Whatcha readin'?

All The Pretty Horses
By Cormac Mcarthy.

This was my second reading of it, and after I got the paragraph about Rawlins and Cole stealing out amongst the swarming stars like thieves newly loosed into that electric dark I remember why I loved this guy. His descriptive language reads like poetry. He has such control. Never says too much or over explains or gets over excited, he does everything just right. He trusts the reader implicitly. I don’t even understand Spanish, but he doesn’t care. He trusts us to fill in the blanks. And we do.

The tale for me was all about right and wrong. It was about how the right thing can’t be compromised or discussed into some diluted form that will please everybody. You either have principles or you don’t, mccarthy seems to say. You either stand up for what you believe, or you wont. And while doing the right thing may cause physical pain and suffering and death, to lay down and surrender is let go of everything that defines you. To reason and negotiate with the truth is to reason and negotiate with purity of your own soul. To accept compromise is to deny yourself a destiny. To deny your destiny is deny yourself a true life.

Grady Cole is a gaddamn cow boy, and he knows what’s right, and he knows what’s wrong and he is his own man. That’s what the book is about I think. Being your own man. Jimmy Blevins was his own man, and he was but boy. But he had the same fire, the same guts and hunger that grady cole has. And Rawlins, Rawlins who had come to betray no man’s trust, ruin no mans daughter, Rawlins who was merely mortal, and afraid. Rawlins who was us. Who worshipped at the altar of grady cole and his death eating escapades. Rawlins who tried his best, but in the end he was brought to heel by his own mortality, as are most of us.

It’s only the chosen few, the twice cursed and thrice blessed who can live like Blevins and grady cole. They accept the violence that comes with living your own life. They don’t even try to avoid it. They know it’s part of life, and they accept it. They don’t shape or bend to circumstance. They are real goddamn cow-boys. The poor glorious bastards. The ride towards death with their pride intact, because if that’s the way it has to be, then that’s the way it has to be.

A great f***ing story. A story about a certain kind of man. And the cost of being such a man.