All the Pretty Horses question

i'm not sure that i do. i've read The Border Trilogy Blood Meridan, and The Road and though I can say they are impressive and haunting books i can't say that I liked them. Parts of The Crossing were very slow moving, the same with All The Pretty Horses. Cities on the Plain was far tighter and a better read for it

The Road - I still can't decide if that was an old man facing up to parenthood knowing he likely wouldn't live to see his son to maturity (McCarthy wrote it for his young son) or a bigger, stronger novel. The emotional manipulation of the book still rankles me

Blood Meridian was nigh on unreadable

The writing & storytelling in ALL THE PRETTY HORSES are extraordinary, compelling. It seems the most readable & likeable of his books, most of which are too dark and gruesome for me. The writing is spare, rigorous, powerful; it is a modern cowboy & young man's journey story with narrative drive, suspense, and fitting resolution.

Not all protagonists end up living happily ever after. The struggle of life isn't always a happy ending. I guess it's all about the struggle. This is why I enjoy his works.

he taps into the ancient rather prehistoric power of language. the very essence of imagery as meaning!

if you get my poit!

I notice (and it may be just a coincidence) most of the commenters on McCarthy are male. He certainly fills a niche in the male protagonist novel group. I do love his poetic language that shines as he describes the Southwest--especially the description of his burying the wolf in The Crossing. It is masterful and evocative. The way McCarthy includes frequent sections of Spanish was distracting to me. I'm sure that for those who are readers of Spanish it must have added local color; for me it was a metaphorical "no trespassing" message. I read The Crossing first and was persuaded to read All the Pretty Horses. I am not a fan of either of these books, despite McCarthy's masterful use of imagery. I simply didn't identify with the characters or enjoy the plots all that well.

My reasons for liking "All the Pretty Horses" are covered in my review. I liked the book, but don't yet know if I am fan of the author. I will have to read a few more of his books before I can make a decision on that, but ATPH was excellent IMO. I do think I am interested in reading the entire trilogy.

I consider Cormac McCarthy an author of 'place' as I do James Lee Burke.
When you read their work you need not visit the location of the story. You've already been there.

Despite the darkness in McCarthy's novels, I adore him. He paints word pictures that bring out the bigness, the beauty of southern NM and AZ - the reason we natives stay through the darkness and the bad times. I have NOT read Open Road simply because I'm not sure I can go that dark and come back smiling. On the Beach took me really close to that, and I'm not going any further.... I re-read the trilogy every 7 to 10 years, and every reading brings out things I missed, or overlooked, before. He speaks to me. It is a communication I need for the enrichment to my world.

Lots of reasons but on a very basic level he does 'danger' like no-one else! The sense you get of isolation and of no-one coming to help you is incredible, especially in All The Pretty Horses and The Crossing (and The Road should go without saying). So however fine they are as contemporary fiction, they sneakily work well as high-class thrillers (as do, arguably, Ian McEwan's books) too.

McCarthy's prose go straight through my brain and directly into my veins.

I like McCarthy because he:

1. has a vocabulary as big as all outdoors.
2. uses that vocabulary in a way that is exasperatingly precise and artful.
3. captures a kind of American idealism, even in his villains (who are really demons of the American ideal.)
4. writes hard. That is, he doesn't pull punches. A lot of his writing conveys a harsh, visceral truth that might be occasionally unpleasant, but isn't any less true for that unpleasantness....

A lot of folks will say that his work is macho or male-centric, and I can't really argue with the point. I don't know why that's a legitimate criticism, though. Wouldn't the same people leveling that particular critique be annoyed by an author being described negatively as "chick lit" or some equivalent characterization? Pointing out the masculinity of his work as if that were somehow a fault is more revelatory of the speaker than the subject....

Charles,
Your comment on atheism in relation to The Crossing is interesting. Many critics see The Crossing as a poster for existential nihilism. At least from what I have read.

I just think he's a great storyteller. Not only are the tales vivid and the journeys perilous, but he tells them in such a way that the weight of what he is saying extends far beyond the simple facts of the story.

Could anyone in this thread who says "his prose reads like poetry" tell me who some of your favorite poets are and what qualities of his prose, perhaps with examples, make it like poetry instead of prose? Badly written prose in my opinion, btw.

Prose! Prose! Prose! McCarthy writes great stories and creates deeply human and inhuman characters, including the landscapes, but his prose, as Don says, "...reads like poetry."

McCarthy is one of my favorite authors. I grew up in poverty in the Southwest and he captures the bleakness and beauty of that way of life so perfectly. Violence and death and love and passion all in such spare poetic prose.

His dialogue is terrific, right down to the punctuation and the deliberate misspellings to mimic pronunciation. And his characters are largely of humble backgrounds but they say profound things using very simple language. I enjoy these things about him so much that I loved No Country For Old Men even though I was indifferent to the plot.

I am in love with the southwest deserts, and I spend a lot of time outside hiking and biking through them, so I enjoy his long descriptions of the landscape in books such as Blood Meridian or All the Pretty Horses.

Once I got used to the lack of punctuation and "he said" sort of thing, I found myself spellbound by the often sparse dialogue, especially when he writes things phonetically to capture a character's accent.

His characters are unique, yet also, often, archetypal...The Judge in Blood Meridian is, truly, a character for the ages. And his Texans were perfect for a Coen Brothers treatment in "No Country For Old Men". I like when he chooses a character, often someone just passing through the story, and has them ramble on for a few pages about some mind blowing philosophy about life and death and our place in the scheme of things.

I was ready to call myself an atheist, once and for all, but McCarthy's books (The Crossing in particular) made me think twice. He captures, or taps into, or reveals some ineffable THING that holds our world together...sounds cheesy I know, and it makes no sense, but there's a power that runs through his best books that makes me feel as if I'm part of something larger than the sum of the parts of my life.

I love his prose too, but he also adds a dose of realism to the Gunsmoke and Bonaza image of the west I had as a kid.

He's clear and succinct in his writing. It speaks easily to the reader, because it follows a line of speech that is shared with everyone, rather than a line of thought that belongs to the writer alone.

Honestly, I like his writing because it's the bare-bones minimal, and as such, is very genuine and raw. It taps into a direct line of communication that many authors find difficult to put into their writing.

He exemplifies the true spirit of a writer and artist. Someone who is courageous enough to stray far from the accepted conventions of literature, yet remain within the accepted paradigms of modern fiction. In all his books, and especially in his earlier ones, the prose is delicately woven together reading more like poetry.
I particularly enjoyed the Child Of God because he certainly breaks from the mould and creates a dark compelling world that left me feeling mesmerized.

Mostly it's his beautiful prose but I also have a close affinity with his subjects i.e. horses, Mexico, desert and Southern US landscapes and culture.
He doesn't pull any punches, his writing is honest and confronts some of the starker/darker elements of the world and the human soul. But if the prose wasn't so simple and beautiful he could be any number of other good writers.
For mine no-one comes close to Cormac, at least that I've read.

His ever growing stories.
There's always something around the bend (literally and figuratively) that comes unexpectedly.

And mostly in the grotesque.
A scene from The Crossing I remember is the brothers going down the road and they keep hearing and feeling light bumps but ignore it. When they reach a gas station, it turns out that there are half a dozen rabbits stuck in the grill of the truck, mangled!

WOW! What an image.

His poetry is another, especially in the Road which suited it cuz, what man wouldn't think that deeply in such a torn world.

His character development is something I love cuz you pick up the character as you go by their actions. I don't like when a narrator explains the character for you, that's cheapening the character. (S)he comes off less organic.

And the stories, I have no idea where they are going. And that's awesome. As well, there's the influence of Sam Beckett wherein there's no overlying story. No "here's a goal they are either going to fail or succeed at". It's straight story, we eventually see where the book might head but it keeps the audience reading to see what happens next.

His writing style is unique, no doubt, and I aspire to be half the writer he is one day. I had trouble following Suttree, which may be only a reflection of my limited vocabulary and intelligence, but subsequent works I found easier to follow. My Cormac favorites are Blood Meridian, No Country for Old Men, and Outer Dark.