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Classic Literature. Fiction. Literature. Western. HTML:In this final volume of The Border Trilogy, two men marked by the boyhood adventures of All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing now stand together, in the still point between their vivid pasts and uncertain futures, to confront a country changing or already changed beyond recognition. In the fall of 1952, John Grady Cole and Billy Parhamâ??nine years apart in age, yet with a kinship greater than perhaps they knowâ??are cowboys on a New Mexico ranch encroached upon from the north, at Alamogordo, by the military. To the south, always on the horizon are the mountains of Mexico, looming over El Paso, Ciudad Juárez and all the cities of the plain. Bound by nature to horses and cattle and range, these two discover that ranchlife domesticity is compromised, for them and the men they work with, by a geometry of loss afflicting old and young alike, those who have survived it and anyone about to try. And what draws one of them across the border again and again, what would bind "those disparate but fragile worlds," is a girl seized by ill fortune, and a love as dangerous as it is inevitable. This story of friendship and passion is enfolded in a narrative replete with character and place and eventâ??a blind musician, a marauding pack of dogs, curio shops and ancient petroglyphs, a precocious shoe-shine boy, trail drives from the century before, midnight on the highwayâ??and with landforms and wildlife and horses and men, most of all men and the women they love and mourn, men and their persistence and memories and dreams. With the terrible beauty of Cities of the Plainâ??with its magisterial prose, humor both wry and out-right, fierce conviction and unwavering humanityâ??Cormac McCarthy has completed a landmark of our literature and times, an epic that reaches from tales of the old west, the world past, into the new millennium… (more)
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The story's main thread is developed around Cole's falling in love with a teenage Mexican prostitute--Magdalena and his attempting to bring her back over the border to marry her. Her Mexican brothel keepers/protectors have much different ideas about someone(thing) they consider their property. As in the previous two novels of this trilogy the novels denouement revolves around the clash between two different cultures living right on each others doorsteps. John recruits Billy Parham to act as a kind of go between between himself and the brothelkeepers (Eduardo and Tiburcio) but they're only interested in discouraging this liason. John then turns to an older Mexican he's met--a blind man but he cannot help him. He is in love though and cannot be stopped from the course he is on which only leads us to the books tragic and bloody climax.
Though not quite as good as The Crossing--this is a simpler and shorter story and it plays to McCarthy's strengths as a writer. A little less concentrated in style than other works of his--the prose is clearer and more lucid. McCarthy is very economical in his dialogue and is one if not just about the best writer of action scenes in the United States today. Many writers would have turned this kind of material into a tearjerker but McCarthy maintains a very tight control over his story and the vision of where to go with it. The whole series is very enjoyable and well worth reading --at least IMO and I expect that within the next couple of years I may have read all his books. I look very much forward to his next.
McCarthy tells us what these
This book is very much about the friendship between these two young men, a friendship closer perhaps than they realise, with Billy seeing himself very much as looking out for John Grady. The story centres around their life on the ranch and John Grady's ill-advised love for a young prostitute. We get to know also their co-workers on the ranch, and along the way there are little vignettes involving additional characters very much in the vein of the other books in the Trilogy.
Cities of the Plain is every bit as good as the preceding books, beautifully written the sparse prose yet evokes the setting and the life of these men in a time of change. It is a most enjoyable read, there is humour, but is also heart-warming and at times heart-rending, deep in meaning; a worthy conclusion to a superb Trilogy.
But I went back to McCarthy and was welcomed back to his violent Texas border town world with open arms.
John Grady and Billy Parham were each the focus in their respective narratives about them, The
They're together on a ranch, working as hands, and John Grady falls in love with a young Mexican prostitute, and this sets the back drop of what happens in the novel.
It's rare to laugh out loud at a book, but I did this several times while reading the exchanges between the two main characters and the other ranch hands. There' s a love between them, for what they do and what they are, and you can see in the wording.
As much as I laughed at the dialogue, these books are never an easy pill to swallow with Cormac, as he takes you to places you don't want to go, and people die who you don't want to die. But isn't that a way to show how powerful his writing is?
In other stories, in most pop fiction, I'm not going to lose sleep over who is killed and who is let to live, but McCarthy connects you with his characters, with their flesh, weaknesses and flaws, and also with their more honorable sides. He makes you give a hang.
John Grady Cole wanted to take a girl who was in trouble, and give her a good life, not even mentioning that he loved her, and that is such a good sentiment and a powerful gesture. Everyone was against it but her and him, and he goes for it anyway.
This wasn't my favorite out of the Border trilogy. Most would pick All The Pretty Horses, but my heart places The Crossing above the rest.
That being said, this is a great read, and I highly recommend picking it up if you are a fan of modern day Westerns (set in the 30's or 40's), or if you are a fan of McCarthy.
It is a slow start, which must put off many readers new to McCarthy or the trilogy. (My advice: you can
Female characters are not McCarthy's strong suit, I gather after reading three of his novels. Yes, most depictions of Third World prostitutes by male novelists bear no semblance to reality but there are far more ridiculous ones than this one. At least in a dream-like thought of John Grady's we get an idea of how she reached this point. All too similar to the route so many in Thailand follow (although they're not going to end up servicing the high-end johns, not for long). You're never going to see that in Graham Greene's dusky wet dreams. That being said, every woman in a locked brothel/indentured situation has a buy-out price. This woman in particular does not have much of a shelf life. Eduardo is supposed to be "in love" with her? Then he wouldn't be renting her out. He wouldn't marry her; he'd keep her on the side. He has to be married already, FWIW.
It's nitpicky but ... why was this rigamarole, getting a green card, etc. necessary? Why trust so many intermediaries? John Grady Cole has been seeing her, communicates the plan to her ...why doesn't he, possibly with Billy, just escort her personally across? It seems that the plan was to take her across the river at an unofficial crossing regardless. She could pass for Socorro's grandchild or whatever. Would a card be necessary for a wedding? I just don't buy it. Which of these Americans has any official id?
Eduardo: "This is what had brought you here and will always bring you here. Your kind cannot bear that the world be ordinary. That it contains nothing save what stands before one. But the Mexican world is a world of adornment only and underneath it is very plain indeed ...And we will devour you, my friend. You and all your pale empire."
Beautiful writing as always. This one has more philosophical discourse on life and death, much more so than the other two. A tragic story, but one which is cathartic and oddly dignifying.
Cormac McCarthy is a poet that has simply never bothered to write poetry. Cities of the Plain is no exception for McCarthy’s habits, although we see this to a lesser extent than we do in the other books of the trilogy, which is slightly disappointing. The protagonists of the first two books are now friends, and the story is set in motion when John Grady Cole falls in love with a Mexican prostitute.
Cities of the Plain is somewhat lacking when compared with the rest of the trilogy. All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing are epics, while Cities of the Plain is calmer. It makes sense because the characters are older, but this book is just not as hard-hitting as the other two. All the Pretty Horses was like learning something that I never wished to learn, and The Crossing was like being gutted. This book, while still quite good, didn’t really live up to my expectations. And the epilogue, a thirty page discussion about a homeless man’s dreams, was confusing and out of place. This is definitely a book I need to reread, because I trust Cormac McCarthy’s creative judgments enough not to just write it off.
The language of the characters and the description of the land reminds me how I feel in love with the southwest. I love this book.
With Cities of the Plain the dreams have receded, the young men Billy and John Grady are older and their journeys have goals. This is a book that is bleaker in the telling even as the romanticism of John Grady Cole provided significant interest for this reader. The time is 1952, the place a cattle ranch in New Mexico. The West is changing as suggested by a brief interchange between John Grady and Billy early in the novel:
"What are you readin? Destry." (p 59)
Destry Rides Again by Max Brand is a classic example of the "myth of the old West". This is the life that is fading in the early 1950's and the question is will our heroes adapt or rebel against the inevitability of change. The change is not without difficulty and there are the ghosts of the past which they face as depicted in the following passage:
"They sat against a rock bluff high in the Franklins with a fire before them that heeled in the wind and their figures cast up upon the rocks behind them enshadowed the petroglyphs carved there by other hunters a thousand years before." (p 87)
Shadowed by ghosts of the past and chastened but not defeated by their youthful misadventures, John Grady Cole of All the Pretty Horses and Billy Parham of The Crossing have become blood brothers of a sort, clinging stubbornly to a vanishing way of life. With the U.S. Army proposing to turn their employer's ranch into a military base, the two fantasize about owning a little spread in the mountains, where they might run a few cattle and hunt their own meat. But when John Grady falls in love with a teenage prostitute in a brothel called "White Lake" across the Rio Grande, his desires collide with powers reminiscent of his those he encountered in All the Pretty Horses.
''There's a son of a bitch owns her outright that I guarangoddamntee you will kill you graveyard dead if you mess with him,'' Billy warns him. ''Son, aint there no girls on this side of the damn river?''
Alas, for John Grady there are none that can compare with Magdalena. He does not worry about Eduardo, her pimp, with whom he must deal if he is to have her and his stubborn idealism sets in motion a chain of events that cannot be avoided. In fact, the question of one's destiny is present throughout this final part to the trilogy. Before the ultimate scenes of the novel there is a telling exchange between Billy and John Grady.
"John Grady nodded. What would you do if you coundnt be a cowboy?
I dont know. I reckon I'd think of somethin. You?
I dont know what it would be I'd think of.
Well we may all have to think of somethin." (p 217)
Combine McCarthy's two previous novels with this somber tome and you have a masterpiece of contemporary fiction and a worthy contribution to the literature of the West. All three are works of a master story-teller, an author who speculates (some might say pontificates) on the nature of stories. So I will end with one moment of speculation about stories among many that I encountered during my journey through the trilogy:
"These dreams reveal the world also, he said. We wake remembering the events of which they are composed while often the narrative is fugitive and difficult to recall. Yet it is the narrative that is the life of the dream while the events themselves are often interchangeable. The events of the waking world on the other hand are forced upon us and the narrative is the unguessed axis along which they must be strung. It falls to us to weigh and sort and order these events. It is we who assemble them into the story which is us. Each man is the bard of his own existence." (p 283)
It is set in the early 1950’s
It is written in McCarthy’s signature style with short, direct dialogue. He realistically portrays the Southwestern desert, and the setting becomes, essentially, another character. I particularly like the indelible connection McCarthy establishes between the land and the people who traverse it. Themes include the inevitability of fate and good vs. evil. I doubt anyone that has read McCarthy would expect anything cheery, and this one is no exception. I am glad I read the trilogy. All three books are solid.
Cities of the Plain is the final installment of The Border Trilogy. I read the first book, All The Pretty Horses about a year ago and the second book, The Crossing a couple of weeks ago. I enjoyed The Crossing so much, I wanted to finish the trilogy sooner rather than later. I tend to spread out series of books and seldom read them this closely together. Why? I have no sensible idea. Maybe it’s to make the experience last longer? To procrastinate the finality?
John Grady Cole and Billy Parham exist together in this final story, working on a ranch in New Mexico. 1952, the two young men are enjoying life on the ranch. It’s a rather simple life, but yet daily hard work. They realize the world is changing and their lifestyle is vanishing. John Grady falls in love with a young Mexican girl working as a prostitute. He enlists Billy’s help to free her from her pimp, which is extremely complicated and dangerous. Meanwhile, there are many interesting characters introduced throughout the story: a blind musician, a pack of dogs, fellow ranch workers, and a clever shoe shine boy.
Cities of the Plain left me feeling much the same emotions as The Crossing. There are moments of heart wrenching despair and utter sadness. McCarthy knows how to build hope for the reader, but I wasn’t fooled this time. I knew any moments of joy or excitement were going to be met with devastating grief. And still, I loved McCarthy’s writing and talent to create authentic characters. I am a huge fan of his sarcastic humor. Only McCarthy can make me laugh in the middle of an argument or stressful event.
I loved John Grady Cole and Billy Parham. They are two down to earth cowboys I am grateful to have met and will miss. I suppose they will come to mind the next time I see a question about which characters you would like to have over for dinner. I think they would be satisfied with just about any measly meal I could create. Or, I could take them out to a Mexican restaurant.
Even though I own a beautiful hard cover copy of this book, I listened to the audiobook I acquired from Audible. Frank Muller’s narration was exceptional. It’s interesting how sometimes I will be browsing my Audible wishlist and notice I can add some audiobooks directly to my library as part of my membership. That’s how I got my hands on this audiobook.
I have photos and additional information that I'm unable to include here. It can all be found on my blog, in the link below.
A Book And A Dog