... All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy.
I came late to the works of McCarthy. When his great book The Road won the Pulitzer, I decided I had to pick it up. I was curious as to what a literate post-apocalyptic novel would be like. It was a fantastic read, harrowing and heart wrenching, and easily one of the 10 best novels I’ve read. Shortly thereafter I read No Country for Old Men, another great book. (Incidentally, the Coen Brother’s film disappointed me. They got many of the details right, but somehow didn’t capture the soul of McCarthy’s original work.)
All the Pretty Horses was an interesting change from the other two books. The classic Cormac McCarthy prose was still in full effect (no quotation marks for him!) but the story was far less dark. There was an air of melancholy to be sure, but not the oppressive doom of his more recent work. It was a simpler tale, a coming of age story about a young post-WWII cowboy struggling to find his place in a world that was changing too soon.
Billy Bob Thornton made a film of the novel a few years back, starring Matt Damon in the lead. I haven’t seen it, but apparently the final picture was so badly edited by the studio as to ruin it completely. As I read the book myself, I couldn’t help but think the one director who could really bring it to life is dead: the late, great Sam Peckinpah. Known for his ultraviolence, he also had a softer side, as seen in such films as Junior Bonner and Ride the High Country. That’s the Peckinpah that was made to direct All the Pretty Horses. Oh well... one can dream.
