(This is a review of the complete BORDER TRILOGY, ALL THE PRETTY HORSES is the first book in the trilogy)
I finished Cormac McCarthy's BORDER TRILOGY (ALL THE PRETTY HORSES, THE CROSSING, and CITIES OF THE PLAIN) this afternoon. I knew last weekend that I only had 150 pages left and I have used every device known to man or woman to prevent myself from finishing the book, save suicide. There is a palpable spot of heartache in my chest as I am not sure that I will find such involvement with books and their characters again.
I know this is foolishness on my part. I will find someone who Mshawpyle or Grouch or Leah or Bonies7 or Gwenk has read in a month or two and, once again, be joined with an author and their work. It is after completing what, in my humble opinion, is a beautiful and important work that I fear that I may not find another. These three books, you see, may have been written about me.
I asked Mshawpyle about these books. Mgreber has read the first one and has a fine review (
http://www.epinions.com/book-review-28DB-653FF7F-3866914E-prod1.) Mshawpyle has read all three and was kind enough to answer some questions I had about the books. He states, I think, that McCarthy was saddled with an unmanageable load by the critics. McCarthy's works, and particularly his characters, are compared by the LA TIMES BOOK REVIEW to Mark Twain; "the greatest writer since Melville on the subject of work." by the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW. While I can't quote MSP directly (I've somehow dusted that E-mail) I believe that he describes McCarthy's metaphors as elusive as the writer himself. I take it that the man makes J.D. Salinger look like a Washington party hostess. Please excuse me if I have mischaracterized your opinions, MSP. Suffice it to say that you didn't like the books as well as I did.
"How could you have missed them" asked Marge Hollinger, the woman who sent me two of the three books. And, after reading them, I don't know. They are about things and people and country that I am drawn to. These books certainly rival McMurtry's LONESOME DOVE as the numero uno "Cowboy Story" of the end of the twentieth century. Both McMurty and McCarthy are great story tellers. In contrasting these two particular works I find that McCarthy drags us kicking and clawing into existentialist inner dialogues that McMurtry has some characters speak. The end of something is thematic in both, but while McMurtry says "watch this," McCarthy says "climb on in here and get your hands dirty." I liked LONESOME DOVE more than THE TRILOGY, but I think that I'm somehow better after reading the latter.
You need to know that I always wanted to be a cowboy. I grew up in New Jersey and North Carolina in the 40's and 50's. While the good Sisters of St. Joseph were teaching me about morals, ethics and heroes, John Wayne and Tom Mix and Lash LaRue and Gene Autry and Roy Rogers and the list runs out the door taught me, in Saturday matinees and later on television, what right was and how to act in society. I didn't learn to shoot folks to resolve problems, that was saved for desperate times, and in 60 years I haven't encountered them yet. Close, but no cigar.
So, McCarthy's use of cowboy protagonists in this modern times western saga captured me quickly. While the first twenty pages of ALL THE PRETTY HORSES, the first book in the trilogy, was challenging to read, I stayed with it. It is of import to state that one might compare McCarthy's style, at times, to "beat" writers of the Kerouac bent. McCarthy has yet to find a punctuation mark that he can't, arbitrarily, do away with for a while. Who is speaking, is this a speech or description, and like questions plagued me until I found a rhythm, of sorts, to his writing.
What follows are paragraphs that make me weep. Not only the first time I read them, but when I go back and read them again, and again when I read them aloud to my wife. Oh yes, this is excellent reading aloud material. I know that some of this is literary trickery and chicanery, but McCarthy employs it masterfully. I gave the first book to good friend Dennis and, while be "bitched" about how cute he thought McCarthy was in the opening of . . . HORSES, he certainly was ready for the second book as soon as I finished it.
McCarthy follows two families in his first two books of the trilogy, John Grady Cole and his family in . . . HORSES, Billy Parham and his folks in THE CROSSING, and unites the early protagonists in CITIES OF THE PLAIN, the final book of the three.
The story is the story of old Texas and Mexico in the mid twentieth century. We Californians share much in the way of culture with Texas, though I'm sure that this statement will get my butt kicked the next time I set foot in a Tejano cantina (other than Counsel's). The two states share a common border with Mexico, an imaginary line drawn on paper, on maps. Maps, if you read the trilogy, are a favorite metaphor for McCarthy. They appear again and again and are integral in the resolve, the ending.
A working command of Spanish, or access to a good ‘quick reference" Spanish to English dictionary, will stand you in good stead as you navigate the map through the two countries and the two cultures; intertwined by history, inextricably joined yet separated by language and values.
In the first book, John Grady Cole and his brother, both teenagers, leave Texas for Mexico to retrieve some stolen horses. For those who survive the first twenty or so pages, you'll be hooked and taken for quite a ride. Horses, villains, friendships and love all are trotted out and examined, sometimes sweetly and lovingly, other times with teeth-gritting starkness.
In the second book, THE CROSSING, Billy Parham sets out to trap a wolf that has come into New Mexico from south of the border. His adventure also takes him to Mexico where he takes the wolf to release it. McCarthy has paragraphs in this volume that are ecstatic to this reader. A quotation from a NEWSWEEK review states, "Nobody living writes about friendship better than McCarthy, nobody writes better about the animals or the land . . ." Scenes prompting laughter, tears and terror fill the pages.
The last book in the trilogy, CITIES OF THE PLAIN, unites the survivors of the first two books in an orchestral finale. McCarthy does a masterful job of tying it all up in a yellow ribbon and placing in your lap, daring you to open it and see the ending. No loose ends, no unanswered questions, he does the job.
At the risk of over thinking the books (men are risk takers, I am told), McCarthy puts the words of Sartre and Camus into the mouths of his characters. Essence and presence, figure and ground, the "meaning" or "meaningless" of it all are sprinkled with a tantalizing frequency as the trilogy reaches crescendo and ends in a resolve. Jungians will have a field day with plausible descriptions of the basis for the "collective unconscious." Archetypes are main role carriers and we are challenged to imagine worlds without "mother, love, hunger, cold," pantheistic phenomena that all cultures understand, and sometimes understand without knowing. My writing skills are insufficient to carry these points to you as well as I'd like. MSP could do a better job of it, but he didn't like these books or folks or the writing as well as I did.
So, I find myself having to write this review. The thoughts and ideas booted me out of a comfortable Sunday afternoon siesta with my wife to write this piece. Let me try and conclude it. McCarthy has written a trilogy that describes the change in our culture, the unbelievable change that has occurred in the last seventy years. The remaining character in the last book mistakenly describes a radar dome as an old Mission. His mistake is only noted as the daylight appears, yet a further philosophical bait to tempt the Greeks amongst you. The juxtapositions (hi Leah) of the radar site and the mission, near the end, codify the actor's crises: I cannot change while all around me appears to have changed. Not unlike our friend Valentine in Heinlein's STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, characters wrestle with a world that is different, and one that they cannot act upon. If you like big books (the Trilogy is available as one volume), if you are a romantic, you really can't miss this one. If you like cowboy stories, if you like LONESOME DOVE, you really can't miss this one. And, if you are mistaking radar domes for old mission sites, you REALLY can't miss this one.
Barnes and Noble
