4.5 Stars for All the Pretty Horses (audiobook) by Cormac McCarthy read by Frank Muller.

This is a wonderfully poetic western about three young men riding into Mexico looking for adventure. But it’s mostly troubled that they find.

The hardest books to review are those where my personal pleasure contrasts with my objective assessment. This is such a book. There is much to admire, but I never really enjoyed it, and after a while, it felt like an uncomfortable hack across a barren, albeit sometimes beautiful, landscape.

This is a Western, set mostly in Mexico, shortly after WW2. It has all the features you’d expect, told with McCarthy’s harshly poetic prose and minimalist punctuation. There’s also a lot of Spanish vocabulary and dialogue: I got the gist, and it was effective in making me feel like an outsider (like Texans in Mexico and how a couple of characters feel in their own land), but it was also rather frustrating.

Despite the careful, and sometimes surprisingly phrased imagery, I often struggled to picture the story, let alone believe the main protagonist was only sixteen. Perhaps I need to watch more vaqueros films.

Ultimately, reading this was akin to having a beautiful smashed plate, one that tells a tale, as Willow Pattern does: there were fragments of beauty, and I could see the overall shape of plate and story, but ultimately, I appreciated isolated pieces rather than the whole.


Image: Broken Willow Pattern china in an old rubbish dump in Sturt National Park, Australia (Source)

Story

John Grady Cole’s grandfather just died and now the family ranch will be sold. John Grady decides to leave Texas for Mexico, to find work on a ranch. He has a natural gift with horses, and persuades his best friend, Lacey Rawlins, to come with him. Before crossing the border, they’re joined by a boy they reckon is only thirteen, who rides a very fine horse, says he’s called Jimmy Blevins, and seems like trouble.

Things happen, but not much happens, except when things happen: breaking horses in, being wrongly accused, travelling long distances in unfamiliar lands, the kindness of strangers, bribes, bars, gun and knife fights, a wealthy ranch, escape, forbidden love, corrupt authority figures, survival, prison, betrayal, loyalty, and people being manipulated - not in that order. The only thing it doesn’t have is native Americans. However, this is not a Western-by-numbers: the varied pacing and crafted descriptions elevate this to the literary shelves.

The story is also layered. There are many occasions when a character tells someone their backstory, which lends a liturgical air of repetition, but 14 pages of Doña Alfonsa’s near monologue was too much: it felt like the printer had accidentally inserted an interesting short story.

Blood

The narrative is steeped in blood, yet it’s not especially gory or graphic. At first, it’s metaphorical; later real blood is added to the mix. These are just a few of those on the first four pages:

•t“The wind was much abated and it was very cold and the sun sat blood red and elliptic under the reefs of bloodred cloud before him.”

•t“The women and children and women with children at their breasts all of them pledged in blood and redeemable in blood only.”

•t“What he loved in horses was what he loved in men, the blood and the heat of the blood that ran them.”


Image: Cowboy riding into a blood-red sunset (Source)

Judgement

Before leaving, John Grady goes to the theatre:
“He’d the notion that there would be something in the story itself to tell him about the way the world was or was becoming but there was not.”
Perhaps that disappointment cements his resolve to find meaning elsewhere, although it’s Rawlins who is the philosophical one:
“Judgement day, said Rawlins. You believe in all that?
I dont know. Yeah, I reckon. You?”

The story is marked by choices and conflicts: Mexicans and Americans, man and beast, rich and poor, male and female, powerful and subordinate, dreams and reality, duty and freedom, fate and chance. Mostly, John Grady acts more by instinct than design (he is only sixteen). However, this is a story of growing to adulthood, and he becomes more thoughtful:
“He contemplated the wildness about him, the wildness within.”
Towards the end, a discussion with an actual judge determines John Grady’s next choice.


Image: A pair of horses in Senora, Mexico, with mountains in the background (though Senora is nearer Arizona than Texas) (Source)

This is my last McCarthy

I was wowed by the sparse and agonising beauty of my first McCarthy, The Road, which I reviewed HERE in 2009.

A year later, I picked up Outer Dark, which I reviewed HERE. I really disliked it and decided McCarthy wasn’t for me.

In the decade since, several people on GR and elsewhere nudged me to try him again, specifically this one. When someone brought a copy to a “book chat and borrow” group, I decided now was the time. I’m glad I read it. It’s a good book. And I am now confident that there are other authors I prefer to devote my time to, The Road notwithstanding.

Another novel, loosely in the Western genre, and also a coming-of-age trip, that I really enjoyed, is John Williams’ Butcher’s Crossing, which I reviewed HERE (he’s most famous for Stoner).

Quotes

•t“There was nothing along the road save the country it traversed and there was nothing in the country at all.”

•t“Rawlins eyed balefully that cauterized terrain.”

•t“He rode with the sun coppering his face and the red wind blowing out of the west.”

•t“Shrouded in the black thunderheads the distant lightning glowed mutely like welding seen through foundry smoke.”

•t“Those eyes had altered the world forever in the space of a heartbeat.”

•t“She spoke an english learned largely from schoolbooks and he tested each phrase for the meanings he wished to hear.”

•t“At sundown a troubled light. The dark jade shapes of the lagunilas below them lay in the floor of the desert savannah like piercings through another sky. The laminar bands of color to the west bleeding out under the hammered clouds. A sudden violetcolored hooding of the earth.”

•t“Sweeter for the larceny of time and flesh, sweeter for the betrayal.” [stolen kisses]

•t“There seemed insufficient substance to him to be the object of men’s wrath.”

•t“The moon that was already risen raced among the high wires by the highway side like a single silver music note burning in the constant and lavish dark.”

•t“She tells me I must be my own person and with every breath she tries to make me her person.”

Despite my great love for The Road, I’d argue that my enjoyment of All the Pretty Horses was far from predetermined. To begin with, I’ve recently been made aware (in discussions with fellow Goodreaders) that I’ve never seen a single Clint Eastwood movie or even a non-Clint Eastwood Western. And although I grew up in the South (sort of), I’m now an East Coast city guy who’s never even gone camping if you don’t count that college freshman orientation trip. Not only do I know jack-shit about horses and their care, but my allergies (basically the entire animal kingdom is off limits) will see to it that I never will. And as this book's title suggests, there’s quite a lot of horse information here (as well as impassioned equine eulogizing), complete with the usual Cormac McCarthy super-detailed passages. It’s this healthy inclusion of mundane detail that readers sometimes complain about, but for us greenhorns who can barely recognize a fully-dressed cowboy, it allows for a full immersion into mid-century Texas and Mexico that’s not only believable, but undeniably real. Don’t let the character accents (sorry Texans!) and punctuation paucity fool you; this guy knows his shit and you will believe him. Except maybe when it comes to romance.

Oh, Cormac. The Alejandra and John Grady Cole relationship reads like a Hollywood movie where the producer came in demanding massive cuts in the middle, leaving us without all the get-to-know-you stuff between the character introduction and the sex--i.e. the stuff that makes you ultimately care about and believe in the couple. And their first contact is pure Hollywood love-at-first-sight cheese. It goes something like this: “he saw her and he knew his life would never be the same” or “he saw her and he knew that he’d found the woman of his dreams” (I’ll look up the exact quote later). How forgiving you are of this type of thing probably depends on how much you enjoy the story arc as a whole and how well you suspend disbelief generally. It’s not that the relationship itself is unbelievable; it’s just that McCarthy doesn’t really take the time to develop it. But by being responsible for JGC’s motivations, Alejandra functions as the ultimate plot-driver, the one whose existence gets JGC into Big Trouble and is therefore responsible for many of his gripping Mexican adventures. And as I’ve suggested somewhat obviously before, forbidden love is a good topic for compelling (or at least high-selling) fiction, even if it's not done particularly well.

Despite some romantic shortcomings, McCarthy has once again won me over with his treatment of morality. Like in The Road, he examines situations where it’d be easy to do something short of the (most) right thing. (Minor, vague spoilers to follow). Along with Alejandra, a side character named Jimmy Blevins exists mainly to get our hero in trouble. He’s also there to show us that our hero is the fucking man. Blevins is a 13 year-old kid that tags along with JGC and his buddy Rawlins on their trip down to Mexico. He wasn’t invited, he’s a pain in the ass, and he screws them over in big and little ways. And JGC and Rawlins are provided plenty of opportunities to move on without him, to leave him with what he deserves, to quit him after giving him every opportunity to be something less than a pain in the ass. But JGC sticks his neck out for Blevins especially when he deserves the opposite. When it’s portrayed well, this kind of grace-full sacrifice gets me good. And McCarthy knows how to do it well.

While I was initially skeptical of McCarthy’s prose style and punctuation liberties, I’ve come to greatly enjoy both since becoming convinced that they (mostly) serve to enhance the storytelling impact. At one point I came across a passage that I was sure I’d read before, but whence I couldn’t remember. And then it hit me—it was from B.R. Myers’s (in)famous essay, A Reader’s Manifesto, which basically laments the state of modern, critically-praised literary fiction. And at the time, since I hadn’t read any of the authors he was quoting and denigrating, I thought that Myers really had a point. Because taken as a standalone quotation, this sentence really does look ridiculous:

While inside the vaulting of the ribs between his knees the darkly meated heart pumped of who's will and the blood pulsed and the bowels shifted in their massive blue convolutions of who's will and the stout thighbones and knee and cannon and the tendons like flaxen hawsers that drew and flexed and drew and flexed at their articulations of who's will all sheathed and muffled in the flesh and the hooves that stove wells in the morning groundmist and the head turning side to side and the great slavering keyboard of his teeth and the hot globes of his eyes where the world burned.

However, when read in context (and I’m not talking about the context of the entire book, but rather just considering the few preceding sentences), the description is not only lucid, but the breathlessly odd rendering of the in-action horse mirrors the emotional, animal upheaval within JGC's own innards, infusing the passage with implicit and potent meaning. But Myers, preying on those who are either unfamiliar with the work or who’ve understandably forgotten this short atypical part, goes for the jugular with what amounts to an ad hominem attack re McCarthy’s intent:

The obscurity of who's will, which has an unfortunate Dr. Seussian ring to it, is meant to bully readers into thinking that the author's mind operates on a plane higher than their own—a plane where it isn't ridiculous to eulogize the shifts in a horse's bowels.

Whether Myers was genuinely confused about the “who” in question is unknowable, but his suggestion regarding McCarthy’s intent is malicious (and laughable). Furthermore, I suspect that many powerful passages—ones designed to reach an emotional peak (without the constraints of Standard Written English) rather than to achieve a straightforward communication of information—would look rather silly out of context, even (or perhaps especially) those written by the High Modernists who remain unsullied by Myers. Unorthodox sentences can be highly effective in context, and McCarthy shows great sensitivity in deciding when to unleash the fireworks and when to leave things plain and simple.

Myers also complains about the level of detail, particularly when it comes to the mundane:

But novels tolerate epic language only in moderation. To record with the same somber majesty every aspect of a cowboy's life, from a knife fight to his lunchtime burrito, is to create what can only be described as kitsch.

It is precisely this style, however, that sets McCarthy apart as a conjurer of another place and another time that feel lived in by human beings who don’t just shoot guns, chase women, and ride horses, but who also wash clothes, get hungover, cook food, and complete other boring, everyday tasks. In spite of all the mundane events that McCarthy chronicles, I can’t put his books down because of the unique way he describes these things; because of the way he records events with that “somber majesty” scorned by Myers.

And while, like Myers, I can also find a few things to criticize in All the Pretty Horses (in addition to the romance), this nitpicking would seriously misconstrue my enjoyment of the book. I inhaled it. As with The Road, McCarthy creates a world that’s not only compelling, but inescapable. You’re in there and the only way out is to get to the next page and then the next, the next, the next. Whatever he’s doing, it works, and Myers’s deconstruction only makes sense if you’re not having a great time. And that’s what All the Pretty Horses is foremost; a great time.

Don’t mind me. Just here for the outlandishly pretty writing.

Basically, my abiding love for the Red Dead Redemption games (aka Manly Horse Riding Simulator Pro) semi-regularly sends me back to the Border Trilogy.

Also I’m a lot more comfortable in stories that are focused on the fading of the old west—the questions of whether it ever really existed and if it had any value—than with stories that, um, aren’t that? Because otherwise it all crosses into mass-murder of indigenous peoples type territory and I get white, British and hand wringy.

(I am not a fan of guilty pleasures as a concept but westerns genuinely fall into this category for me. Because, yes, I think it’s fair that I feel guilty about liking them).

Anyway, this is set in 1949. And is all deconstruct-ey and shit. Its probably mostly a bildungsroman, it’s protagonist essentially heading with his best mate—and a troubled kid who comes to an inevitably troubled end—down to Mexico to try and be a cowboy. Anyway, Mexico is super corrupt. There’s a hot daughter and a doomed love affair. And I’ve no idea if this is a fair portrayal of Mexico in the 1950s. But it does kind of remind me of the bit in RDD where you spend a while bobbing around some nice white lady’s ranch doing mostly benign missions for mostly decent people. And then you get to Mexico for the second act and everybody is completely evil for no real reason.

But. The writing. Fuck me the writing. If you don’t mind there’s no conventional punctuation or whatever.

He thought that in the beauty of the world were hid a secret. He thought the world’s heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world’s pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower

I just couldn't get into this book! I found it difficult following who was telling the story!

For everyone who has ever been abandoned. This is a sprawling journey of heartache and adventure, and how no good deed will go unpunished in this dusty, dry, then suddenly flooding broken world. Read All The Pretty Horses, and if you keep going through the next 2 books of this trilogy, you will never be the same. You will also learn that punctuation was invented by those who were not able to get the music and sound of words into their writing. Listen as you read this book, listen to you heart beating and your breath catching.

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy has just captured my heart and soul. While my heart will always be a part of the American West, this amazing book not only had such beautiful prose, but it put you there in the moment as you experienced all that is beautiful but threatening in the rugged west, particularly on the Texas-Mexico border. What is so lovely about this book is the underlying theme of the horses, all the beautiful horses, that is pulsing throughout this narrative as we come to love and admire John Grady Cole and his partner, Lacey Rawlins, as they make their way from their homes in Texas and travel on horseback to Mexico in 1949. The book opens with one of the most stunning passages as John Grady Cole is present after the death of his grandfather in the ranch home that he and his family have run for generations. And this first book of the trilogy ends with the death of John Cole's dear abuela, a woman who cared for his mother as well when she was a child. These two significant deaths for John Grady Cole are the bookends of this wonderful novel; the first book of The Border Trilogy. What transpires in the interim is a journey that you need to embark on yourself. It is a story of friendship, love, strength, courage and endurance with a lot of humanity all described in beautiful and descriptive prose as only Cormac McCarthy can do.

"The candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he shut the door. He took off his hat and came slowly forward. The floorboards creaked under his boots. In his black suit he stood in the dark glass where the lilies leaned so palely from their waisted cutglass vase. Along the cold hallway behind him hung the portraits of forebears only dimly known to him all framed in glass and dimly lit above the narrow wainscoting. He looked down at the guttered candlestub. He pressed his thumbprint in the warm wax pooled on the oak veneer. 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."

"What he loved in horses was what he loved in men, the blood and the heat of the blood that ran them. All his reverence and all his fondness and all the leanings of his life were for the ardenthearted and they would always be so and never be otherwise."

ADDENDUM: June 13, 2023
A sad note on the passing of one the greatest literary authors of this century. Rest in peace Mr. McCarthy. You will be missed.

*2nd read - I liked this last time. Loved it this time. The writing was beautifully McCarthian and I enjoyed picking up on the intricacies of the story. The plot fit with me much more this read and I grew to love John Grady.

Within All the Pretty Horses, Cormac Mccarthy has proven once again that his sublime prose is wonderful, beautiful and inspirationally thought-provoking.

“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.”

The second McCarthy book I have read was this tale of the ever changing American west, this time in the late 1940s. John Grady Cole is a young Texan rancher who within his friend Rawlin’s plans to leave his life to cross the Mexican border in search of someone new, something that is calling to him. Even though it says it is in the 1940s, there are cars and other technologies, it feels like it could be a novel based much earlier, with a similar feel and tone to the 19th century.

All the Pretty Horses follows John Grady and Rawlins as they journey and encounter strange individuals, as well as fine somewhere to settle and begin to work. John Grady has a natural talent with horses and begins to make a wage breaking in the wild horses of the surrounding areas. There are a few twists plot wise but certainly nothing extremely shocking or unique.

“I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am.”

However, the plot is not what makes this book special in my opinion. It is the classic and wholly awe-inspiring prose of Cormac Mccarthy. There is always, I feel, a hidden layer beneath McCarthy’s work that calls for a deeper inspection and discovery of the true thoughts the author went through whilst he wrote his book. The same goes for All the Pretty Horses, which beautiful prose is no exception. For any lover of language and deeply-dug metaphors you will enjoy this work.

For lovers of intense plot, full of twists and surprises, or on-stop action and an unnamable pace, All the Pretty Horses is probably not going to tick all of those boxes for you. It is slow and can occasionally dwell in a section for too long, or too little, but it is uniquely brilliant with a mesmerising prose and an authentic landscape.

“He saw very clearly how all his life led only to this moment and all after led to nowhere at all. He felt something cold and soulless enter him like another being and he imagined that it smiled malignly and he had no reason to believe that it would ever leave.”

4/5 - Whilst not a masterpiece like Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses is a hopeful and lighter novel that is written with excellent language, and has moments of brilliance. The plot isn’t spectacular but it doesn’t need to be when McCarthy is writing, the passages of fantastic description are enough for me to make it a very enjoyable read.

"…wild wild horses… couldn't drag me away…"

Stavo già cantando ad alta voce e invece no, il titolo originale è All the pretty horses.

Iniziare questo libro è stato come cercare di abbracciare un cactus: ritmo lento e poco coinvolgente, zeppo di sottointesi o comunque informazioni date per scontate, dialoghi smozzicati con una voce narrante onnisciente perfettamente neutra per non dire assente, nomi di persona introdotti senza riferimenti, in un mix che rende impossibile identificare i personaggi e ancor meno i loro pensieri e intenti. E in special modo per quanto riguarda il protagonista: sedicenne ma perennemente bardato di cappellone e stivaloni da cowboy scafato. Questi accessori sono solo un posticcio eccesso di styling o sono un qualcosa di voluto che sta a rappresentare il suo desiderio di essere grande? Impossibile saperlo, al lettore non viene dato il benché minimo indizio, non una parola di spiegazione viene concessa. Va bene la scrittura scarna , ma qui si esagera.

Comunque vado avanti e provo ad arrangiarmi da sola: siamo in Texas, facendo i dovuti conti è la fine degli anni '40. Morto il nonno, mollato dalla fidanzata, i genitori divorziati e più nello specifico babbo ammalato e mamma attrice che si disinteressa bellamente del figlio, il ranch - di proprietà del nonno di cui sopra - destinato ad essere messo in vendita, il ragazzo decide di mollare tutti e andarsene, insieme con un amico.

Procedo con la lettura, senza perdermi una parola dei dialoghi perché sono gli unici che possono fornire indizi, scopro che l'amico in realtà è il cugino, e il protagonista - sempre estremamente adulto e serioso per i suoi miseri sedici anni - sta fuggendo in Messico e là intende trovare lavoro. E ancora no, cugino era solo un modo di dire, in realtà erano a scuola insieme. Ma senza che me ne renda conto, a questo punto della storia ci sto già dentro più comodamente, al posto del cactus c'è una yucca dal tronco grande cui poter appoggiare la schiena con tutto l'agio necessario a una buona lettura. Non so identificare che cambiamento sia avvenuto nella mia percezione, o nel libro, o in tutt'e due: l'ambientazione è quella classica western, il fatto di essere spostata un centinaio di anni più in qua le conferisce una certa originalità, e la trama in realtà non è per nulla il classico western con la ricerca dei dollaroni sonanti ma un perfetto romanzo di formazione.

Il Mexico di cui i ragazzi vanno alla ricerca non è soltanto un viaggio nello spazio ma anche nel tempo: oltrepassare il confine significa per loro fare un salto indietro di cinquant'anni almeno, e consente loro se non di ritrovare i vecchi cowboys, per lo meno di percepirne le tracce. Riuscire a cavarsela sarebbe per loro qualcosa di più di una vittoria o un trofeo. Cercano un lavoro che gli è indispensabile alla sopravvivenza; oltre a questo non ci è dato sapere se e quanto cerchino rapporti umani, un amore, nuove esperienze da fare proprie, guardare la morte in faccia… in ogni caso le troveranno, tutte queste cose. Il finale prende una bella rincorsa, direi quasi epica, unica e piacevolissima concessione della trama allo schema tipico del western, ed è un peccato che questa gran rincorsa si sgonfi in un niente quando arriva il momento del dunque. Ma riflettendoci, il finale in questa storia non conta niente. Il vero finale è un paesaggio che aleggia su tutto il racconto, proprio come se fosse al piano superiore, e al quale si accede solo in brevi sprazzi aperti dai fugaci sogni del protagonista: è il paesaggio di un paradiso, o forse di un mondo primordiale, abitato solo dai cavalli bradi che non hanno mai visto un essere umano: "Lassù non c'era nient'altro e i cavalli si muovevano in armonia come fossero guidati da una musica. I puledri e le giumente non avevano alcuna paura e correvano immersi nell'armonia universale che è il mondo stesso e che non si può descrivere, solo esaltare."

E' questa la sensazione che si prova stando tra i cavalli: gli altri animali domestici, i cani e i gatti, sono accanto a noi, nel presente, ma un cavallo, in un certo senso, sembra sempre guardarti dal passato.

Ancora non mi posso dichiarare fan sfegatata di questo genere di scrittura molto americano e molto contemporaneo, talmente scarno da sconfinare nell'omissione e un poco anche nell'incoerenza, ma la storia di formazione nella sua semplicità mi ha saputo coinvolgere. Procedo con la trilogia perché con le tre prove d'acquisto regalano un sacco di biada per il cavallo e si può partecipare all'estrazione finale per vincere un puledrino alla festa della transumanza a Casarola.

John “Grady” Cole is sixteen years old in the fall of 1949; his grandfather is newly dead and his mother is going to sell their Texas ranch, the only home he’s ever known. Grady has been raised by the Mexican workers on the farm, Arturo and Luisa, and Luisa’s mother, whom Grady calls Abeula (grandmother). We learn that Abuela not only took care of his mother as a baby, but also the wild Grady boys who were his mother’s uncles and who had all died so long ago. Grady’s mother has been absent most of his life, chasing the dream of being an actress. It seems his father has been an in and out presence, mostly out. Cormac McCarthy doesn’t indulge in dozens of paragraphs writing about Grady’s identity; he doesn’t linger on Grady’s emotions, but for the careful reader, the underpinnings of Grady’s life are smoldering embers, meant to be seen and felt as they are walked over. Luisa’s greeting, “Buenos días, guapo.” Good morning, handsome. The touch of her hand to the back of Grady’s neck as she walks to the stove. In contrast the conversation with his mother accentuates their distance, each sitting at opposite ends of a long table. Grady’s pleas to save the ranch fall on deaf ears. He says he can run the ranch and she tells him he’s ridiculous. She has no true knowledge of her son or his abilities, worst of all, she doesn’t seem to care about what’s going to happen to him. He’s going to be as displaced as the Mexican family that’s raised him. If she feels any affiliation with this Mexican family she’s known all her life, she does not let it rise to the level of conflict with her plans.

Grady’s father may not have had much of a part of his raising but he knows one of the most important aspects of his life. Horses. His gift to Grady, the Hamley Formfitter saddle shows this. Throughout the novel, we learn of Grady’s relationship with horses and through this I came to think of this connection as elemental, a part of him as close as his own skin. He talks to his horses in Spanish, which because of his raising is probably his first language.

Blevins’s horse was breathing with slow regularity and his stomach was warm and his shirt damp from the horse’s breath. He found he was breathing in rhythm with the horse as if some part of the horse were within him breathing and then he descended into some deeper collusion for which he had not even a name.

Displaced Grady travels across the Rio Grande into Mexico with his friend Rawlins. There they meet a young, perhaps 13 year-old boy, Jimmy Blevins. Blevins is a tagalong on a beautiful bay horse that Grady and Rawlins suspect he has stolen. Their unlikely association with Blevins will have consequences.

Grady and Rawlins will find work at the Hacienda de Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción. There Grady will fall in love with the owner’s daughter, Alejandra, and that is a story worth reading just to take in McCarthy’s prose, which is simple and beautiful.

In Mexico, there are Mexicans that perceive Grady as ‘other.’ They will cause problems for him. “She (Alejandra) took his arm and she laughed and called him a mojado-reverso, so rare a creature and one to be treasured.” So certain was I that this was a key consideration that I read several articles that referred to this term. That’s the beauty of reading older novels. One can often uncover revelatory insights through the analysis of others. In ‘“Mojado-Reverso”: Illegal Immigration and Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy’, an article by Josh Crain, Crain states that La Purisima can be “can be understood as a parody of the migrant experience in America.” The description of La Purisima reminded the boys of paradise. Just as Mexican immigrants come to America for the better life they’ve seen in the movies and heard of in reports from relatives, so Grady and Rawlins went there to find the paradise they’d heard about. Crain comments that the American paradise is often represented by opportunities for leisure while “the immigrant, whose habit of life has been hard work, stands in marked contrast to them.” This analysis made me want to laugh at the scenes of Grady and Rawlins waking early to break the wild horses, going to bed late, and rising to do this day after day, while they attracted a crowd of Mexican onlookers who observed and partied. While Crain encourages readers not to give these interpretations political meanings, I’m fascinated that McCarthy’s genius is leading us to remember (or consider) what it is like to be the immigrant.

The simplicity and beauty repeated again and again in this magnificent book.

You know how sometimes you read a book for school and spend hours discussing the brilliant symbolism of this scene and that scene, but then you get to the end and realize you didn't enjoy anything about the book? That's what happened here.

This is one of those books with brief symbolism that never builds to anything. Yes, there's symbolism, but it's all about the rugged west and the resilience of the masculine spirit. Original.

I won't deny the prose is decent. McCarthy has some talent for describing settings, although not nearly as much talent as the blurb seems to imply. V.E. Schwab has written setting descriptions ten times better than this. Who cares, really? Especially when everything else is so incredibly bad.

The main characters are incredibly flat and boring. This is my least favorite thing about "classic" books. Does John Grady Cole even have character traits? His one trait is "stoic". Do we know anything about who he is as a person? Anything? I wrote an ESSAY about the character work in this book. A fucking essay. And yet I still can't name any of his character traits. Alejandra and Rollins are fairly decent, although still too flat. Jeremy (is that his name? I don't remember or care) is annoying as hell, as well as being flat.

I guess I should give this some praise for this not being as racist as I expected? There's plenty of hurr-durr-Mexico-is-full-of-terrible-brown-people, but at least Alejandra's a somewhat 3d character. Still racist though.

Basically McCarthy took decent prose and then threw in every single terrible thing about old westerns, including racism, boredom, and flat characters, and then pretended it was a good book. Not recommended.