Wow. Devo lasciar sedimentare un paio di giorni questa epopea grandiosa.
Wow.

Paesaggi splendidi, una scrittura scarna e allo stesso tempo intensa, personaggi memorabili.
McCarthy si conferma uno dei miei preferiti di sempre.

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Part One:
Having read just two of the three, I need to start. McCarthy’s style so seduces you that you want to write in his voice - good luck with that. I'd read "The Road" and been struck by it, but this has possessed me. As in "Road," and from the movie "No Country For Old Men," I knew the bleakness of McCarthy's vision. But in Border Trilogy I felt his poetry. Anyone who faults his prose should stop and consider his absolute comprehension of the lands that run from Texas and New Mexico down into Mexico. You feel you want to know how he knows so much, who he is as a man, how the language of this people, of this world, his endless catalogue of flora, of the obscurest rural cowboy accessories, both in America and in Mexico drop from his pen like water. This is not to mention the rest of his vocabulary, which is voluminous and never flaunted. Perfect words appear when they are needed.

Could I have savored this as much as a young man? I think age has allowed me a more pastoral mood, the patience to roam the endless plains and mountains with Billy or John Grady and see what they see.

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

Part Two
OK, I’m done. Yes, I cried a little at the end of Cities of the Plain (said to be a reference to Sodom and Gomorrah). The magnificent knife fight kept waking me up last night. No, I don’t need this in the middle of a pandemic. Yes, the Mystical Episodes considering Reality and Death get a bit long. If Señor Mysterioso under the freeway overpass had simply related his dark parable with less conversational patter from Billy, the section would have been more powerful. One sensed an insecurity there, as if Cormac was self-conscious about his epistemological wanderings and needed to dilute it with more acerbic cowboyisms.

The greatest writer of our generation? Hard to argue with that. What to me is incomparable and so powerful is the combination of McCarthy's immense descriptive powers set against the verbal minimalism of his characters. It’s like Miles and Trane in the same body. John Updike, for instance, no matter how finely wrought his sentences, didn’t have a Billy or John. And Carlos Castaneda, despite a Don Juan who was mystical and pithy and profoundly wise, did not wax as poetic 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.

I don't think I really could review these books separately, and I don't recommend reading them with large gaps of time in-between...just plowing straight through all three I think is the best way to go. McCarthy's complexity as a writer and philosopher really comes through in this trilogy, and I think some of the nuances and a lot of the enjoyment would be lost were you not to read them successively.

Having read (and loved) The Road, I was expecting to be drawn in immediately, and this wasn't the case for All the Pretty Horses. In fact, I got a bit bored and had to really focus on what was going on to stay with it--but I had faith in McCarthy and felt that how he chose to tell this story would prove to be significant, as it did. It'd definitely a slower pace from The Road. Just sit back and enjoy them. At times, you'll be riveted, and at others, you'll be challenged, having to encounter many different philosophies as the protagonists proceed on their journeys.

I like that McCarthy challenges me as a reader. I really don't like being "written down to", and there were times when I had to accept that I wasn't quite sure what had just happened, but it always became clear if I stuck with it intellectually.

One huge drawback for me in reading these is that I don't speak Spanish. Much of the dialogue was left a mystery to me...perhaps that was where some of the challenge lay in figuring some things out. I did feel that either my intuition and application of cognates was getting better or McCarthy spelled more of the dialogue out by the third book. I do plan to learn Spanish one day, and I think I'll read these all over again...although the story will be known to me, the philosophies are such that as your life changes, they will mean different things to you.

A very special thank you to Josh, for getting me a beautifully bound edition of this trilogy. Happy Birthday to me indeed. It even has one of those nice golden tassle bookmarks? Love it.

ALL THE PRETTY HORSES

Just an excellent book. Read like it might be an earlier work of McCarthy's, come to find out it's from 1992 (Blood Meridian is 1986). Victoria made the valid justification that McCarthy's frantic burgeoning prose complements its protagonist, 16 (then 17) year-old John Grady. I wrote Dane Alicandro a letter immediately after weeping while reading a passage of this in the Coca-Cola Northampton Factory's Men's Room. McCarthy really gets in touch with his heart here...I learned something about this luminary that I wouldn't have had I only read Blood Meridian. The Road shows a love that resides in Cormac's heart, but it isn't this love, not the love between Grady and Alejandra. Victoria and I got into an animated discussion outside of her Love Nest (the name of her house in Amherst), and passersby must've assumed we were arguing, and it was great. She probed me for my thoughts on Alejandra's leaving John Grady Cole. She lamented at her choice, why did Alejandra not go with this young cowboy? I played devil's advocate and said she didn't have a choice, that the tradition of her family and her country were bigger than this young couple. I think my point has some evidence too, when looking at the faux confessional between John Grady and the judge (no, not the Judge, just the judge. No overlap, although Blevins could be the Kid maybe? hmm investigate further). John Grady explains all he's done, and the judge keeps accepting him, even though they are things John Grady regrets. They are done, and he made them because he felt he was doing what he must. So too, I think, does Alejandra. The scene with the priest who preaches on the radio is quite poignant I think, although seemingly out of place upon first glance. The wife says that they can even hear the priest on Mars, as the new age of technology is ushered in and the old life that the old-souled-John-Grady cannot let go of appears to be receding. I think the preacher is a sort of perversion of John Grady, whom through whose eyes we've truly glimpsed God (should he exist). God, if god is beauty and truth and solemnity and joy and sorrow, IS Alejandra, IS las yeguas. But God isn't on Mars, he is here. He is in Mexico.

THE CROSSING
Yet again, I wept at work while reading this trilogy. Covered face at a Coca-Cola plant, I shook with rage and woe...emotions I didn't know I had but McCarthy had been building unbeknownst to myself the time entire. McCarthy's confidence that he'll arouse his intended reader response is unmatchable...what is it about placing a single solitary pole in a pit for a mother wolf carrying her pups to retreat to causes the reader (me at least) to lurch in sickened despair for her? I cried again breathlessly relaying this scene to Victoria (and AGAIN to Dad, Barbara, and Caleb over pizza at a Manchester pizza joint), who nodded knowingly and empathetically, tears coming out as I tried to paraphrase the beauty and horror of a wolf and boy knowing no one else in this godforsaken land and relying on each other but simultaneously completely unable to know one another, as we as men cannot fully know wild beasts nor they us. I jotted down at work that "McCarthy's prose is isolating. It needs to be heard, but it is loathe to be relayed and paraphrased". You MUST read this to understand why this book can do this to the reader, so gradual and subtle is McCarthy's layering of emotional attachment simply through his diction and syntax. I think McCarthy, wittingly or unwittingly, describes this best on page 413 when he says "there is writ a message that can never be spoken because time would always slay the messenger before he could even arrive". The ending was absolutely perfect in a book so cyclical, and is blatantly an ode (or at least to me, having read them both in one summer and knowing McCarthy's affinity for Melville) to Moby Dick...except McCarthy lights a votive candle for the Land, rather than the Sea. Second only to "Blood Meridian" for McCarthy's work. I will forever carry Billy Parham y el lobo en mi corazon! And, as a sidenote, what a wonderful way to brush up on my high school Spanish! And to connect with the employees at Coca-Cola, when I don't have a Spanish-English dictionary close at hand. Thanks Javier and Robert Camacho!

CITIES OF THE PLAIN

John Grady meets an older Billy Parham. McCarthy ties it altogether here, but this was my least favorite of the three. Still made me cry. To reference another conversation of Victoria and my, when JGC dies in Billy's arms and Billy stoically just sort of says Goddammit it reflects the journey the reader has made with Billy, where tragedy is no less tragic but we are better prepared for it perhaps. When Billy is forced as a 78 year old man to the side of the highway and McCarthy describes a highway overpass I think we see a glimmer of The Road, the beauty that is no less evaporated in today's environment just because it's less apparent than in the lands of JGC and Billy's youths. Billy refers to both Boyd and JGC simply as "the best" at different points. The ending is lovely, describing Billy's aged hands as a sort of microcosm for the journey of his life, and I've had the same thoughts looking at McCarthy's author picture and those grizzled veiny forearms. Victoria has often asked me if I get sad when I finish a book, and I've replied that no, I feel a sense of accomplishment. I can, after all, go update my GoodReads. When I finished this book, on the last day of summer vacation, I lay with this beautifully bound edition of the most beautiful book(s) I've ever read, and my heart welled. This book solidified my belief in the existence of a soul. I am a different man having read these books, and I don't believe that newly acquired knowledge alone can explain this transition. I'll never look at death, at my loved ones, at the world, the same. Thanks Josh, thank you Mr. McCarthy.

When I finished Blood Meridian a couple of months ago I felt convinced that I had read Cormac McCarthy's most important book: the key to his oeuvre, the lynchpin of his thought, the vehicle for his profoundest reflections on life, death and what it means to be human. Now, I'm not so sure. Among McCarthy's many talents is his ability to give the reader the impression that each of his novels is just as deep as the last, if not deeper, no matter what order you read them in. In The Border Trilogy, McCarthy weaves a stunning tale combining the trademark artistry of his prose with a more direct narrative style (particularly in the first and third books) that lends the 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 much more than 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 delivers a powerful and characteristically beautiful exploration of the blurred lines between man and the wild, of what divides good and evil, of the tenuous line between life and death, of the boundary between two souls, and of what passes between them. All three books are a joy to read, and as with all of the author's other novels I'm keen to come back to them again in future. Many reviewers have called the trilogy an "epic" with good reason - though even that label hardly does justice to these remarkable books. No single word can.

This is a review of all three books, in this one volume.

Gosh. What a read, eh? McCarthy is a wonderful writer of epics, which is what these are. The first book (all the pretty horses) was probably my favourite, in terms of a coherent story line. That being said, due to his writing style I was often confused about who was who, whether it was Grady or Rawlins with the girl, for instance.
The second (the crossing) I thought was just going to be a repeat of the first, with the details changed. After the first 300 or so pages it came into its own.
The third (cities of the plain) was the most confusing; if I had trouble keeping up with two characters, how was I going to go with a half-dozen?! That said, it was certainly the most emotionally flooring, particularly after having read 1000 pages.
I didn't mind so much the confusion over who was who; it all worked itself out in the end.
The rambling interactions were the hardest to keep interested in (the epilogue of cities, and the preacher in crossing), but maybe that's on me for not keeping up.
The untranslated Spanish was certainly interesting. Especially as an antipodean who knows none and can only guess at what it might mean, I liked it, but I also just wanted to know what they were saying!

In many senses, this trilogy was about nostalgia, or sehnsucht, for a time and a life which can never be, and maybe never was. Thanks Cormac, for the journey.

I have this vague idea of going back and writing reviews of some of my favorite books, read long before I heard of Goodreads. And yet strangely, it’s somehow harder to write reviews of the books I love the best. I’m not sure why that is- maybe it’s because I feel SO MUCH for the books that are like old, beloved friends, that combing through all my weighty feelings and associations with them to find the right words is almost impossible. So there is my disclaimer that this will probably be a rambling, besotted jumble of thoughts, more than a true review.

I have a great deal of respect for Cormac McCarthy’s talent, and have been impressed by everything I have ever read by him. That said, these three books are the only ones that I truly love. I love almost everything about them, the unique, gorgeous poetry of McCarthy’s syntax and the depth of his philosophy, the complexity of his primary characters, who I love dearly. I also love how deeply he draws on numerous archetypes and myths that span almost every era of World Literature. You can delve deep with McCarthy, folks- as deep as any literary-analysis loving English major/book nerd dares to go. Personally, I wrote a 30 page paper on the role of myth and legend in the trilogy for a graduate level literature class, and it was my favorite paper that I wrote in college. There was just SO MUCH to sink my teeth into, and I never enjoyed analyzing literature so much before or since.

The first book in the trilogy is the most famous, winner of the National Book Award, frequently on AP Literature exams, etc. (And also, sadly, the inspiration for an absolutely horrid film version starring Matt Damon.) All the Pretty Horses is the boyhood story of John Grady Cole, a post World War version of a questing knight. His journey into the wild open land of Mexico, in search of a world that no longer exists (if it ever did, outside of stories) is at the simplest level a brilliantly drawn coming of age story. But instead of the clichéd resolution (adolescent loses his innocence and idealism after facing harsh realities/darkness of life) John Grady, the true Quixotic hero, manages to find a path where the idealism and belief in beauty outlives the innocence, and I think that’s a gorgeous thing.

The second book in the trilogy, The Crossing, is my favorite of the three. I love the two young brothers, Billy and Boyd, so very much, and McCarthy’s writing is so raw and beautiful it sometimes physically hurts. I also love his brilliant incorporation of the Corrido (Spanish ballads about oppression, history and tragedy, and often Quixotic reform) and the social bandit/outlaw myth. But it’s Billy’s story most of all, how his deeply sensitive nature is both shaped by and shapes fate, and how he is destined to love and try desperately to save wild, doomed creatures- both human and animal. I really can’t say much more about this one, because I’ll end up either giving copious spoilers or crying, or both.

The third and final book, Cities of the Plain, covers much more time, and completes the stories of the two protagonists from the other books, Billy and John Grady. While in my opinion this is the weakest in the trilogy, McCarthy’s weakest is still better than most contemporary novels I have read. And I love the relationship that develops between Billy and John Grady, and how seamless and authentic their characterization is throughout the trilogy.

While any of the three books can be read alone, in my opinion they shouldn’t be. The full effect of McCarthy’s poignant story about these two young men, and all they loved and lost , only comes from reading all three together.

I first read All The Pretty Horses camping on the beach in Sonora, Mexico. I had never read McCarthy before and it blew me away. The rhythm of the prose mimics the gait of a horse on an open range, the lyrical descriptions of the Southwestern landscape dead-on. Well-crafted (and often humorous) dialogue with a careful ear for cadence and dialect.

However upon subsequent readings, and further exploring the Trilogy, I became less enthralled and more conflicted. In The Crossing, the prose becomes more over-blown, sometimes to a degree of absurdity.

But mostly I was just disappointed by the conclusion of Cities of the Plain - or rather my expectations. I'll admit I wanted a Hollywood ending. Which any reader of McCarthy understands is an exercise in futility.

Er ist einfach großartig
Diese Sprache ist so knapp und präzise, kein anderer Autor kann da mithalten
Ich verliere mich oft so in den Gedanken, ich verliere die Geschichte

If there's is any beauty to be found in misery and pain, it's been captured in this trilogy.
An incredible western trilogy that does little but stare into the face of death and studies it's bony features for over 1000 pages. This is particularly true for The Crossing, which is several hundred pages of the protagonist's situation continually moving from bad to worse, and every plan they make fails, often brutally so.
All The Pretty Horses is easily the best book of the trilogy. While brutal realism is there, it avoids being an endless stream of tragedy and setbacks, and the passion and determination of the main character John Grady, gives this first book more direction and focus, whereas The Crossing meanders from pain to suffering and back again.
Both tones of each book are combined well in Cities On The Plain, but by this point, McCarthy's penchant for brutality has made the story predictable, and you are well aware of where things are going.

However, inbetween the main events of the books (typically tragedies involving knife fights, gun fights, and horses), there is some achingly beautiful prose. But just like in life, it's a lot of pain to get through for enlightenment.
I would highly recommend All The Pretty Horses. You'll know at the end whether you have the grit to make it through the other two books. Just remember, as McCarthy makes clear: it can always get so much worse.

All'inizio del mondo

“Così il viaggiatore arrivò in questo luogo al crepuscolo, mentre le montagne intorno si facevano sempre più scure e il vento soffiava nel passo ormai freddo all'avvicinarsi della notte, e depose a terra il suo fardello per riposarsi e si tolse il cappello per rinfrescarsi la fronte, poi il suo sguardo cadde su questo altare, macchiato di un sangue che in tutti questi millenni né le intemperie della sierra né le tempeste della sierra erano riuscite a cancellare. E lì lui scelse di trascorrere la notte, tanta è l'imprudenza di coloro a cui Dio è stato così buono da risparmiare una giusta parte di avversità, in questo mondo. […] Visto che non riusciamo a conoscere noi stessi nella veglia, che possibilità abbiamo di conoscerci nei sogni?”

La scrittura di McCarthy nasconde più cose di quante ne riveli: per il lettore è un duello con sé stesso leggere oltre il senso e il confine della razionalità, per arrivare a credere che la follia che sta nel racconto sia una cosa sacra, un frammento di divinità. L'uomo di McCarthy si contrappone al vuoto in modo così impulsivo e irrazionale da venirne inghiottito. Tra furti di cavalli, la cattura di una lupa gravida, la salvezza per una giovane venduta al protettore, si incontrano gli uomini del cammino, i cowboys e i braccianti, i vaqueros e i mercanti, i maestri ciechi, i vagabondi filosofi, i domatori e i banditi e gli indios e gli zingari, per un paesaggio di montagne e mesas e pianure che attraversa il confine infinito e metafisico tra Texas e Messico. Gli uomini sono di poche parole; fuggono e inseguono e cacciano. Le donne sono intense e decise, profonde nel sentire e nell'opporsi. La tradizione non permette il perdono, le stelle cadono ed è solo erba e sangue e pietre e pioggia. Tutte le storie sono una cosa sola: ogni essere umano è un orfano, si imbatte nel messaggero di un dolore irreparabile, accetta di divenire un testimone della tragedia, si accorge di avere fatto troppa strada per poter tornare. E la fine è un inganno epico dentro una notte di sogni. L'uomo di McCarthy rimane attaccato alla dimensione del viaggio, all'oscurità e alla ricerca; è un essere rivolto al tramonto, pur inconsciamente, interprete solitario di una natura cruda e inesorabile, cavaliere notturno piegato dalle cose, sognatore sconfitto tra libertà e giustizia. Ma c'è insieme molta concretezza, molta natura: cibo, fagioli e tortillas, animali, bestiame, piante, legna, cuoio, pelle, fuoco, bivacchi, acqua, volti e affari, orizzonti, famiglie e armi. Nessuno ha interesse per i guai eppure ne resta prigioniero, nessuno cerca la guerra ma ogni momento è una sottrazione alla pace e al bene; l'umanità è selvatica, coraggiosa e pronta, spera e desidera, piange e ricorda, sceglie nel dolore e agisce con risolutezza con amici e nemici. È un mondo svanito, composto da bellezza e perdita, intriso di male e destino, costruito con ciò che è lasciato a ciascun essere, quel poco che resta di singolare, di unico.

“Non era un illuso. Sapeva che le cose che più desideriamo tenere nel nostro cuore spesso ci vengono sottratte, mentre quelle di cui faremmo a meno sembrano spesso, proprio in virtù della nostra indifferenza, mostrare una inattesa capacità di durare nel tempo. Sapeva quanto è fragile il ricordo delle persone amate. Certo, noi chiudiamo gli occhi e parliamo con loro. Certo, noi aneliamo a risentire le loro voci anche una volta sola, ma queste voci e questi ricordi si affievoliscono sempre più, finché ciò che un tempo era carne e sangue non è più che eco e ombra. Alla fine, forse, nemmeno questo”.

Belli, senza dubbio: tre romanzi scritti con grande destrezza narrativa, dove ogni gesto, ogni sguardo ogni intenzione viene descritta dettagliatamente (quasi con ossessività), dove anche quando non succede niente di straordinario la lettura ti appassiona. Però, leggerli uno dopo l'altro, senza sosta, può provocare un po' di stanchezza, una sensazione di "troppo"; troppi cavalli, troppe selle, troppi sputi, troppi 'figli di puttana'.