The Border Trilogy: All the Pretty Horses, the Crossing, Cities of the Plain (Everyman's Library)

"The task of the narrator is not an easy one . . ." And so I continue to work my way slowly through McCarthy's brilliance. There is no order or plan to my approach: I just take them as they come to me, as the quoted title advises. This is a reader's dream, 1,020 hard-bound pages, with an embroidered gold satin placekeeper. This is a book to keep and treasure, that you will read again, and that you will want to pass on (ideally to a son), maybe adding your own note to the lovely dedication, almost hidden in the back pages. My father, dead three years now, read Louis L'Amour voraciously his entire life. From a teenager to a 75-year-old man, it was the same books, over and over. He never spoke of the west, of cowboys or gunfights or life on the range, but his unending flight there told me. I don't know what drew him, what he was missing in his life as an Army officer or husband or father. Maybe freedom, possibility, or just predictable simplicity. McCarthy's three books in this trilogy belie this assumed simplicity. The characters are simple, unassuming, honest, hard-working people to whom horrible things happen. Simple choices lead to life-altering events, saving and ending it. "He thought about his life and how little of it he could ever have foreseen and he wondered for all his will and all his intent how much of it was his own doing . . ." Synopsis: By page 77 in the first book it's clear: "Somethin bad is goin to happen" [sic] (and we get it again on page 36 of The Crossing). Young John Grady Cole flees to Mexico for work with horses and finds a woman and brutally adult reality in betrayal, pain and death. In the second Billy Parham flees to Mexico and unwittingly saves his own life only to find more cruelty, injustice and death. In the last the now young men find their simple existences just cannot remain so. Through it all is the beautiful, alluring and deadly enigma that is Mexico. I don't really care to read about cowboys or horses. I know there are people who dedicate their lives to them and can work magic with them. Such are John Grady Cole and Billy Parham. All the Pretty Horses is clearly McCarthy's love song to the horse, with the other two novels complementing. If you are a cowboy, these three books are the best thing ever written for and about you. In all of this is the intimidating wonder of McCarthy's magnificent writing, his beautiful, attentive descriptions and perfect depiction of movement and action. I will read anything he writes about. Describing a man's interest in a woman: "The prism-broken light from the chandelier that ran in a river over her naked shoulders . . ." In Blood Meridian I took notice of his description of the night sky, and it came through again and again here, one starry night most certainly not the same as any other, with multitudes of things so subtly different, and therefore McCarthy's devotion to chronicling just that: * Constellations "rising up through the phosphorous dark like a sea-net." * ". . . worlds sprawled in their pale ignitions upon the nameless night . . ." * ". . . the myriad constellations moving upon the blackness subtly as sealife . . ." * ". . . the stars in flood above her . . ." * ". . . the lights of the cities burning on the plain like stars pooled in a lake." * ". . . the stars which wer belled above them against the eternal blackness of the world's nativity." Yes, this collection did make me cry, twice. Both times it came on surprisingly abruptly, despite me knowing what was coming; it just hit me, me in the story and living its depth and presence. Only one book has ever done that before, The Road , and that's the truth. This is profoundly powerful stuff. I'll make my simple complaint again: the Spanish frustrates me intensely. I'm learning it slowly as I read McCarthy's work, but there is so much I know I'm missing in these passages. McCarthy has put a lot of time and attention into his work, and it pains me that I don't have the capacity to access this. Bottom line: ". . . the world was sentient to its core and secret and black beyond men's imagining . . ." This is a masterful collection, a worthy addition to your library of the greatest literature ever written. These are stories of cowboys and horses and adventure in the dusty Southwest but are so much more, magnificent tales of existence and musing on human purpose and destiny.

"The Border Trilogy" is magnificent writing, over 1000 pages of it, whether you are into cowboys and Westerns or not. McCarthy's is a dark, powerful, and tragic vision, one conveyed with epic sweep. Cormac McCarthy grew up outside Knoxville, and his first four novels are set in the Southeast. But few had heard of him until he moved to El Paso in 1976 and began his "Western period." First came "Blood Meridian" (1985), and then his breakthrough to public acclaim with "All the Pretty Horses" (1992), which won the National Book Award and was made into a movie. He followed it with two more similar novels: "The Crossing" (1994) and "Cities of the Plain" (1998). With "The Border Trilogy," set from the late Thirties to 1952, McCarthy moves both forward in time from "Blood Meridian" and to a less mythic and more personal level, with the characters of John Grady Cole and Billy Parham. The action ranges from Texas and New Mexico into Mexico. Be prepared: necesitarás mucha traducción. (You will need much translation.) There are passages in Spanish throughout, so you will need a Spanish-to-English translator. I read "The Crossing" first. I was attracted to the story of a wolf being returned to the mountains of Mexico. I had read "Blood Meridian" and "The Road," and only after being amazed by "The Crossing" did I tackle the rest of the trilogy. I read the first and third books back-to-back in this volume. "All the Pretty Horses" is about John Grady Cole, and is set in 1949. "The Crossing" is about Billy Parham, and is set from the late Thirties through WW2. "Cities of the Plain" brings John Grady and Billy together, though the story centers on John Grady. It is set in 1952. With compelling characters, amazing descriptions of the landscape, laconic and often humorous dialogue, and dark philosophy, the novels of The Border Trilogy are among McCarthy's best, and more accessible than "Blood Meridian," which may be his masterpiece.

There's American Literature before and after Cormac McCarthy. Immersive, thought-provoking, and engrossing.

I ordered this trilogy as a result of having read McCarthy's The Road and seen No Country For Old Men. The New Mexico/Texas/Mexico border country is the locale for all three of these stories, in the years surrounding the Second World War. The first two are coming of age adventures featuring young cowboys, while the third brings together the young protagonists of the first two. In All the Pretty Horses we are introduced to young John Grady Cole, a horse whisperer of sorts who is in the process of being dispossessed of the New Mexico family spread. Along with his friend Lacey Rawlins, Cole lights out for Mexico and adventure. Falling in with a third boy, Jimmy Blevins, acts to bring the trio all the adventure they could ever hope for, most of it of the unwelcome sort. In The Crossing, we find another New Mexico family. A wolf invades the local range and the Parham family sets out to trap and remove it. Billy Parham, the oldest son, comes upon the trapped, pregnant she wolf and is moved to relocate it back to its Mexican home rather than kill it. Parham crosses back and forth into and out of Mexico in the succeeding three years, ultimately joining forces with his younger brother Boyd. This is a far more tragic tale then the earlier story. In Cities of the Plain, John Grady Cole and Billy Parham come together as ranch hands on a spread near El Paso. Like The Crossing, this is a sad and depressing tale. Westerns are not a genre that I have frequently read, though Lonesome Dove is one of my favorite novels. The writing in these three stories is so authentic and haunting in its imagery and descriptiveness as to be stunning. This is some of the best writing I have ever come across, regardless of genre. Magnificent work. I do have two complaints however, which diminish the work in my eyes considerably, not in the quality of its writing or storytelling, but in my personal reading experience. The first has to do with the very frequent, sometimes extensive Spanish dialogue. Granted, most of the Spanish is very basic, and I was even able at times to figure the gist of the conversations. At others however, entire paragraphs and sometimes as much as a page is consumed with Spanish conversation, sometimes at very key, highly compelling sections of the story. Having taken no Spanish and the book providing no footnotes or translations, what am I to do, go purchase a Spanish/English dictionary or get out of bed and feed the lines into an internet translator? The device certainly lends authenticity to the story, but only to the benefit of McCarthy's bilingual readers. I cannot for the life of me figure out the decision making process that allowed this. Secondly, there are several instances throughout the stories where McCarthy engages in very detailed, sometimes technical expositions on highly technical processes. The first that comes to mind is the process by which John Grady Cole saddle breaks wild, untrained colts. The intention is to create a vivid picture in the readers mind. However, McCarthy utilizes terms of art and references tools and equipment which are meaningless to anyone other than either a horseman or a ranch hand. The effect is to dedicate pages of descriptive prose which mean absolutely nothing to the reader. Again, my option is to get out of bed and find a dictionary and then do some research on the internet to get some photos and articles on ropes, knots, halters, bridles and other cowboy equipment that would render the narrative meaningful. In a nutshell, a highly educated cowboy or ranch hand, fluent in both English and Spanish would likely deem this to be the most magnificent book he'd ever come across, and he'd likely be correct. Failing on both counts, I'm left with 90% of the story being top rate and the other 10% leaving me to scratch my head. Four and a half stars.

I have read McCarthy incessantly since Harold Bloom made me aware of him in the early nineties. Needless to say, I became entranced and still am entranced. I have reread The Border Trilogy straight through on several occasions, most recently this fall, and, during each excursion, I find hidden nuggets of wisdom, and some wisdom which may be fools gold found on a fool's errand. For, masqued in a Western Novel context, these stories, as it seems more clear to me now, are really a travelogue through wisdom writings. As John and Billy make their way through the often surrealistic landscape of a changing American Southwest and Northern Mexico, they encounter personages who seem to embody various types of wisdom, many of them with a gnostic bent. I use "seem" here as, the thing is, there is much superficial, as it were, wisdom encountered here, but few, if any answers-for John or Billy or us, for that matter. These are vision quests in the shamanistic tradition, but the quests, with ostensible goals, lead only to more quests-the quest for wisdom is not satiated but only creates the thirst for more wisdom. In a weird way, somewhat analogues to Hesse's "Journey to the West", McCarthy's protagonists find wisdom where least expected, but wisdom that is difficult to unravel and/or unpack, and which they, kind hearted lads as they are, have difficulty putting to any use for what they have learned and what they feel they need to accomplish rarely meet. Perhaps that is the point? That wisdom begats wisdom which negates wisdom ( a kind of perverse syllogism) and so on until the wisdom negates itself permanently leaving only questions? As in all of McCarthy's works, yes, even including Suttree, there is little in the way of comfort here-for either the protagonists or the reader, and that can lead to a profound sense of disillusion as you reflect on these stories. Alongside disillusionment due to the lack of any recognizable belief system, or anything to believe in at all really from a theosophy perspective, there is also an overwhelming sense of the goodness of people to strangers, and especially strangers in need. This may seem to designate the book as emblematic of the "Golden Rule" or some such nonsense, which it cannot be as there is also overwhelming human cruelty in the book, but if there is a glimmer of hope found here, it, in my opinion, can only be found in the amazing capacity of kindness buried deep in the human heart, overcoming the demiurge of human self interest and narcissism. I say that, but that is not what John Grady Cole experiences in Cities of the Plan, of course, there is also a strong strain of determinism in these stories. But does determinism exist because of the Demiurge/Artificer? And if so, and there is no way to break through the artifice, then that would dictate that there are no answers at all available to us NOW. Sigh, I don't know....if you want to wrestle with these questions, these books are great places to do so.

Great story and it’s nice to have all 3 books in one book. The book is high quality and the print is still a nice easy size to read. It’s Worth it for sure

One of the major reading events of the past few years for me has been the "Border Trilogy" of Cormac McCarthy, which is comprised by his novels "All the Pretty Horses," "The Crossing" and "Cities of the Plain." I think I had put off approaching this trilogy for two reasons. First, the film adaptation starring Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz gave me the impression the whole thing would be lighthearted and romantic, and second, the structure of the trilogy (which is to say only a disjointed connection between the three books, with no characters in common between the first and second, and only one character from each of the two books appearing in the third) put me off a little. These books are nowhere near as mushy and feminine as the previews for the "Pretty Horses" movie made it seem, in fact the movie itself is nowhere near that romantic. Female characters don't play significant roles in most of what occurs in these books. They're stories about rough boys becoming rough men. The significant connection between the three novels is that despite the variation in character and the time gaps between books, all occur in the border area between the USA and Mexico, and all three involve crossings between the two lands as significant plot elements. The books are as stark and as harsh as the rest of McCarthy's work, and a recurring theme is the attempt of a character to rescue a doomed or wounded friend, woman, child or animal. The landscape and the horses are as significant as any of the characters or plot events, and the narrative style varies from simple prose to poetry, from straightforward linear clarity to an almost ranting, biblical convolution. There is never a question with McCarthy that he is writing about things that matter deeply to him, and that conviction and passion come through on the page. I consider him the most powerful and significant living writer, at least in the English language. If anybody out there hasn't yet been convinced to read him by the various awards, the worshipful reviews, or even Oprah or the several film versions of his books, consider this yet another voice telling you, "If you read anything at all, you must read Cormac McCarthy."

My first CM book(s). Brilliant story-telling with periodic troubling events - that justify themselves in the context of the story. Amazing attention to detail, describing people, surroundings and events with extraordinary detail. The discourse between the protaganist and characters he encounters are mesmerizing. You don't realize it at first, but he sometimes goes through a sixty word paragraph with no punctuation. If I had one criticism, and perhaps it's my own shortcoming, it's that some dialogue is in Spanish which leaves the reader desperate to know what was said. Like a new word that you learn and then hear three times in the next two weeks, I think of his stories and am more aware of the author, sadly learning of his death, movies based on his books, and his acclaim as one of the greatest writers in history. Eager to start another of his books. Will be proud to have his hardbound books in my collection.

There's few books that I could hardly wait to get and this is one. I got the book (hardcover edition) in perfect condition. It's an authentic copy, printed in Germany. I haven't read it but I'm excited to do so as I expect it to be as good as Blood Meridian, if not better.

Arrived promptly and in good condition, great service and good books.

I received the book in perfect condition and within the time expected. I’m very confident on your sevice.

its pages are falling out

The printing quality is superb.