It’s been decades since I read a paperback western.
Louis L’Amour’s Down the Long Hills comes to mind, but I can’t remember how I bought a copy. What I can recall of Down the Long Hills is that the hero had to help a couple of children who would’ve died without him, as documented in the oil painting cover.
Possibly I was interested in L’Amour because my grandpa had a bunch of them in the shelf inside his coat closet. He’d pick them up from garage sales along with other, racier titles like Coffee, Tea, or Me?, a memoir about swinging stewardesses. He’d read in his recliner next to the floor lamps with the twisted metal stand.
So when I saw this copy of All the Pretty Horses at a local Half Price Books, I thought, what the heck? McCarthy died June 13th of this year, one of my favorite podcasters love him (Kmele Foster), and I’ve always liked the cover design by Vintage:
It’s the story of John Grady Cole, a teenager in 1940s Texas. He’s essentially disinherited from the ranch he grew up on thanks to his parents’ messy divorce. He and a friend run for the border and get into trouble. There’s a young woman, a rich family, some very disturbing jail time. Everything you might hope for in an adventure story.
The plot isn’t my usual jam, but I’m impressed by the dreamy prose. It takes fifty or so pages to figure out how to read him. Until you know the characters’ voices, it’s hard to know who’s speaking or whose thoughts you’re observing. But, if you do hang in there, you’ll start to enjoy how rapidly the dialogue goes.
His descriptions of landscapes is very much like L’Amours, each hill and valley and group of trees they ride through is described. It sometimes reflects John Grady’s mood. They cross a big river (I assume it was the Rio Grande, but of course he doesn’t name it), and I felt the exhilaration of my Little House and Oregon Trail days. Survival stories and fun.
Less fun, but more urgent, are the descriptions of bloody knife fights in the prison yard. How was I able to read this? I’m not into torture porn, I don’t buy into violence as the ultimate expression of masculinity, but here I am, very much concerned about where John Grady was slashed and whether the wound looks like it’s healing. Don’t get gangrene, John Grady. Hang in there.
But I know it’s a trilogy, so we’re good.
How about you? What are Westerns for? Are they for giving us courage? Are they gore porn? And have you seen the movie directed by Billy Bob Thornton?
LINKS I’m into:
-Ask a Jew podcast featuring my friendly acquaintances ChayaLeah Sufrin and Yael Bar Tur
-Call Me Kate, an adaptation of Katharine Hepburn’s 1990s autobiography, on Netflix
-Shoutout to Kmele Foster, who convinced me to finally read McCarthy
My Grandfather also collected trashy novels :)
Don’t recall ever reading a western novel specifically. Love it as a movie genre though.
okay another extremely eclectic western film that i just remembered:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YGmTdo3vuY&ab_channel=VICE
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. Its a Persian American vampire western feminist film lol. its filmed in a desert in california, but its entirely in persian lol. its really interesting.