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All the Pretty Horses
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All the Pretty Horses - Through Part I
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Tamara
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Apr 18, 2014 08:03PM
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I am having some trouble getting into the style of writing. There is a sparceness about it that seems to be reflecting the sparce and rather empty landscape. But, it is leaving me feeling rather distant. I am not always sure who is speaking. I am also a little put off by the many sentences in which there are just strings of mundain actions connected by "and" that appear to simply provide more description. This cowboy land is totally unfamiliar to me and I can not find much to connect with in my own life yet.
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I am also having trouble following the dialogue and who is speaking when. But, I remember from his other books that this is just his style. I don't like it at all, but I have come to accept it. I've given up on backtracking to figure out who said what. I feel like it's not who said what in the conversation as he writes it, but as long as you get the gist and the overall feeling. I also have a hard time with some of the Spanish (like I did in Oscar Wao) but most of it I can decipher, and luckily I'm reading on my kindle so can easily look up the words I don't know.
I feel that some of the amazingness of McCarthy's books is that is does seem to ramble on when you are reading it, but you ultimately see this beautiful story and relationship between two people. I love Rawlins and John Grady as a duo. They seem like the ultimate cowboys. I love the glimpse into American life on the western frontier so to speak. i love the interactions with the Meixcans. I thought it was amazing that they just crossed the border with no problem, so different than the border with Mexico today.
My favorite parts of this book so far, being done with this section, is the description of the landscape. I think that McCarthy can really describe a landscape beautifully without using too many words that I don't understand.
I am excited to see where this will go!
So, Grady leaves home because he is upset that his mother has run off to become an actress and the ranch was sold? Could not quite figure out why the ranch left the family. Wasn't it the father's family that owned it, so why did it have to be sold? And, were we ever told why Rawlins left home? I am interested in figuring out more about the back story of the young kid.
I, quite contrary, loved "The Road". It was my first McCarthy’s book. Ready it 3 years ago in one sitting. I was drown into the story, thought his dry writing suited perfectly cold, post-apocalyptic landscape. Because of enjoying "The Road" so much I bought All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing.Started from ATPH and was struggling a lot, due to the same reasons you've mentioned above. Couldn't get into it. Around page 140 I put it back on shelf only to rerun right now. I will give it a go once again, hopefully with success this time.
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Much like you all, I had a difficult time with the run-on sentence structure at the beginning...I thought that Mccarthy was writing in that style to allude to time passing in a frenzy after JGC's grandpa died. Now I hear that may be the way he likes to write all his books. Either I'm getting use to the style or he has stopped doing it as often. Like Tamara said, the spanish has been a little frustrating, as has the environment he writes about, esp. since I have been reading it during air travel trips without wifi! All that aside, it has kept me wanting to find out more about the characters.
Thanks for the clarification on the linage of the ranch ownership.This is my first McCarthy novel. I have had The Road on my TBR list for a while, simply because part of the filming was done in my neck of the woods. After all, there is nothing that better resembles a post-apocolyptic world than winter in this area. LOL!
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Yes, Jay, unfortunately it's just his style! Though, you definitely get used to it the more you read the book, especially if you read it in long chunks. Since this is my third by him, I think I'm more used to it, though it was jarring at the very beginning, especially coming off of Interpreter of Maladies which is so NOT run on-y.
I also love The Road! I don't think his writing style bothered me at all while reading that book. I am finding All the Pretty Horses a bit harder to get into but I think that is because it is a western. I definitely am looking forward to reading more on my lunch break and hopefully getting sucked into the story and characters.
I voted to read this book, and I think I'm really regretting that decision. The writing in this book is extremely difficult to read. When I get to the end of a passage have forgotten what I just read. I don't know that I'll be able to make it to the end of this book, but I'll be giving it my best effort!
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Don't worry about it too much. It's pretty slow moving so don't feel like you are missing too much. Just keep reading and eventually it will all start to make sense.
Well, after searching multiple translations of the spanish, I found a link that a Brent Stevens compiled of allfrom the book, with page numbers!http://cormacmccarthy.cookingwithmart...
Hope it helps...it did me!
I've switched from tiny font Picador edition to kindle version and I enjoy it a lot. Find his dry writing style to be captivating again. Story goes smoothly and atmosphere is just very McCarthy. I understand Spanish so it's not disturbing for me. It's funny that just the font that is not suitable for me makes such a big difference.
I find myself rereading paragraphs as parts of it seem jumpy to me. I'm not having a hard time with the Spanish or who is speaking but more with what is going on.
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Tamara, exactly, x ray is great
How wonderfully different perspectives can be. I've only finished about 60 pages so far, but I've been so remarkably moved by those pages that I wanted to leave a quick note about my experience up to this point. In reading the comments left already, I was genuinely surprised to discover that most seem to be having the polar opposite reaction to my own. A large part of my perspective on this book is shaped by my upbringing. I grew up in a small town in Wyoming nestled in the foothills of the Rockies and in the heart of ranching country. When I was young (I'm 35, so grew up in the 80s and 90s), I did everything I could to distance myself from cowboy culture. I didn't want to be just another stereotypical "sh!tkicker", as we said, and I ran from all things country and/or Western. But as I grew older, I started to realize that I loved many of the most stereotypical elements of cowboy culture--from the slow-paced drawl to the profound love of, indeed almost true identification with, one's horse(s).
Reading All the Pretty Horses makes me achingly nostalgic. I now live halfway across the world (just outside of Amsterdam), but each of McCarthy's pages has instantly transported me back to my childhood. Far from difficult or confusing, the dialogue seems natural and wonderfully rhythmic. In fact, I'd say I even find the cadence soothing. To me, it reflects the landscape--the wide open spaces, the desolation that literally reaches as far as the eye can see. And the pieces that are left out, both in conversations between the characters and the histories of the characters themselves, seem to tell as much of the story as the elements to which we are directly privy.
I can't wait to continue with this book. But I've actually decided to do something that is very uncharacteristic for me. I'm going to pace myself. Rather than plow through like I normally do, I'm going to take a page at a time, pausing frequently and savoring. I know that's the only way I'll be able to do both the book and my childhood memories justice.
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It's so nice to have the perspective of someone who can relate to John Grady's lifestyle. I'm looking forward to reading more of your thoughts.
Happy reading!
Rebekah, I think that the very thing that made this so incredible for you is exactly what limited my enjoyment of it. You could understand, from experience, the people that inhabited this story. You understood the rhythm of the language. You picked up on the unsaid, knew what was intended wthout it being spelled out. My upbringing was urban/suburban. The closest thing I came to a horse was the pony ride at the church carnival. This world and its inhabitants were foreign to me. It is amazing how our experience can shape our reaction to a novel. The relationship between book and reader is so dynamic and unique. I suspect that is why I absolutely loved Oscar Wow, he inhabited my neighborhood. I knew his real life counterpart as well as the real life counterparts of most of the people in that novel.
I'm sorry but I gave up on this. I have decided I just really am not a fan of Cormac McCarthy. The way he describes action drives me crazy. She picked up the coffee and took a sip and wiped her lips and put it down and looked across the room and coughed and said Hello. The sentence structure causes me to stumble, giving weight to these banal actions that otherwise should slide right on by. I have no idea why he writes like this and I've given him three books worth of a chance to explain it to me. (The Road, No Country for Old Men and this one). When an author causes a reader to stumble, to pause, there should be a reward or a pay-off for the extra time invested. In my opinion that's just part of the unspoken contract between author and reader. Otherwise it's just bad writing. I hate not finishing books but it had to be done. Goodbye Cormac McCarthy.
I also found these run-on sentences filled with actions that seemed insignificant to be odd. But, it did not cause me to stumble, as you put it. I eventually got into the rhythm of his pattern. However, I agree with you that it is not my favorite style.
I think Irene and Kamil's points about the writing style are really interesting. For me, the style is what makes the book so good.This is an extremely covert narrator--it is almost impossible to tell what the narrator thinks about anything that happens in the story, making the narrator feel almost like a mechanical observer. Check out the opening paragraph, just as an example: "the candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he shut the door. He took off his hat and came slowly forward. The floorboards creaked under his boots." There's a lot of information packed into those sentences, but that information is almost entirely sensory based--we only know what an invisible observer standing in the room might see or hear. In other words, there's a really filmic quality to this particular narrator's voice, as though the narrator is simply a camera lens capturing these scenes.
At other points in the story, though, the narrator's voice suddenly changes--we do get introspection or elaboration, and those moments become ones to watch out for. Most often, this occurs when the narrator's voice blends with that of a character, so that it becomes difficult to distinguish the voice of the narrator from the voice of the character, or when the narrator describes the surrounding landscape. But there are other moments where the narrator's voice suddenly seems to become more overt. I'm thinking especially of the passage about what it feels like to ride the stallion: "between his knees the darkly meated heart pumped of who's will and the blood pulsed and the bowels shifted in their massive blue convolutions of who's will and the stout thighbones and knee and cannon and the tendons like flaxen hawsers that drew and flexed and drew and flexed at their articulations and of who's will all sheathed and muffled in the flesh and the hooves that stove wells in the morning groundmist . . ." This sentence keeps on going for a few more lines. The narrator here records not what can be visibly seen or heard but instead the interior workings of the horse's body. And these lines become rather abstractly philosophical (something rare for the narrator) as they question the place of this horse in the world, and what it means to have power and will. It's a great moment in the text (not least because of the repetition of the odd phrase "who's will"), but because even at a sentence level it is as though the narrator can no longer restrain his or her own voice and must break free.
That is exactly what I found rather difficult with the text. That shifting around left me scratching my literary head. I could not figure out who I was in relationship to the story. It was as if the rules kept shifting leaving me disoriented. I have never been good in relationships with people who shift the rules of interaction on me. It always feels manipulative, a bit of game playing. At some level, this felt a bit like that. Why go from this stark style of recording minute details in a choppy sentence structure to this convoluted, some-what poetic run-on sentence that tries to capture the feel of riding a powerful horse? Are you asking me to stand back and watch? Are you inviting me in? Am I supposed to figure it all out on my own or are you going to be my guide? Maybe i am revealing a bit of my literary laziness in this confession. LOL!
I think you're right, Irene--this is a book you have to do some work to read and the narrator really isn't your guide. I guess that mimics some of the thematic aspects of the book itself since John and Lacey head off into the unknown without a guide. Seems like it also really echoes John's own approach to people. He's very straightforward and down-to-earth, but he reads people really well. He and Lacey have a lot of conversations where they communicate without really speaking. And he very carefully observes others around him in order to gauge what they are thinking or feeling without being told. So it seems kind of fitting that the narrator would make the reader do a similar sort of interpretive work.
