Book Club Update

(Can anyone guess who this lady is?)

Jenny recommended All The Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy for review. *No great surprise Gretchen wholeheartedly concurs! :)

The West, particularly for those who grew up with television shows such as "Gunsmoke" and "The Rifleman," and reading the classic novels of Zane Gray and Louis L' Amour, is evocative of a time of rough nobility where it seemed as if each breath brought a new confrontation of Good vs. Evil. Reality was something quite different, an existential setting where life and death did strange dances in the sunset and actions occurred with a randomness and happenstance that took no notice of pureness of heart or motive and often rendered foresight useless.

All The Pretty Horses is the first volume of McCarthy's Border Trilogy comprising of ALL THE PRETTY HORSES, THE CROSSING, and CITIES OF THE PLAIN. Each stand quite well independently but are best read together and in order. All The Pretty Horses is touted as the superior volume to its brothers in the trilogy.

McCarthy's landscape is the southwest of Texas and Mexico between the two world wars, when horses and motor vehicles share the road and cattle ranches and cowboys are disappearing. John Grady Cole, a 16-year-old with a love for horses and knowledge of them far beyond his years, senses on some level that the way of life he loves with horses and cattle ranching is soon to come to an end.

When his grandfather dies and his mother, more interested in professional acting than ranching, sells the family land, John Grady and his friend Lacey Rawlins flee Southern Texas on horseback. They cross into Mexico at the Rio Grande. There they meet another Anglo teen on horseback. Jimmy Blevins is younger and dangerous. Against Rawlins' advice, John Grady allows Jimmy to join them.

As they ride, they notice an approaching thunderstorm. Having been struck by lightning before, Jimmy is terrified. He tries to outrun the storm, then dismounts, strips naked, and hides to avoid being struck again. His horse, clothes, and gun are washed away. Later, when the boys try to reclaim Jimmy’s horse and gun in a nearby village, the townsmen chase them through the countryside and the trio is separated.

John Grady and Rawlins seek refuge at a vast estate. Grady finds work there as horse trainer, Rawlins as a vaquero or cowboy. As Grady falls in love with the rancher’s daughter, his companion enjoys the company of the other workers. Their sanctuary is ruined when Jimmy Blevins reappears.

McCarthy's main theme in All The Pretty Horses is conflict. Man vs. woman, freedom vs. authority, and rich vs. poor are viewed with unblinking, unwavering vision and described with a poetic voice. Although the violence in All The Pretty Horses is sudden and uncompromising, it is never gratuitous. It is also balanced and contrasted by McCarthy's description of the romance between the star-crossed John and Alejandra that leaves the reader hoping it will succeed even as it is known, almost from their first encounter that any relationship between them is probably predestined to fail.

What is most significant is that McCarthy fashioned a work that functions on an aural and visual level. The language is sometimes in a third person stream-of-consciousness style. Long physical descriptions of the landscape take on a moral tone by their end. Dialogue is given without quotation marks. Spanish is spoken by the characters as needed. All of these characteristics add to the unique quality and depth of the novel but have been both praised and criticized by readers. The criticism is primarily generated by individuals seemingly more concerned with punctuation and grammar than embracing the true heart of a story.

I find this incredibly unfortunate especially if it is the sole determining factor preventing them from actually learning something they might never experience through any other means or source, such as found in These Is My Words, yet another book using a unique writing style, authentic unto Sarah Prine’s early 1800's diary entries.

Thank you, Jenny. Although I enjoyed the movie years ago, I had not read the book. In my experience, books are almost always a bit more substantial. There are only two movies I can currently recall, remarkably matching the caliber of the books they were based on; The Color Purple, by Alice Walker, and The Onion Field, by Joseph Wambaugh. I’m sure there are more I’ve forgotten or not seen to compare. At any rate, I lucked out in book swapping with a neighbor who happened to have All The Pretty Horses, and I look forward to reading the others you recommended as well! :)

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Nicholas Evans, the author of The Horse Whisperer set a second ‘New Western’ novel titled The Loop, in Montana, in a fictional town outside Yellowstone, called Hope. The history is reminiscent to Wolf Point, where the gravel of some roads consists of substantial portions of wolf bones, legacy of a fanatical wolf-killing past.

Despite its past, Hope is changing. Movie stars are buying ranches, and a pack of wolves has returned to the nearby mountains, adding another threat to the local landed gentry. The gentry is personified by Buck Calder, who rides both women and horses as hard as he can. Not a sensitive horse whisperer, Calder represents the brutal and tyrannical rancher who seems to appear in so many real wolf stories -- he hates the government, the damn bunny huggers, the newcomers, and wolves, which symbolically represent all three.

He also hates the new wolf biologist, Helen Ross, who becomes romantically involved with his son, Luke. The young Calder, however, secretly loves the wolves. Luke suffers from a speech impediment that is aggravated in the presence of his father, but it is healed by Ross and the wolves as he struggles to assert himself against his father.

The novel begins with an ambiguous scene where one of the new wolves attacks and kills a faithful dog, right on the porch of Calder's daughter and a few yards from his baby grandson in his carriage. After the beginning scene, it appears the novel might be one peddled by the Farm Bureau, but the story's course flows in the opposite direction. Most readers will enjoy picking out characters who are modeled in part on people that many of us know or have read about.

The novel comes to an exciting conclusion. Fortunately nothing like this has happened so far, but it could. In the meantime you’ll become acquainted with a fairly good exposition of Old West thinking in the confusing New West as we follow Buck Calder, and other ranchers, some quite different from Calder, including one who borders on the mentality of the Freemen/militia folk. Calder locates and employs an old "wolfer," a frightening and tragic old man who sets about employing "the loop," a heinous method of killing wolf pups as they first emerge from their dens.

The strongest characters in the book are Luke and the old wolfer. Characterization of others is at times weak. For example, Helen, the beautiful and brilliant doctoral candidate, suffers from negative self-perception and bad romantic choices. Such a character merits much more explanation. And his characterization of environmentalists serves as a weak foil, remaining in the background as noisy, uniformed outsiders.

The novel gives an impression that those who favor the wolf (government biologists aside) engage mostly in ineffectual protesting. However, the hatred of the ranchers stands out. Their motivation is clear -- domination -- the primary reason why the minor predation of real wolves and compensation payments has little effect on their opposition.

In my estimation, The Horse Whisperer and The Loop are both worthwhile reading material. I was actually so inspired after reading The Loop I penned a poem entitled Road of Skulls, and had prior written, Power and Grace, after The Horse Whisperer.

NOTE: The program I purchased so that all of our members and viewers could read these books on the blog together via text video isn’t functioning properly. I’m attempting to set up an appointment with the manufacturer to access it remotely and hopefully work out existing kinks.

Here is a summary of our current reading list:

These Is My Words by Nancy E. Turner

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

Same Kind of Different As Me by Ron Hall & Denver Moore

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

The Loop by Nicholas Evans

*And now I have a request for one of our own writers. Melissa, would you please post your poem, Darker Angels? I would love to re-read it and see it shared here! :-)