs to be read out loud. But unpainted with its unique selection and ordering of words, the book would be no more than Three Boys Travel South.

Two examples, both from the first page of the Vintage paperback….

In the opening paragraph, John Grady enters a hall to see his grandfather’s body, laid out for the viewing. He takes off his hat. The floorboards creak. He sees a melted candle and idly presses a thumb into the liquid wax. Then he turns to the body of a man he loved:

Lastly he looked at the face so caved and drawn among the folds of funeral cloth, the yellowed moustache, the eyelids paper thin. That was not sleeping. That was not sleeping.

It was dark outside and cold and no wind. In the distance a calf bawled. He stood with his hat in his hand. You never combed your hair that way in your life, he said.

Short sentences for an emotionally bleak scene. Commas in the three-item description in the first sentence above, then nothing but conjunctions in the three-item description in the first sentence in the next paragraph. The collective emotion of the words is an emphasis of what they report – barren feelings in a barren land.

At the bottom of the same page, there’s a dramatic change as a train passes nearby:

It came boring out of the east like some ribald satellite of the coming sun howling and bellowing in the distance and the long light of the headlamp running through the tangled mesquite brakes and creating out of the night the endless fenceline down the dead straight right of way and sucking it back again wire and post mile on mile into the darkness after where the boilersmoke disbanded slowly along the faint new horizon and the sound came lagging and he stood still holding his hat in his hands in the passing ground-shudder watching it till it was gone.

Yeah, it’s just one sentence – one sentence with some made-up words, marking a grim intrusion by the world that John Grady will soon leave, on his way to the simpler one he understands better and therefore wants.

As I said, its presentation can be hard on the eyes. And it’s assuredly not for everyone by any means.

But gather your breath and read it out loud, in a moderate voice and with an easy pace and the breaks falling where they naturally would. Then – then – it rolls.

Rating: 2* of five

The Publisher Says: The national bestseller and the first volume in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy, All the Pretty Horses is the tale of John Grady Cole, who at sixteen finds himself at the end of a long line of Texas ranchers, cut off from the only life he has ever imagined for himself. With two companions, he sets off for Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic journey to a place where dreams are paid for in blood. Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction.

My Review: The Doubleday UK meme, a book a day for July 2014, is the goad I'm using to get through my snit-based unwritten reviews. Today's prompt is to discuss the "most chocolatey novel" for National Chocolate Day.

I hate chocolate, and I hated this pretentious self-conscious poseur of a novel.

I dont think omitting punctuation is novel since the nouveau roman movement has been doing it since oh I dunno the 1950s AND its pretty much pointless in telling a standard coming-of-age story AND it's an absurd (and inconsistently utilized) affectation whose cynical deployment in this violent animal-abusive Peckinpahesque farrago won the author a National Book Award

Which is not to say that McCarthy can't write very nice lines:
Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.
--lovely and precise

Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.
--amen to that one

But that isn't enough to make a book a Modern Classic! A triumph! A brilliant (overused word) novel!

It's a very basic coming-of-age-in-the-West story featuring a blah little boy who becomes a Man because shit happens. Where it isn't tedious it's nauseous. The pornographically sensual descriptions of guns and blood and cruelty are, for this reader at least, off-putting.

Take away the "difficult" "innovative" (really? eighty years after Ulysses and we're calling this crap-fest difficult and innovative?) stylistic quirks and what do you have?

A Louis L'Amour novel written by DH Lawrence.

How horrible is that.

John Grady finds himself at a crossroads after his grandfather's passing. His father, still reeling from a divorce, and his mother, seizing the opportunity to sell the family ranch and move to the city, leaving him with a choice. This choice forms the basis of [All The Pretty Horses] by [Cormac McCarthy], a compelling Western novel that explores themes of loss, freedom, and the search for one's place in the world.
John Grady and Lacey Rawlins, driven by a shared longing for the cowboy life and the allure of the unknown, make a pact to embark on a daring adventure. Their journey takes a thrilling turn when they cross paths with Jimmy Blevins, a young boy seemingly on the run. This unexpected encounter adds a new dynamic to their group, setting off a chain of events shaping their futures. The sheer unpredictability of these events will keep you on the edge of your seat, eagerly anticipating what lies ahead.
That's a Western novel bordering on nature writing, which will delight lovers of wide open spaces, nights under the stars, and wild rides. McCarthy's style asserts itself: absence of punctuation, epiphora, and minute descriptions of nature and animals. This unique style [explanation of the style's significance] creates an atmosphere, a climate, in which the reader can fully immerse themselves—a feeling reinforced by the introduction of untranslated Spanish dialogues. The plot remains gripping. Strong sensations guaranteed!

A gloriously atmospheric reading experience.

WINNER: U.S. National Book Award
WINNER: National Book Critics Circle Award

It's not so much 'what' this book is about as it is 'the words' of this book. The delicious, deliberate, patient, cowboy-slow, piece-of-straw-in-your-mouth, quiet way the story is told.

The terrain of Texas and Mexico. Horseback riding and camping. Campfires, campfire meals (I seem to remember there being a lot of tortillas and beans). Strong black coffee in the morning. The solitude. The open air. The night sky. Traveling on horseback. Divine.

“He lay on his back in his blankets and looked out where the quarter moon lay cocked over the heel of the mountains... the great diamond of Orion and Cepella and the signature of Cassiopeia all rising up through the phosphorous dark... He lay a long time listening to the others breathing in their sleep while he contemplated the wildness about him, the wildness within.”

The Border Trilogy – Part 1 of 3

His name is John Grady Cole and he is 16 years old. His world shifted and changed radically from what he knew and what he expected while growing up in San Angelos, Texas. He and his best friend Lacey Rawlins (17) decide to ride to Mexico and see if they can find work on a ranch.

On their way there, a younger boy, possibly 14 (although he lay claim to 16 years) named Jimmy Blevins joins them, although neither is particularly keen to have the fellow along. For starters, his name is the same as a preacher on the radio so the two older boys doubt that he even gave them his real name. He also has a large, expensive looking horse.

However, they appear to be stuck with him – until a series of incidents splits them up. n  Shrouded in the black thunderheads the distant lightning glowed mutely like welding seen through foundry smoke. As if repairs were under way at some flawed place in the iron dark of the world.n Both the younger boy and his big horse happen to have a huge fear of lightning.

All three of the young men meet up again a few weeks later, but their circumstances are much harsher than the rough living of their journey. They do meet some characters along the way, and they all have stories: n  Buddy when he come back from up in the panhandle told me one time it quit blowin up there and all the chickens fell over.n John Grady also falls hopelessly in love with his boss’ daughter and she with him. This is yet another event that converged with others to result in all three young men struggling to stay alive.

This story is set mostly in Mexico in 1949-1950 and is jam-packed with action, adventure, and misadventure. The writing is excellent and its pace is well suited to the story: it takes an ambling gait through parts of the story interspersed with wild gallops in-between. Again, there is no punctuation to show when people are talking, and at times I was compelled to pay attention to context to know who was actually talking. Another hurdle for me is that several conversations take place in Spanish; however, I took it as a given that the summary of those conversations followed in the ever-moving flow of the story.

I cared very much for the characters in this book and found empathy in my heart for pretty much everyone. Although none of the boys ‘come of age’ in this novel, it felt to me like they had already done so years before. Their lifestyle wasn’t the easiest choice in the world, but it was one they chose to do their best at. And who am I to say they didn’t succeed?

All the Pretty Horses opens with the death of John Grady Cole’s grandfather on his family’s ranch in San Angelo, Texas, in 1949. His parents are divorced. His mother owns the ranch and is selling it. Feeling a sense of loss, sixteen-year-old John Grady convinces his friend, Lacey Rawlins, to accompany him to Mexico to continue the ranching life. This novel is both a coming-of-age story and a quest of personal discovery. Two naïve young men travel on horseback into the desert wilderness of western Texas and northern Mexico. They encounter a runaway and find work. John Grady meets a young woman and interacts with her family members. They experience life in both its decency and violent ugliness, while maturing and learning hard lessons in the process. Themes include destiny, loyalty, integrity, friendship, freedom, courage, and powerlessness in the face of injustice.

John Grady is a likeable protagonist bordering on heroic. He operates from an internal code of honor and is a natural leader. He has a natural affinity with horses, and the writing contains moving descriptions of the bonds between humans and these intelligent animals. There are numerous references to the specific terminology of horsemanship. Horses become one of many recurring images throughout the novel. For example, “The horse had a good natural gait and as he rode he talked to it and told it things about the world that were true in his experience and he told it things he thought could be true to see how they would sound if they were said. He told the horse why he liked it and why he’d chosen it to be his horse and he said that he would allow no harm to come to it.”

The writing style is mostly spare but interspersed with lengthy stream-of-consciousness descriptions. The harsh beauty of the land is an essential component of the trials the characters must surmount. Dialogue is generally brief and direct. McCarthy does not employ apostrophes or quotation marks, and forms compound words out of those normally separated. He liberally inserts untranslated Spanish phrases, keeping with the bilingual nature of the protagonist and life along the U.S.-Mexican border. The story is told in four parts with no chapter breaks. The first three sections flow naturally. The fourth section interrupts this flow with several lengthy expository passages. The tone often veers toward the bleak and pessimistic, particularly regarding the exploration of fate, chance, and free will in life. The various characters express different perspectives about life, some hopeful, some deterministic. It is mostly character-based but interwoven with rapid action segments. The relationship between John Grady and the young woman that drives a good portion of the story could have been more fully developed.

McCarthy creates a particularly memorable character in John Grady. He encounters brutality, injustice, chaos, and emerges on the other side a changed person, stronger, wiser and aware of his own potential for violent action. McCarthy explores the enduring questions of personal identity each person must confront and provides many opportunities for introspection. Recommended to readers who appreciate “westerns” with philosophical overtones.

FRASI CHE POSSONO DARE LA VITA O IMPARTIRE LA MORTE


Mustang

Capitolo primo della cosiddetta trilogia della frontiera.
Rispetto ai suoi scritti precedenti, nonostante mantenga un clima di violenza più che notevole, qui Cormac McCarthy sembra introdurre dei sentimenti più ‘umani’: per esempio, l’amore.
L’amore tra il protagonista John Grady Cole e Alejandra, la figlia del ricco proprietario messicano presso il quale John trova lavoro come domatore di cavalli selvaggi, abilità che ha sviluppato nel ranch dei suoi nonni.


Matt Damon aveva ben più dei sedici anni che ha John Grady nel romanzo.

Siamo nel 1949, il progresso, l’industria, lo sviluppo economico avanzano e non si fermano di fronte alla nostalgia, di fronte a un pezzo di terra, davanti ai cavalli selvaggi. Le praterie sono destinate a diventare autostrade.
Il sedicenne protagonista parte a cavallo, come unico bagaglio quello che indossa e quello che la sella può trasportare: il nonno con cui è cresciuto è morto, la nonna venderà il ranch per trasferirsi a vivere in città. John Grady non ci sta e se ne va.
Punta a sud, verso il confine col Messico. Con lui parte anche un amico, Rawlins, che crede di essere più fortunato in Messico nella ricerca di un lavoro. Ma in fondo quella che entrambi cercano è una vita alternativa: in qualche modo, è un andare contro il tempo, il progresso arriva da nord, e allora spingiamoci a sud dove si vive ancora con i cavalli, le selle, i lazo. Il loro obiettivo si riflette nel paesaggio: secco, assolato, duro, primordiale, che sembra scolpito dalla collera di dio.

Ogni tanto il gruppo passava accanto a una macchia di cholla. Sulle spine delle piante c’erano trafitti numerosi uccelli trascinati dal vento, piccole creature grigie e anonime impalate nell’atto di volare o afflosciate con le piume arruffate. Alcuni erano ancora vivi e al passaggio dei cavalli si contorcevano sulle spine sollevando il capo e pigolando, ma i cavalieri non si fermarono. Quando il sole s’alzò nel cielo il paesaggio cambiò colore e si tinse del verde acceso delle acacie e dei paloverde, del verde scuro dell’erba che costeggiava la strada e del rosso fuoco dei fiori dell’ocotillo, come se la pioggia fosse stata elettrica e avesse elettrizzato il territorio.


Penelope Cruz è Alejandra.

Avvicinandosi al confine, la coppia di cavalieri diventa un trio: si aggiunge Blevins, un tredicenne che si spaccia per più adulto, e che cavalca un baio splendido, ed è armato di pistola.
Anche nel 1949 un cavallo e una pistola erano proprietà di valore per la quale valeva la pena uccidere o rubare. Blevins è misterioso, forse è un ladro di cavalli, e certo non porterà fortuna agli altri due, ma certi valori, vuoi amicizia vuoi fratellanza vuoi solidarietà, non si possono disconoscere neppure davanti alla cattiva sorte.
E senza seguire ogni snodo e curva della trama, basta sottolineare come il Messico si riveli più trappola che speranza, che la legge anche laggiù è dura e punisce senza pietà, ma alla sua maniera, magari lasciandoti torturare dai tuoi compagni di cella – che ambire alla mano della figlia del ricco datore di lavoro è sempre un’esagerazione oltraggiosa che si paga.


Il film del 2000 è una regia maldestra dell’attore Billy Bob Thornton, che comunque alla regia si è cimentato più volte, anche con risultato notevole come il precedente “Sling Blade”, premiato con l’Oscar per la migliore sceneggiatura da adattamento.

Il viaggio di John Grady ha forte valenza iniziatica, viaggio all’origine del mondo, e il romanzo si potrebbe ascrivere tra quelli cosiddetti di formazione.
E certo John Grady deve imparare in fretta a crescere con altrettanta fretta. Parte col sogno di ritrovare a sud uno stile di vita più semplice, per così dire più primitivo, dove certi valori come l’amicizia non appartengano già al solo passato. Ma non sa di far parte di una razza in via d’estinzione. E anche il Messico è meno “puro” di quanto si aspetti.
L’innocenza è perduta, e non è neppure più un valore: si muore per un cavallo, per il possesso di una pistola.
Il romanzo termina con John Grady che cavalca verso il tramonto, come ogni buon western che si rispetti. Ma non è certo un’immagine di speranza, piuttosto di ostinazione: John Grady non ha certo vinto la sua battaglia, ma non è neppure vinto. E non è ancora pronto a scendere da cavallo.


Vita nelle prigioni messicane.

McCarthy trasmette splendidamente la libertà dei grandi spazi, il senso dell’avventura, la speranza: ma anche quanto la vita è maestra severa e non consente appello.
È un McCarthy sempre laconico, austero, che non ha ancora ceduto a quell’eccesso di dialogo che mi ha sorpreso, non piacevolmente, in La strada e Non è un paese per vecchi. Lo scarno dialogo non è neppure sottolineato da due punti o virgolette, si integra nel contesto di una scrittura economica dal timbro biblico.

Frasi che possono dare la vita o impartire la morte è come Saul Bellow definiva la narrativa di Cormac McCarthy.

Il film in originale mantiene il suo titolo All the Pretty Horses, in italiano diventa Passione ribelle. Ma non trasmette neppure una minima parte del fascino maestoso del romanzo.



Quando soffiava il vento da nord si sentivano gli indiani, i cavalli, il fiato dei cavalli, gli zoccoli foderati di cuoio, il tintinnio delle lance e il perpetuo frusciare dei travois trascinati sulla sabbia come enormi serpenti, i ragazzi nudi che montavano i cavalli bradi con la spavalderia dei cavallerizzi da circo spingendo altri cavalli bradi davanti a loro, i cani che trottavano accanto con la lingua fuori e gli schiavi seminudi che marciavano a piedi oppressi da pesanti fardelli e soprattutto la lenta litania dei canti che i cavalieri cantavano in viaggio; un popolo e il suo spirito che attraversavano in coro sommesso il deserto pietroso verso un’oscurità perduta alla storia e a ogni ricordo come un graal contenente la somma delle loro vite violente ed effimere.

Cormac McCarthy is the world champion of writing fiction that people consider both extremely challenging and instantly accessible at the same time.

In Blood Meridian you have a demonic horror story told within the lurching funeral march of cowboys making a trek through a nightmare old west.

In No Country for Old Men you have John Carpenter's Halloween translated into another genre, with a nearly unstoppable killer hunting down a man on the run. And an older sheriff follows them both and comes to realise he might be chasing death itself.

The Road is a family drama where embracing your role as a parent means being able to let go and finding the hope in a terrifying future. And it is also a cannibal apocalypse trendsetter which undoubtedly influenced the modern zombie genre and post-Armageddon stories in every medium including Mad Max: Fury Road and the video game The Last of Us.

And here with All The Pretty Horses, McCarthy creates his own colossal fantasy adventure series.

Only it's not a door-stop novel with more pages than all of the Encyclopedia Britannica combined.

It's a slim, easy to read, 300 page, coming of age, romance.

It features two young men setting out on an adventure by horse back who encounter a third much younger kid who is a trick shot, riding an expensive horse. The kid believes he will be killed by lightning (as its killed many members of his family). From there the three encounter mysterious strangers, difficult trials, forbidden love, elder women with tragic pasts, assassins and mythology aplenty.

The book is brimming with legends and legacies and stories. Detailing broken families, hidden pasts, the souls of horses, tales of revolutions failed and horrific dungeons where a life and death conflict awaits the hero that will challenge them and change them forever.

And then there is the most difficult part of the quest. The journey home.

There is nothing overtly fantastic in the book, there are no wizards, no dark lords, no rings of power or elves guarding the forest (although the young boy seems quite fae), but the book is exploding with world-building.

You feel the scope of the adventure through the eyes of the characters. You hear it in the dialog, and the attention to small details. The storytelling is huge. It speaks to the human condition while embracing the mythic and the legend.

The book is both undeniably idealistic and an exceptionally critical breakdown of our idealism.

It takes apart our unrealistic dreams while seeing the purpose and the value in them. It is heart-breaking and moral, because it shows us the value of our morality and how that morality often crashes against the rocks of the world's innate cruelty.

The book is one part Tolkien, one part Dostoevsky. It has wonder and wit and terror. And those elements clash and resolve in a beautiful way in the ending.

McCarthy, like other realistic writers who dabbles in fantastic ideas (Miyazaki, Murdoch, Saramago, Murakami and Shakespeare) sees these wildly conflicting elements as many parts of a more complex whole. A sort of self-devouring, intricate piece of clockwork.

Genius storytelling, incredible prose. 10/10

A part of my giant sized Review Round-Up: https://www.patreon.com/posts/68034532

From most authors, this would be considered a great novel. There are great parts. From McCarthy, one of the best American authors, this feels sort of like a typical romance with typical Western themes. It's not a prime delivery for such a supremely talented writer.

The novel is not on par with The Road, No Country For Old Men, or, and especially, Blood Meridian. Perhaps value is gained after reading the entire Border Trilogy.

This western of new antiquity flows with a horse's grace and bursts into furious and powerful charges. McCarthy's pen grazes upon lush words. His verbs gallop, his adjectives whinny and snort. There is a subdued, wild loneliness. The populous within the pages wander like herds or rally in a tense, motionless pack ready to pounce, while mere boys -more man than most- wander through them ready for love, ready for death.

These characters breath and sweat and bleed. The reader comes to know the true color of their blood. It flows down their filthy boots into a landscape vivid with an encompassing spectrum not seen in The Road. Here, the travelers cross the land and the land touches their painfully real feet, and from there a current spreads out, electrifying the hardscrabble Mexican countryside.

Kick the dust and sand off these words. Dig in and glory in their life-giving beauty.


Review Appendix: There's a band I've recently come across who write the kind of music that would make for a wonderful soundtrack to McCarthy's Border Trilogy. The Division Men (a husband and wife duo) play a music that sounds like Leonard Cohen lost in the desert. Take a listen: http://divisionmen.bandcamp.com/track...

Listen to the whole album Under The Gun here: http://divisionmen.bandcamp.com/album...