media consumption

All the Pretty Horses

by Cormac McCarthy

It weird. You read this book and you don't know where it's going. It kind of plods along. McCarthy's sentences almost mesmerize you with their one-clause-in-front-of-the-other pacing: this happened and then that happend and he said this and then they did that.

Before you know it, you are drawn into the story and the world that the story inhabits, which in this case is the mid-century Texas-Mexico border country. McCarthy's spare prose is piercing and heart-wrenching as he tells the story of a young cowboy running away from home to seek adventure across the border in Mexico. Actually, now that I think of it, this is a pretty basic coming-of-age story and it's easy to see why they've gone and made a Hollywood movie out of it.

I should read some reviews to see if movie-makers were somehow able to bring the austere beauty of this book to the screen. If so, I would want to see that movie. Even if I have to settle for Matt Damon in the lead role.

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