Madd > Recent Status Updates

“If fact, for him, most times he wasn’t even sure if God were there. Or if He ever heard him. And for sure, he didn’t want to pretend. He didn’t want to be a hypocrite like his father.”

This book is so honest about characters and their relationship to their god, it surprised me. Even if that relationship is negative.

“How do I know who you are? Do I know what sort of man you are? What sort my father is? Do you drink whiskey? Do you go with whores? Does he? What are men?”

“As she walked toward him her beauty seemed to him a thing altogether improbable” ☹️

I also meant to mention earlier I really like how he writes the women of this book, even if the role they play is a small one. It’s respectable and they are powerful, even in the small amount of power they have. The woman, Alfonsa, John spoke with in particular is probably my favorite character besides John himself

McCarthy uses sexuality as a power in all the novels I’ve read of him so far. Some ways more than others. In Blood Meridian with the Judge over children and how others saw and viewed the Kid; in the Road with the cannibals who ate and raped; and now in this book with the captain and Rawlins. Even if in this book it is much smaller than the other books.

How horses are spoken of in this book is actually so beautiful you can feel the love and respect these people have for them. It makes me wonder if they’re meant to be an innuendo for something else or if McCarthy is just really driving home his love for horses. Maybe I’m reading too hard into this I mean the book is literally called “All The Pretty Horses” lolol

“He said that war had destroyed the country and that men believe the cure for war is war as the curandero prescribes in the serpents flesh for its bite.”

Wait bars

“He lay a long time listening to the others breathing in their sleep while he contemplated the wildness about him, the wildness within.”

I get this is like a book for little kids, but like Samatha spent the whole lot of these practices super involved with training these kids. Like dribbling and defending and all that. How does a little joy from celebrating a victory viciously tweak her leg? And not like dribbling the ball and coaching and all that

“I look up, into the bright blue air. I think I see four figures with wings, and their winged dogs, swooping and playing in the rivers of light. They will always be there.”

Elvis Costello mentioned

So technically that’s a Less Than Zero mention if you really think about it

“I folded my arms across my chest. It didn’t seem so cold, with my back against the earth. My head was next to Davy Ray’s.”

☹️

I used to mull over the same thoughts of the afterlife when I was younger and came to the same conclusion as Cory lol I wonder if all kids who grew up in faith came to the same conclusions?

They soon fear the testing of Cory’s faith than understand the mourning of a boy who just lost his best friend

“I don’t know where they are. I just know where I am.”

Yes bro

He’s like actually being tortured holy shit

Gregor is genuinely suicidal how is this a kids book my god??

“How exhausting it was to keep a secret, to hide a secret, to discover a secret, to know a secret existed and waited for you in the dark.”

Hamnet and Gregor parallels go crazy. Competing for the most tragic character in the book

It’s going to take Gregor to get out of it. It always does

He loves his little sister so much it kills me

Double Gregor’s pain and suffering and give it to Solovet

And the worst part is that it isn’t even all her fault

Why is this 11 year old being put through literal hell

I’m actually crying dude what the hell this is a kids book

I’m actually tearing up

I love the pacing of this book so much more than the first one

“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains.

On their backs were vermiculite patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”

They’re still alive despite everything as they always had even before man.

Oh god it’s agonizing

“He took the cup and moved away and when he moved the light moved with him.”

“There is no prophet in the earth’s long chronicle who’s not honored here today. Whatever form you spoke of you were right.”

I turn the page and ik he’s gonna be dead