All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

I picked this book from a bookshop in San Fransisco when i visited there in Feb'24 for work. I had it in mind to read Cormac McCarthy when tributes started pouring in after his death last year, and his book felt like a good starting point for my read-all-good-American-writers journey. 

This book is gripping. It held me throughout. There was never a time i got distracted enough to read another book - and i have many books piled up around me which would be great distractions. But that might actually not be a great praise for the book. More than just sticking with the book, scenes from the book lingered in my mind long after i had read them. The words painted them vividly, and they lingered. The characters felt real, especially the way they spoke. And the writer did this with very few words.  

More importantly though, the book made me think about why we read fiction. The narrative is not the hero here, not in the obvious sense of you reading the book to know what happens next, at least. You read this book more for moments in the narration - like when protagonists are chased by cowboys from a village who think they are stealing their horses, or when the protagonist spends a night out in the country with his romantic interest, or the scenes from the jailhouse where the protagonists are locked for a couple of weeks. In these moments, the writer achieves a depth of description which make them beautiful. There are sentences and paragraphs here which hook you in, similar Gabriel Garcia Marquez's sentences, but then there are also scenes where even if the individual sentence are not quotable, the string of words that make up a scene put together shine bright. And that, more than anything else, is what stands our for me in this book. 

That is not to say that there is no narrative. There is a strong one. It follows one of the more common themes in storytelling - a man goes on a journey and is changed by it - but facade of the narrative is strong enough for you to stay invested throughout. I am also told there are biblical themes colored at various points in the story - i do not know enough to catch them as yet. 

And perhaps these two things put together shine light on a non-intuitive dimension to the answer of the question - why do we read fiction. The narratives are important, even if they are repeated. And each time a story is told it adds a new color and depth to the often repeated story. BUT how you tell that story, which words you use, and in this case how many words you use - all of these are equally important. These tools show you a different side of the hero, of the landscape, of the relationships - it shows you new ways of seeing. And in All The Pretty Horses, Cormac McCurthy uses words in a very very interesting fashion. I wont say i get it yet. The language, and some of the words, are difficult. But i sense the newness of it. This book will show more colors in the second and third reading. 

The one thing that poked me a little was the boy falls for a girl trope. And this is my subjective bias, it does not take anything away from the book. But i was anticipating it to happen the first time the girl is introduced, so the story lost some color for me when it saw it happen eventually. Another thing that poked me was how righteous the protagonist was - no flaw. He does have doubts, especially religiously. But otherwise is a pretty end to end upright fellow, even going out of his way to right things. It would be interesting to see how it plays out in the next two books. 

I am excited for how the next two in this series - The Crossing and Cities of the Plain - turn out. I am happy to have started exploring the Cormac McCarthy wormhole, and lets see how it goes.