Book Report: Far Too Much Cormac McCarthy

Conclusion to part 1: Hot Boy Summer

Prior to this by several years I’d already read The Road and Blood Meridian, which, woof. Those two vary wildly in terms of accessibility but not in terms of how weird they feel to read on the bus every day. Just real breezy summer reads, good for pairing with mimosas. Perhaps I was already near to my ultimate goal. And so, I read these four books in as many weeks.

No Country For Old Men

This, it turns out, was originally begun as a screenplay before changing to a novel, and then when it was made into a Coen brothers film the year after publication was adapted almost shot for shot, so I already knew the gist of it. From what I’ve read about him, it doesn’t seem like McCarthy ever lived in Texas for a significant amount of time, but if that’s the case then it’s bizarre how accurately he gets the old-timer lingo and carriage. My grandpa was a sheriff in the West Texas town both my parents are from for most of his life so it was strange reading a sort of facsimile of that as arguably the main character. I guess this alongside The Grapes of Wrath forms a sort of heritage vignette for my family, although this makes for a fairly gruesome entry on that shelf.

I actually highly recommend this one. It flies by and isn’t as rough around the edges as other McCarthy novels or even incredibly bleak — just pretty bleak. Plus I think the “good old boy” cut of person is something we definitely tend to lump into a box along with a lot of preconceived notions, but Sheriff Bell’s portrayal sheds a lot of light into this and is probably far more relatable than you’d guess.

All The Pretty Horses

With my warm-up out of the way, and already slipping into that family accent that always lurks down beneath the surface of everyone, replete with rustic aphorisms, I was ready to begin my work in earnest. No longer did I plan which book I was going to read next; my new weekly habit was to sidle up to that dimly-lit M shelf in Book People and just see which one fell off onto me.

I think it’s fair to refer to the Border Trilogy (of which this is the first entry) as the Emo Cowboy trilogy. 16-year old friends around 1940 or so decide they could use a change of scenery and run away to Mexico where deadly hijinks bookend a part two that paints a surprisingly lovely portrait of life on a hacienda breaking horses for a meager living, with a dash of steamy farm romance to boot. One of those books that is profoundly moving but not for any particular or traceable reason. It was also at this point in my journey I remembered I’ve been a horse girl deep down ever since The Two Towers came out in 2002.

The Crossing

I’m wearing boots now, which I work to keep clean. I drive up and down the lilting curves of North Lamar with detached peace. It’s fine if dust blows in through the windows and it’s fine that it’s too hot for the month that it is and I don’t care which song comes on next. I no longer care if a sentence goes on walkabout and quotation marks are a forgotten dream. I feel deep in my bones that it is good for wounds to rub dirt into them. Life is tenuous but good. Suspiciously good.

This book has almost no connection with All The Pretty Horses except that they’re structured very similarly: a stoic, angsty young man who’s good with horses travels to Mexico (the representation of death/unconscious/chaos/the lower half of the wheel of universal story structure if you subscribe to Dan Harmon’s Channel 101 which is a super good read if you’re interested in storytelling in any capacity) where he gets in over his head before wandering aimlessly for a long time and eventually returning to America changed. Drags more than the first book but also has a wolf in it.

Cities Of The Plain

I no longer mind if my boots get beaten up. I do what I do, but how long can it last? What before was loved now poses veiled threats, and what is loved now is profoundly unknowable and intractable beneath hazy neon signage. The world is changing and the world is shrinking as it dries up, encroaching upon what green lands are left between the dust and the asphalt, a cataclysmic erasure before God and everyone.

A landscape of low shacks of tin and cratewood here on the outskirts of the city. Barren dirt and gravel lots and beyond them the plains of sage and creosote. Roosters are calling and the air smells of burning charcoal. I take my bearings by the gray light to the east and set out toward the city. In the cold dawn the lights are still burning out there under the dark cape of the mountains with that precious insularity common to cities of the desert. A man is coming down the road driving a donkey piled high with firewood. In the distance the churchbells begin. The man smiles at me a sly smile. As if we know a secret between us, we two. Something of age and youth and their claims and the justice of those claims. And of the claims upon them. The world past, the world to come. Their common transiencies. Above all a knowing deep in the bone that beauty and loss are one.

I am stabbed through the gut in a fight I started with good reason but also no reason at all. It is here, bleeding through my hands into the wet dirt, that it finds me at the last: hot boy summer. I die at peace and with a Lone Star in my gnarled hand.