Just
as jazz is the archetypal American music, so is the Western the
truly original genre of American literature. The West ---
particularly for those of us who grew up on a video diet of
television shows such as "Gunsmoke," "Cheyenne," and "The
Rifleman," and the literary feast of 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. The reality was, of course,
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.

This reality is presented with an indescribable elegance in ALL THE
PRETTY HORSES, the first volume of Cormac McCarthy's Border
Trilogy. The volumes that comprise The Border Trilogy --- ALL THE
PRETTY HORSES, THE CROSSING, and CITIES OF THE PLAIN --- each stand
quite well independently, though they are best read together and in
order. But it is ALL THE PRETTY HORSES that is, in many ways, the
superior volume to its brothers in the trilogy and quite possibly
to any other work written by an American writer in the 20th
Century.

McCarthy's landscape is the southwest of Texas and Mexico between
the two world wars, a time of uneasy transition, when horses and
motor vehicles share the road and cattle ranches and cowboys are
fading from the landscape. John Grady Cole, a 16-year-old with a
love for horses and a knowledge of them far beyond his years,
senses on some level that the way of life he loves --- horses and
cattle ranching --- is soon to come to an end. He and his best
friend Lacey Rawlins run away to Mexico in search of unnamed
fulfillment other than the promise of adventure. Their meeting with
the enigmatic Jimmy Blevins is a pivotal event that leads Cole into
a series of bittersweet and violent encounters in a land where the
rules are unknown and constantly changing. When Cole and Rawlins
separate from Blevins and obtain employment on a Mexican cattle
ranch, it appears that they have achieved their idyllic dream.
Their brief association with Blevins, however, collides with Cole's
affair with Alejandra, the beautiful and willful daughter of the
owner of the ranch. Cole and Blevins soon find themselves in a
situation where neither hope nor mercy exist.

McCarthy's main theme in ALL THE PRETTY HORSES is conflict --- man
vs. woman, freedom vs. authority, rich vs. poor --- viewed through
a clear glass with unblinking, unwavering vision and described with
a poetic voice possibly unequaled in all of American fiction.
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 blossoming and
fulfillment of the romance between the star-crossed Alejandra and
Cole, a description that leaves the reader hoping that it will
succeed even as it is known, almost from their first encounter,
that any relationship between them is predestined to fail.

Ultimately, however, what is most significant about ALL THE PRETTY
HORSES is that McCarthy has transcended the constraints of
literature and fashioned a work that functions on an aural and
visual level as well as a literary one. It is on that basis that it
is possibly the penultimate American work of art of its era. One
cannot come away from reading ALL THE PRETTY HORSES without
wondering if, at the end of time and all that is, one of the last
sounds to be heard will be the turning of the final page of this
wonderful, incredible novel.