Exploding Helicopters #6 Cormac McCarthy - Cities Of The Plain It has taken me so long to read this book that I can’t actually remember how it started, but that’s no indication of how well I liked it; more that I can’t organise my life at the moment. I feel a little like a broken record on this site, since every other post makes some reference to how Cormac McCarthy is this great Messiah of misery, but he just fucking rules. No exaggeration. Cities of the Plain is the third book from the Border Trilogy, featuring John Grady Cole and Billy Parham, young cowboys who we met in All The Pretty Horses (Cole) and The Crossing (Parham). They have been through some serious fucking shit already, but seem to have finally got it together working on a ranch for a nice guy (Mac) and doing their cowboy horse whispering shit in the sunshine. Then John Grady falls in love with a dying prostitute and you know instantly that McCarthy is gearing up to flex his bleak muscles. I was talking about Cormac McCarthy’s writing style to my housemate the other day actually. She loves the free and easy ‘spontaneous prose’ rubbish by Jack Kerouac, and I was explaining why she was very very wrong. McCarthy doesn’t worry about traditional sentence structure or denoting speakers or even punctuation, but his writing is fluid and poetic and feels like molten chocolate rolling around your head, whereas I just want to send Kerouac to night school. There are some proper beautiful bits in Cities of the Plain. Someone at the far side of the arena touched the brim of his hat and the spotter raised one hand and turned and the auctioneer said now six no six I have six who’ll give me seven seven seven. Anyways the dogs wont hunt on Sunday either. They’re Christian dogs. Mr Parham, he said. Every male in my family for three generations has been killed in defense of this republic. Grandfathers, fathers, uncles, brothers. Eleven men in all. Any beliefs they may have had now reside in me. Any hopes. This is a sobering thought to me. You understand? I pray to these men. Their blood ran in the streets and gutters and in the arroyos and amongst the desert stones. They are my Mexico and I pray to them and I answer to them and to them alone. I do not answer elsewhere. I do not answer to pimps. If that’s not enough to make you read it, there is an incredible knife fight near the end. Serious can’t-read-fast-enough excitement. Cormac McCarthy - Cities of the PlainPublication date: 1998Publisher: PicadorPrice then: not statedPrice now: £2.99Purchased from: Ebay From the synopsis: “Bound by nature to horses and cattle and range, these two discover that ranchlife domesticity is compromised, for them and the men they work with, by a geometry of loss afflicting old and young alike, those who have survived it and anyone about to try.”
Exploding Helicopters #6

Cormac McCarthy - Cities Of The Plain

It has taken me so long to read this book that I can’t actually remember how it started, but that’s no indication of how well I liked it; more that I can’t organise my life at the moment.

I feel a little like a broken record on this site, since every other post makes some reference to how Cormac McCarthy is this great Messiah of misery, but he just fucking rules. No exaggeration. Cities of the Plain is the third book from the Border Trilogy, featuring John Grady Cole and Billy Parham, young cowboys who we met in All The Pretty Horses (Cole) and The Crossing (Parham). They have been through some serious fucking shit already, but seem to have finally got it together working on a ranch for a nice guy (Mac) and doing their cowboy horse whispering shit in the sunshine. Then John Grady falls in love with a dying prostitute and you know instantly that McCarthy is gearing up to flex his bleak muscles.

I was talking about Cormac McCarthy’s writing style to my housemate the other day actually. She loves the free and easy ‘spontaneous prose’ rubbish by Jack Kerouac, and I was explaining why she was very very wrong. McCarthy doesn’t worry about traditional sentence structure or denoting speakers or even punctuation, but his writing is fluid and poetic and feels like molten chocolate rolling around your head, whereas I just want to send Kerouac to night school. There are some proper beautiful bits in Cities of the Plain.

Someone at the far side of the arena touched the brim of his hat and the spotter raised one hand and turned and the auctioneer said now six no six I have six who’ll give me seven seven seven.

Anyways the dogs wont hunt on Sunday either. They’re Christian dogs.

Mr Parham, he said. Every male in my family for three generations has been killed in defense of this republic. Grandfathers, fathers, uncles, brothers. Eleven men in all. Any beliefs they may have had now reside in me. Any hopes. This is a sobering thought to me. You understand? I pray to these men. Their blood ran in the streets and gutters and in the arroyos and amongst the desert stones. They are my Mexico and I pray to them and I answer to them and to them alone. I do not answer elsewhere. I do not answer to pimps.

If that’s not enough to make you read it, there is an incredible knife fight near the end. Serious can’t-read-fast-enough excitement.

Cormac McCarthy - Cities of the Plain
Publication date: 1998
Publisher: Picador
Price then: not stated
Price now: £2.99
Purchased from: Ebay

From the synopsis: “Bound by nature to horses and cattle and range, these two discover that ranchlife domesticity is compromised, for them and the men they work with, by a geometry of loss afflicting old and young alike, those who have survived it and anyone about to try.”