ALL THE PRETTY HORSES

This is another classic from the gloom and doom meister, Cormac McCarthy. Although, there is not as much doom as normal since this novel is more of a study of evil. Published in 1992, it's the first volume of his famous The Border Trilogy. This was an incredible story and exciting and hard to figure out the ending and finally well written. I didn’t make a mistake with the previous sentence, it’s Polysyndeton syntax at work. Originally created by the great Ernest Hemingway, it elongates the sentence using several conjunctions in close succession without a break, thus creating a kind of urgency to continue without the reader having a chance to catch their breath and/or analyze what was just said. Not that there is going to be any quotation marks, commas, or apostrophes to help you make sense of it, somehow Cormac induces, or seduces, the reader into totally understanding what is being said, and who said it! This man can write beautiful prose, and his descriptive writing is right up there with an author, such as, Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote The Scarlet Letter , and The House of Seven Gables. How is this for an example of Cormac’s descriptive writing: “She looked up at him and her face was pale and austere in the uplight and her eyes lost in their darkly shadowed hollows save only for the glint of them and he could see her throat move in the light and he saw in her face and in her figure something he'd not seen before and the name of that thing was sorrow.” As I always say (at least since I’ve come to understood him) - This man can write!
 

It’s a love story of sorts. What, from Cormac? Well, I said sort of...with some violent twists. The year is 1949, and the place is San Angelo, Texas. The story begins with our hero, John Grady Cole, leaving his deceased grandfather’s ranch for Mexico. On the way, he picks up his buddy, Lacey Rawlins, and together they head south on horseback. Once in Mexico, they believe they are being followed. They semi-ambush a young man that appears to be about thirteen years old riding a beautiful bay horse. When Grady and Rawlins ask him why he is following them, he says, “I aint done nothin.” “What’s your name?”, said John Grady. “Jimmy Blevins.” “Bullshit”, said Rawlins.”Jimmy Blevins is on the radio.”That’s another Jimmy Blevins.” “Who’s followin you?” “Nobody.” How do you know?” “Cause there aint.” Reluctantly, they let the strange young man travel with them. Instinctively, Rawlins knows this kid is trouble. And is he ever right! Later in their travels, Blevins loses his horse and Colt pistol while hiding from a thunderstorm. He persuades Grady and Rawlins to help him find his bay horse and pistol. They find and “steal’ back Blevins horse from a Mexican stable. They are pursued by the town but get away after they split up. Blevins goes one way, and Grady and Rawlins another where they wind up working as vaqueros on a 11,000 hectares ranch owned by Don Hector Rocha y Villareal. He has a beautiful daughter named Alejandra. Grady falls in love. Can you sense a problem coming into play? Oh, yeah! Because of Grady’s horse breaking abilities, the father promotes him and then Grady has a secret affair with his beautiful seventeen year old daughter, Alejandra. Now the story turns dark! Knowing Cormac McCarthy, I’ve been waiting for this. You, the reader, have hundreds of exciting and twisting pages ahead of you. I have only given you a taste of what’s ahead. I highly recommend this classic western.

Not only did I enjoy this novel, but I learned a lot of Spanish. Cormac had the ability to tell the story with lots of Spanish conversations, and you, as the reader, somehow understand. How did he do that? I now know what a cuchillero, papazote, hacendado, caballero, and a gerente are. I like to look for symbolism in Cormac’s novels. I know who represented evil, guilt and remorse, but who were the three men that showed up on page 281 and confronted Grady with "Cuales de los caballos son suyos? (Which of the horses are yours?) Todo son mios. (All are mine.) Donde esta su serape?(Where is your blanket?) No tengo (I do not have one.) Quienes son ustedes? (Who are you?) Hombres del pais. (Men of the country.)" Men of country? What does that mean? I know that John Grady Cole shows up again in the third book of this series, Cities of the Plain , and then maybe I will get my answer.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Are you surprised that Cormac can write about romance? I was. Read this excerpt involving Grady and Alejandra: “The following night she came to his bed and she came every night for nine nights running, pushing the door shut and latching it and turning in the slatted light at God knew what hour and stepping out of her clothes and sliding cool and naked against him in the narrow bunk all softness and perfume and the lushness of her black hair falling over him and no caution to her at all. Saying I dont care I dont care. Drawing blood with her teeth where he held the heel of his hand against her mouth that she not cry out.” I’m convinced, but did you see all the ‘ands’ in the paragraph? Did you see any apostrophes? Of course not.

And lastly, Cormac proves that his characters possess feelings, when Grady is at a gravesite, Cormac writes: “He stood hat in hand over the unmarked earth. This woman who had worked for his family fifty years. She had cared for his mother as a baby and she had worked for his family long before his mother was born and she had known and cared for the wild Grady boys who were his mother's uncles and who had all died so long ago and he stood holding his hat and he called her his abuela and he said goodbye to her in Spanish and then turned and put on his hat and turned his wet face to the wind and for a moment he held out his hands as if to steady himself or as if to bless the ground there or perhaps as if to slow the world that was rushing away and seemed to care nothing for the old or the young or rich or poor or dark or pale or he or she. Nothing for their struggles, nothing for their names. Nothing for the living or the dead.” Not for nothing, Cormac McCarthy has proved to this reviewer that he can write a book of a different color.