First impressions

[an early or first edition, signed by the author, going on eBay for a little over $400]

Prompted by being reminded recently that one can never recapture one's first impression of something, this is some first impressions of reading the Cormac McCarthy novel, courtesy of Epsom Library, 'All the Pretty Horses'.

A strange tale of three farm boys who, for various reasons, head south from western Texas to Mexico, on horseback. Vaguely in the 1950s or 1960s? Two good, one bad. At least one of the good boys is surprisingly knowledgeable about and good with horses. The bad boy gets lost on the way. The two good boys have a spell on a Mexican ranch, owned by someone else with a thing about horses. One of the boys has a love affair with the owner's daughter, who, when he gets to find out about it, is not pleased and takes rather drastic action. The boys go through a bad patch, involving a stay in a rough Mexican jail. First one, then the other head north again. The novel ends rather inconclusively, with one settling back down to life on the farm, the other, the ex-lover, not.

A lot of horses and a lot of rather desolate country. Although I dare say with its own brand of beauty. Some sex and quite a lot of violence, some of it involving knives, some of it involving guns. I still puzzle about McCarthy's fascination with violence. I have not found any clues in his early life which looks, from a distance, fairly ordinarily middle class. And certainly not a farm boy.

At one point, one of the Mexican men explains that once a Mexican man has decided to do something, he has to carry it through. He cannot be seen to vacillate, let alone back down. He owes this to himself, even if no-one gets to know about it. Which can make relations with both men and women a bit violent by our standards. I have seen a bit of this sort of thing in TB over the years, but perhaps my version of this manly trait is that one needs to show consistency, in some way or another. One needs some kind of internal compass. It may be that magnetic north shifts a bit over the years, but it should not flip-flop about. That said, one's opinions or actions flip-flopping about is OK, provided there is some steadiness under the covers, below the surface as it were. Or to use a horticultural metaphor, one is always trying to grow the perfect pumpkin, even if one's views about how best to do that might change from year to year.

Chunks of the dialogue are in Spanish. Which is fair enough, given that a lot of people in the area in question are more or less bilingual - but a pain for me as I can only guess at most of the meaning. Maybe there is room for a scholarly edition with translations and explanatory notes on the right hand pages. Maybe there is such a thing?

But why did McCarthy do it? Was there more to it than an autodidact showing off his linguistic prowess?

Then in writing this book, was he making a pitch for sales by writing of the great American dream: the west, horses and guns. Something which a good number of punters would buy into?

There is a rather gushing puff at the back of my copy of the book which talks of 'a magnificent parable of responsibility, revenge and survival'. Next stop reference 8. Maybe buy the film from Prime? From where I learn that the book is actually set in the late 1940s.

PS: I see at reference 9 that Shrimsley of the FT is banging a drum that I bang from time to time. But something that he does not mention, something which I think significant, is that Trump, amid all his grandstanding, is addressing the same problem, that of a rich country which has got used to living beyond its means - with one aspect of this being importing lots of cheap labour. Maybe our voters will learn something from how it all pans out over there. And I associate this morning to the lazy ruling classes of reference 10.

References

Reference 1: All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy - 1992.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cormac_McCarthy.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/06/more-violence.html. Recent notice of McCarthy.

Reference 4: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=cormac. A couple of mentions from the fairly distant past.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Providence,_Rhode_Island. Where he was born.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoxville,_Tennessee. Where he was raised.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/01/two-mccarthys.html. The autodidact at work.

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Pretty_Horses_(novel).

Reference 9: Britain is living beyond its means: No party looks truly ready to confront tax-resistant voters with some hard questions - Robert Shrimsley - 2025.

Reference 10: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/de-la-unay.html.