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.
« Perciò pensava ai cavalli che erano sempre il pensiero migliore. »Ognuno di noi ha – o dovrebbe avere – un pensiero migliore. Quel pensiero-guida che resta come un perno, come l’occhio del ciclone, fisso nelle difficoltà. Quell’idea che ci è dato di contemplare pure dal fondo di un pozzo: il fioco raggio di sole che filtra dall’alto. Il pensiero che ci salva sempre. Da noi stessi, da tutto il resto. Per John Grady Cole questo pensiero sono i cavalli:« Quella notte sognò i cavalli che correvano su un altopiano dove l’erba e le piante selvatiche crescevano rigogliose per le piogge primaverili e i fiori blu e gialli si estendevano a perdita d’occhio. Nel sogno lui correva in mezzo ai cavalli inseguendo le giumente e le puledre che risplendevano al sole nei loro fulgidi manti bai e castani. I puledri correvano insieme alle madri e calpestavano i fiori sollevando una nebbia di polline che aleggiava nell’aria come polvere d’oro. Lui correva sugli altipiani insieme ai cavalli che facevano rimbombare il terreno sotto gli zoccoli, e fluivano liberi con la criniera al vento e la coda spumeggiante. 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. »Per John un cavallo non significa soltanto se stesso, non tendini e criniera e sgroppate. Per John un cavallo è soprattutto sangue, sangue caldo che senti pulsare sotto le gambe, vita che scorre e tumultua, bramosia, libertà. Nel cavallo scorre la sua stessa riluttanza a essere domato: sia l’uomo sia il fato sono cavallerizzi crudeli. « Ciò che amava nei cavalli era la stessa cosa che amava negli uomini, il sangue e il calore del sangue che li animava. Tutta la sua stima, la sua simpatia, le sue propensioni andavano ai cuori ardenti. Così era e sempre sarebbe stato ». E proprio questa storia del « cuore ardente » mi sembra il filo conduttore di ‘Cavalli selvaggi’, primo volume della Trilogia della Frontiera. Così come il filo conduttore di ‘Oltre il confine’ m’era parso il « raccontare », qui è il cuore ardente, la libertà di esistere ed esistere passionalmente che salta all’occhio. John Grady e l’amico Rawlins sono nati per vivere e respirare nel clima avventuroso del vecchio west, per inseguire la ferrovia che si fa violenza verso il Pacifico, per azzuffarsi coi pellirosse, per stanare dagli anfratti i cavalli selvaggi. Ma questo mondo mitico non esiste più nel paese in cui sono nati: nel Texas ormai si vendono i vecchi ranch, le antiche consuetudini non passano più di padre in figlio. Ma il loro sangue giovane continua a sentire il richiamo di questo passato glorioso e li spinge ad avventurarsi nel solo luogo in cui questo passato sia ancora un presente: il Messico, oltre il confine. Per John e Rawlins il Messico è la terra del sogno, la terra della libertà, « è così che vivevano i vecchi cowboy ». E solo in Messico può essere concessa loro quella fetta di vita autentica che cercano: una vita in cui le passioni e il pericolo sono un tutt’uno, in cui il sangue non ha smesso di correre, nella Grande Storia come nella storia di tutti i giorni. Si sa, poi, che un cuore ardente chiama sempre a sé altri cuori ardenti. Ed ecco allora incontri fatali come quello con Blevins, ragazzino terribile, terribilmente vivo, che un destino infame si diverte a usare come miccia d’innesco. Ecco allora Alejandra, che coi suoi occhi azzurri sconvolge il mondo di John « in un batter di cuore ». Ecco Dueña Alfonsa, costretta a dividere John da Alejandra, ma pure cuore ardente anche lei, antico cuore ardente e ribelle domata. Ecco Pérez, che sa molto del male e che, nel chiuso di una prigione di lusso, non ha smesso di interessarsi alla sorte di ogni cuore ardente di passaggio. Una sete di vita, di vita autentica c’è in tutti loro, al di là dei ruoli che il caso o il fato o un fato-che-è-caso ha loro assegnato. Molti sono i punti di contatto tra questo e ‘Oltre il confine’, primo tra tutti la condizione dell’eroe, di nuovo un déraciné, ma un déraciné di pasta ben diversa da Billy Parham. Rispetto a Billy, John Grady appare meno tragico, meno fatalmente solo, perché non ancora solo del tutto, perché ancora acceso da speranze e slanci passionali. È proprio il cuore ardente, non ancora domato in John e invece ormai brace in Billy, a separare i due protagonisti. Ed è per questo che non vedo l’ora di trovarli davanti a un fuoco, l’uno accanto all’altro, in ‘Città della pianura’. Ma al di là dello status dei personaggi, dell’ambientazione, della resa stilistica del paesaggio e della tragicità di fondo che sembra impregnare sia l’uomo sia la natura, ‘Cavalli selvaggi’ e ‘Oltre il confine’ sono più di diversi di quanto ci si possa aspettare. Qui l’avventura ha la meglio sulla filosofia, il sogno di evasione vince sulla poeticità insondabile dell’altro. Lungi da me affermare che questo sia un difetto: è una differenza costitutiva, tutto qui. Ed è giusto che il lettore cominci il suo percorso in sella a un cavallo selvaggio, col cuore ardente ancora. È giusto che le sue papille si abituino prima al sapore delle tortillas e del caffè, che passino attraverso la polvere, che saggino il sangue. È giusto che gli tocchi prima un po’ d’amore, che le viscere gli si annodino di sensualità e romanticismo (le scene d’amore tra John e Alejandra meriterebbero di essere trascritte per intero, ma pure non si può). Poi è giusto che gli sia richiesto di crescere, di farsi Billy, è giusto che cominci a interrogarsi su cose più grandi di lui, è giusto che comincino a mancargli le risposte. E così a me la Trilogia della Frontiera pare un percorso che ci viene chiesto di affrontare. Insieme a John ci sediamo in sella al cavallo. Insieme a Billy scendiamo da cavallo e ascoltiamo la gente parlare. E poi ancora… Chissà cosa mi costringerà a fare McCarthy un’altra volta.
What do You think about All The Pretty Horses (1993)?
“The coward abandons himself first. After this all other betrayals came easily.” John Grady Cole is displaced. In 1949, his grandfather dies, and his West Texas ranch passes to a young widow. So teenage John Grady and his friend, Rawlins, set out on horseback to Mexico. John Grady dreams of horses. He loves in them 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 ardent hearted and he would never be otherwise.” John Grady and Rawlins meet up with a younger boy named Jimmy Blevins. Nobody knows what Blevins' real story is but both feel like he leads to trouble. Blevins says that the men in his family are cursed by lightning. My granddaddy was killed in a mine bucket in West Virginia. It run down in the hole a hunnerd and eighty feet to get him it couldnt even wait for him to get to the top.” [His uncle got killed on a horse and] “it never singed a hair on that horse and it̓ killed him graveyard dead then melted the fillins in his teeth and soldered his jaw shut. Im double bred for death by fire. So Blevins took off at the first sign of a thunderstorm, and this sets off a chain of events that leads to heaps of trouble ahead. The boys find work at a Mexican hacienda because of their excellent equestrian skills. Large herds of wild horses roam free on the mountaintop. These are the wild horses that John Grady frequently dreams about.I once lived in West Texas, and I testify to the authenticity of McCarthy’s lean dialogue: Yonder goes a light.What’s them lights?I̓d make it Eldorado.How far is that do you reckon?Ten, fifteen miles.I knowed you was a infidel.You dont know a goddamned thing. Just be quiet and dont make no bigger ass of yourself than what you already are.I said dont be spittin in the fire where I got supper cookin.Supper? You̓ ll think supper when you try and eat that stringy son of a bitch.He’s gone completely dipshit.I knowed when I first seen him; the son of a bitch had a loose wingnut. It was writ all over him.You know how long its been since we et?I aint even thought about itI aint either till just now. Bein shot at will sure enough cause you to lose your appetite, wont it?Let me saddle a catch horseWe aint got timeIf that son of a bitch set your ass out in the stickers you̓ ll have time. This novel was the beginning of my love affair with Cormac McCarthy. Though I strive for optimism, his bleak and brutally lyric vision uncovers my buried subconscious and shakes my tectonic plates of fear. This novel is about coming of age and discovering first love in a time of transition. No matter how it turns out, I expect John Grady will still dream of riding horses on a high plain. When I read the Border Trilogy, my ardent heart ran with him.
—Steve Sckenda
Second Review: April 2012The first time through this book I was keenly aware of the realism that’s reflected in my first review. This second reading, however, allowed the beauty of that realism to shine through. To me, it is what it is is a good thing because there is no other option. However, there’s also a fundamental elegance to whatever it happens to be and it’s through that elegance that I find peace, wisdom, and composure.---Fisrt Review: August 2011To those that would say McCarthy is a dark writer, I would counter that with the premise: happiness is unique only to humans and is not a part of the world that surrounds us. Every moment of happiness is a result of our interpretation of events in a positive light. Outside of humanity, the world simply moves onward through time until one day it will cease to exist. There is nothing happy or tragic in this reality unless we as humans interpret this end as a happy or tragic completion of this world's existence. In my opinion, it is from this very real realty that McCarthy's words originate.I have had several instances in my life that required the exchange of arguments in order prove a legal point. The reality of these experiences is that the most powerful and convincing arguments are those that are anchored to the physical world, as it exists, without happiness or tragedy. It is what it is.All the Pretty Horses is yet another novel by McCarthy that is both powerful and convincing because everything written by McCarthy is a reflection of the physical world, as it exists, without happiness or tragedy. This brilliant style allows for humanity, each of us as individuals, to interpret events within All the Pretty Horses as either happy or tragic or anywhere in between based on the life experiences of each reader. Thus, to any reader that is receptive to this style, All the Pretty Horses will be real as well as something different for each of us.As to specific realities that are included in its pages, here are just a few:• The realization that a son must make his own way in life without the help of his parents.• The relative moment in history when the west, as an icon of the American experience, was dying a merciless death.• The image of Mexico and its people as a country that is unique to the world.• The reality that life is immensely complicated and that the outcomes of our decisions are never certain.• The arid west is comprised of distances filled with almost endless moments of loneliness, desolation, beauty, and magnificence.With each successive book, my admiration (and respect) for McCarthy continues to grow. And I will have to re-read All the Pretty Horses before moving on to The Crossing. After all, I must value what is true above what is useful.
—Daniel Villines
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.
—Patrick Reinken
