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A review by spenkevich
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
4.0
‘Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.’
The world is made of stories and these stories form cultural ideas about a place and time, such as all the mythos of the American West with ideas of heroics in hard times, gunfights, horses and living close to nature. But striping away the romanticisism reveals the reality beneath and the hard facts of life one must inevitably confront. Cormac McCarthy’s National Book Award winning novel, All the Pretty Horses, blends the brutality and beauty of life in a stunning bildungsroman that strips away the mythos of the American West as the old world gives way to the modern one. 16 year old John Grady Cole is ‘like a man come to the end of something’ when, distraught by his family selling the family ranch to the corporatization of oil, highways and industry creeping across the land, crosses into Mexico with friend Lacey Rawlings with his heart set on the adventure and heroisms of the cowboy mythos. But have they found paradise or have they entered a hell from which they will not make it back alive? Told in McCarthy’s ornate, signature prose and set in a threatening landscape that is practically a character on it’s own, All the Pretty Horses is a fantastic journey about border crossings: from one land to another, from naivety to understanding and from adolescence into adulthood.
When All the Pretty Horses was published in 1992, buoyed by the win of the National Book Award it outsold all of McCarthy’s previous novels combined and brought the author finally into the spotlight. Not that there was anything lacking in his previous works—[b:Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West|394535|Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West|Cormac McCarthy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1701688704l/394535._SY75_.jpg|1065465] is often cited as a favorite—but the combination of McCarthy’s exquisite prose in a more plot-forward and less dense work has wowed critics and fans alike and it works well as an entrypoint into his works for that reason. This is a book that is difficult to put down, the writing which is practically a protagonist to overshadow his own characters takes hold on the reigns of your mind and sends you galloping into the action and intrigue that never lets up. While a few parts many feel a little over the top, such as the multi-day prison brawl and climactic showdown, the writing and imagery is so engaging and engrossing that you’ll hardly notice. McCarthy’s prose often reads like a cross between the Old Testament and [a:William Faulkner|3535|William Faulkner|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1615562983p2/3535.jpg], often with a lush loquacity that can also drive succinct and direct images into the reader’s mind and also expand their vocabulary. It moves as if with the natural world it describes, never being unnecessarily verbose but always a formidable force of language.
‘I knew that courage came with less struggle for some than for others but I believed that anyone who desired it could have it.’
As the novel opens, we find John Grady Cole mourning the loss of his grandfather, losing his girlfriend and also knowing that soon he will lose the family ranch he always hoped to inherit. While he is full of gusto and confidence, we find him to still be a starry-eyed youth constructing the facade of being ‘a Man’ than actually having achieved maturity. During his break-up when she offers to remain friends he accuses her of being ‘all talk.’ When she responds that everything is just talk he says ‘not everything’, an early indication that he values action above all else but it is contained in a scene where he displays a lack of maturity. The novel functions as a coming-of-age tale, with Grady learning to take responsibility for his actions as he moves towards maturation.
‘It may be that the life I desire for her no longer even exists.’
A major part of his coming-of-age, however, is the waking from the dream of the American mythos. He is drawn to Blevins, the young horse boy they meet early on in Mexico, despite Rawlings not trusting him. Grady see’s him as someone of action, something wild and embodying the cowboy mythos of living in communion with the land.
With Blevins, however, we see the tough cowboy act as a quick ticket towards disaster and cracks in the mythos begin to reveal itself as juvenile. The horrific end this leads to is enough to shock anyone awake into the reality of life and death, and suddenly posturing is shown to have deadly consequences ready to snatch you from this world. It’s a scene I’ll never forget, blunt as a gunshot, and told in such a way as to leave you teeming with details that suddenly become muted in the aftershock.
Much of this novel is about border crossings, a multi-functional metaphor that encompasses both physical and emotional spaces. There is also the crossing from idealization into acceptance of reality. Grady resents the loss of the myth of the American West as industrialization and modernization take over, idealizing Mexico as a fresh wilderness full of adventure he can live out his cowboy fantasies within (which, okay, a bit problematic in the ‘savage Others’ way). When Grady and Rawlins reach the ranch upon which they work, it is a sort of found Paradise to them, the promised land they had been chasing. Though along the way the land echoes different tones, depicted as threatening and violent (think the birds caught and dying in the thorns they pass). Grady’s actions, a metaphorical feasting on the forbidden fruit that is Don Hector’s daughter, Alejandra, quickly has them thrown from Paradise for their descent into Hell: prison. The book is rife with religious imagery and the crossing from Heaven into Hell, with a purgatory session in recovery later, adds a dramatic weight that comes alive and sinks its fangs into you through McCarthy’s prose.
The prose does a lot of heavy lifting in this novel, where even a single word in Spanish in the dialogue is used to denote the ethnicity of a character. ‘The truth is what happened,’ says John Grady, ‘it ain't what come out of somebody's mouth,’ and in keeping with this belief, and that of action mattering more than words, McCarthy’s prose shows us what the characters are made of through how we see them respond and through the metaphorical language around them. Just as the landscape is a character in the novel, so is the language itself.
‘Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.’
Perhaps the greatest lesson in accepting reality and waking from the dream of idealism comes from Dueña Alfonsa, who tells of the failed revolution and the reality that hit hard to those clinging to ideals. It isn’t to say that ideals aren’t worth fighting for, but the understanding of what can be done, what must be done to do it, and that some borders can not be crossed. ‘It is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it,’ we are told, ‘I don't believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and love of blood.’ Evil is real and will lead to death, and those familiar with McCarthy know that the unstoppable force of evil is often embodied in his novels. For Grady, this is learning that the Paradise he idealizes can never be his, but learning to love what can be his all the same. Which is the most meaningful part of this novel, that even amidst all the violence and darkness, Grady always holds on to believing in good and beauty.
I enjoyed that there were so many strong women in this novel too, and that it was from women that the young men learn the truths of life. Dueña Alfonsa is a strong character, and so is Alejandra. True, much of her character exists for romantic purposes, but she is also a highly capable and strong character that even shows up the boys at riding.
‘Don't fear Death. Its only gonna help you die faster, its not gonna help you live.’
It can be seen that All the Pretty Horses adheres to the [a:Joseph Campbell|20105|Joseph Campbell|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1429114498p2/20105.jpg] narrative of the Hero’s Journey, with the boys setting out, meeting helpers, mentors, temptors and falling into the abyss where rebirth and transformation occur. The prison sequence, with Grady and Rawlins fighting for days on end, functions as the hellish catalyst for transformation. Once Grady has killed a man, heroics no longer seem so heroic. It is no longer something you do to be brave or be a hero, it is something you do because it is what you have to do. The romanticization of heroes and cowboy myths dissolve under the crushing weight of reality, life and death, and in this way we see Grady return home with a lesson under his belt. He left a youth, returned as an adult with a new found sense of self and purpose.
‘The closest bonds we will ever know are bonds of grief. The deepest community is one of sorrow.’
Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses is a wild ride that tears at the fabrics of myths and tugs at our heartstrings all the same. Violent, brutal, yet deeply beautiful, this is a fascinating coming-of-age tale that goes about it in unexpected ways while teaching lasting lessons. But most of all, it is a lot of fun and has a few scenes that are forever burned into my memory. ‘In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments,’ writes McCarthy, ‘those whom life does not cure death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and reality, even where we will not. Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.’ May the world be a place where we can thrive and appreciate the beauty even amidst all the darkness, and may you enjoy this novel as much as I did.
4.5/5
‘He stood at the window of the empty cafe and watched the activities in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all.’
The world is made of stories and these stories form cultural ideas about a place and time, such as all the mythos of the American West with ideas of heroics in hard times, gunfights, horses and living close to nature. But striping away the romanticisism reveals the reality beneath and the hard facts of life one must inevitably confront. Cormac McCarthy’s National Book Award winning novel, All the Pretty Horses, blends the brutality and beauty of life in a stunning bildungsroman that strips away the mythos of the American West as the old world gives way to the modern one. 16 year old John Grady Cole is ‘like a man come to the end of something’ when, distraught by his family selling the family ranch to the corporatization of oil, highways and industry creeping across the land, crosses into Mexico with friend Lacey Rawlings with his heart set on the adventure and heroisms of the cowboy mythos. But have they found paradise or have they entered a hell from which they will not make it back alive? Told in McCarthy’s ornate, signature prose and set in a threatening landscape that is practically a character on it’s own, All the Pretty Horses is a fantastic journey about border crossings: from one land to another, from naivety to understanding and from adolescence into adulthood.
When All the Pretty Horses was published in 1992, buoyed by the win of the National Book Award it outsold all of McCarthy’s previous novels combined and brought the author finally into the spotlight. Not that there was anything lacking in his previous works—[b:Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West|394535|Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West|Cormac McCarthy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1701688704l/394535._SY75_.jpg|1065465] is often cited as a favorite—but the combination of McCarthy’s exquisite prose in a more plot-forward and less dense work has wowed critics and fans alike and it works well as an entrypoint into his works for that reason. This is a book that is difficult to put down, the writing which is practically a protagonist to overshadow his own characters takes hold on the reigns of your mind and sends you galloping into the action and intrigue that never lets up. While a few parts many feel a little over the top, such as the multi-day prison brawl and climactic showdown, the writing and imagery is so engaging and engrossing that you’ll hardly notice. McCarthy’s prose often reads like a cross between the Old Testament and [a:William Faulkner|3535|William Faulkner|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1615562983p2/3535.jpg], often with a lush loquacity that can also drive succinct and direct images into the reader’s mind and also expand their vocabulary. It moves as if with the natural world it describes, never being unnecessarily verbose but always a formidable force of language.
‘I knew that courage came with less struggle for some than for others but I believed that anyone who desired it could have it.’
As the novel opens, we find John Grady Cole mourning the loss of his grandfather, losing his girlfriend and also knowing that soon he will lose the family ranch he always hoped to inherit. While he is full of gusto and confidence, we find him to still be a starry-eyed youth constructing the facade of being ‘a Man’ than actually having achieved maturity. During his break-up when she offers to remain friends he accuses her of being ‘all talk.’ When she responds that everything is just talk he says ‘not everything’, an early indication that he values action above all else but it is contained in a scene where he displays a lack of maturity. The novel functions as a coming-of-age tale, with Grady learning to take responsibility for his actions as he moves towards maturation.
‘It may be that the life I desire for her no longer even exists.’
A major part of his coming-of-age, however, is the waking from the dream of the American mythos. He is drawn to Blevins, the young horse boy they meet early on in Mexico, despite Rawlings not trusting him. Grady see’s him as someone of action, something wild and embodying the cowboy mythos of living in communion with the land.
‘What he loved in horses was 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 ardenthearted and they would always be so and never be otherwise.’
With Blevins, however, we see the tough cowboy act as a quick ticket towards disaster and cracks in the mythos begin to reveal itself as juvenile. The horrific end this leads to is enough to shock anyone awake into the reality of life and death, and suddenly posturing is shown to have deadly consequences ready to snatch you from this world. It’s a scene I’ll never forget, blunt as a gunshot, and told in such a way as to leave you teeming with details that suddenly become muted in the aftershock.
Much of this novel is about border crossings, a multi-functional metaphor that encompasses both physical and emotional spaces. There is also the crossing from idealization into acceptance of reality. Grady resents the loss of the myth of the American West as industrialization and modernization take over, idealizing Mexico as a fresh wilderness full of adventure he can live out his cowboy fantasies within (which, okay, a bit problematic in the ‘savage Others’ way). When Grady and Rawlins reach the ranch upon which they work, it is a sort of found Paradise to them, the promised land they had been chasing. Though along the way the land echoes different tones, depicted as threatening and violent (think the birds caught and dying in the thorns they pass). Grady’s actions, a metaphorical feasting on the forbidden fruit that is Don Hector’s daughter, Alejandra, quickly has them thrown from Paradise for their descent into Hell: prison. The book is rife with religious imagery and the crossing from Heaven into Hell, with a purgatory session in recovery later, adds a dramatic weight that comes alive and sinks its fangs into you through McCarthy’s prose.
The prose does a lot of heavy lifting in this novel, where even a single word in Spanish in the dialogue is used to denote the ethnicity of a character. ‘The truth is what happened,’ says John Grady, ‘it ain't what come out of somebody's mouth,’ and in keeping with this belief, and that of action mattering more than words, McCarthy’s prose shows us what the characters are made of through how we see them respond and through the metaphorical language around them. Just as the landscape is a character in the novel, so is the language itself.
‘Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.’
Perhaps the greatest lesson in accepting reality and waking from the dream of idealism comes from Dueña Alfonsa, who tells of the failed revolution and the reality that hit hard to those clinging to ideals. It isn’t to say that ideals aren’t worth fighting for, but the understanding of what can be done, what must be done to do it, and that some borders can not be crossed. ‘It is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it,’ we are told, ‘I don't believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and love of blood.’ Evil is real and will lead to death, and those familiar with McCarthy know that the unstoppable force of evil is often embodied in his novels. For Grady, this is learning that the Paradise he idealizes can never be his, but learning to love what can be his all the same. Which is the most meaningful part of this novel, that even amidst all the violence and darkness, Grady always holds on to believing in good and beauty.
‘He thought that in the beauty of the world were hid a secret. He thought that the world’s heartbeat at some terrible cost and that the world’s pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower.’
I enjoyed that there were so many strong women in this novel too, and that it was from women that the young men learn the truths of life. Dueña Alfonsa is a strong character, and so is Alejandra. True, much of her character exists for romantic purposes, but she is also a highly capable and strong character that even shows up the boys at riding.
‘Don't fear Death. Its only gonna help you die faster, its not gonna help you live.’
It can be seen that All the Pretty Horses adheres to the [a:Joseph Campbell|20105|Joseph Campbell|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1429114498p2/20105.jpg] narrative of the Hero’s Journey, with the boys setting out, meeting helpers, mentors, temptors and falling into the abyss where rebirth and transformation occur. The prison sequence, with Grady and Rawlins fighting for days on end, functions as the hellish catalyst for transformation. Once Grady has killed a man, heroics no longer seem so heroic. It is no longer something you do to be brave or be a hero, it is something you do because it is what you have to do. The romanticization of heroes and cowboy myths dissolve under the crushing weight of reality, life and death, and in this way we see Grady return home with a lesson under his belt. He left a youth, returned as an adult with a new found sense of self and purpose.
‘The closest bonds we will ever know are bonds of grief. The deepest community is one of sorrow.’
Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses is a wild ride that tears at the fabrics of myths and tugs at our heartstrings all the same. Violent, brutal, yet deeply beautiful, this is a fascinating coming-of-age tale that goes about it in unexpected ways while teaching lasting lessons. But most of all, it is a lot of fun and has a few scenes that are forever burned into my memory. ‘In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments,’ writes McCarthy, ‘those whom life does not cure death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and reality, even where we will not. Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.’ May the world be a place where we can thrive and appreciate the beauty even amidst all the darkness, and may you enjoy this novel as much as I did.
4.5/5
‘He stood at the window of the empty cafe and watched the activities in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all.’