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Summary: this book is awe-SOME
Review: I just finished the Border Trilogy. The books get better and better. Cities of the Plain was my favorite. It has the most action. I generally don't read the works of living writers. I find most modern subject matter socially and spiritually unredeeming. But McCarthy's stuff is all about society and spirit! Remember that part in The Crossing where he says that you have to live with men instead of merely passing among them? That was pretty cool.
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Summary: Ravishing
Review: I loved this book. It haunted me for weeks after reading it. I wept at the ending. I can't imagine it as a movie, because the books are so perfect, but of course I will see it and try not to get my hopes too high that it will be anything like the books. I wonder if they will just do All The Pretty Horses? I guess Matt Damon will play the hero. In my mind, Billy Crudup would have been a better choice, or anyone slimmer, lighter, more boy-like, more serious. These novels are miraculous; they seem "channeled." I'm rarely envious of other writers, but these are books I would have been proud to write.
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Summary: Read the trilogy
Review: If you've never seen the southwest, read any of McCarthy's Southwest/Mexico book, and you almost won't have to. That's how vivid.
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Summary: COMPLEXITY ROPED IN
Review: It took a while to get around to this one. My experience with this writer has always been that you don't pick up one of his books purely for entertainment. In fact, the complexity of the telling and the tale in parts one and two of this trilogy approach Faulkner.I found CITIES, in terms of plot and style, to be less complex, more reader-friendly. However, even writing in this more traditional sense, McCarthy maintains the edge that sets him apart from most of his American contemporaries. The simplicity and poetry of the phrasing is still there, the marvelous descriptions, the dead perfect dialogue, still crisp and efficient. And even though you know what's going to happen if you've read the earlier works, you can't help but be tantalized and magnetized and pulled along. The suspense and style that Larry Brown emulates in his southern underbelly novels is raised a couple levels by the hand of this master writer. In creating this more readable conclusion to the Border Trilogy, McCarthy may have blown his chance at the Nobel (rumors of his shortlisting abound among the writers I've spoken to). But with CITIES, he allows us to go along for the ride with little more than a dusting off of that rusty Spanish.
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Summary: Don't like it? Have it your own ignorant way.
Review: Lots of reviews here complain about this book not having the drive or originality of the first two books in the trilogy. I'd have to agree, since this book just repeats the plots of the first two in a deliberate and symmetrical way. As Marx said, history happens twice, the first time as tragedy and the second as farce. Once again John Grady stupidly decides that he'll be able to save a Mexican girl, and once again Billy loses a brother. In some ways this is a really ruthless book. The figure of the cowboy is given no possible redemption, no future. But what were we expecting? From the first it was clear that guys like John Grady and Billy are unforgivably short-sighted. They never "see" Mexico, they only fantasize about it (something for all you people who complained about the Spanish to think about--get a damn dictionary, for pity's sake!) They think of themselves as masters of all they survey, and as a direct result they end up dead or in despair. And yet, and yet, and yet . . . This is also a very serene and forgiving book that captures, more than any other western I can think of, the reality of the cowboy as worker--starved, broke, hanging on to the ranching life out of some kind of genuine love. If you get bored reading about the details of ranch life, just go read some pulp cowbody romance with shoot-outs and steamy sex scenes and get it over with. McCarthy doesn't tell us which of his two visions of the cowboy is the true one, but he does leave them separate with no attempt to solve the problem he's laid out. I don't know whether this is good or bad, but McCarthy has brought a clarity and honesty to the Western that it was badly in need of.
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Summary: Another classic
Review: McCarthy brings together the protagonists from ATPH and The Crossing in a story that concludes the Border Trilogy. Among the book's themes: the passing of an era in the West. The book is everything CM fans have come to expect: a great story, amazing characters, wonderful use of the English language, and heartbreaking events.
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Summary: Cuts like a knife....
Review: Reading Cormac McCarthy's Cities of the Plain cuts like a knife leaving a steadily flowing wound when one finishes reading this the last of his Border Trilogy. The conclusion of the trilogy begun with All the Pretty Horses which features John Grady Cole and The Crossing with Billy Parnham brings the two together. As one might expect Billy Parnham and John Grady become friends who rely and care for each other in a friendship that is both simple and complicated as the tale of the American West. Two seemingly simple men who long only to ride the range are inevitably tied together. John Grady is the charismatic young leader who loves horses and has an eye for strength and beauty masters chess and plays at life. Billy Parnham is the caregiver and caretaker a simple observer who enters the life dreams of those around him. McCarthy's stories are like multi-faceted gems. Every perspective provides a different view and a different version of truth and beauty. Which perspective is the truth and which are illusion? Somehow they all form a bond and co-join to make something of ultimate honesty and pain. Within Cities of the Plain there are stories within stories. Relationships are complex and unsettling. Love is a thing of beauty shrouded in gloom and foreboding. Every page of McCarthy book mesmerizes the reader with words and poetry. McCarthy is one of the geniuses at the use of lyricism in writing. His dialogues devoid of quotation marks read like poems both in Spanish and English. "He stared past her dark and shining hair toward the deepening dusk in the streets of the city. he thought about what he believed and what he did not believe. After a while he said that he believed in God even if he was doubtful of men's claims to know God's mind. But that a God unable to forgive was no God at all.
Any sin?
Any sin. Yes.
Without exceptions? She pushed her hand against his lips a second time. He kissed her fingers and took her hand away.
With the exception of despair, he said. There's no remedy for that." In Cities of the Plain John Grady Cole finds a love of great depth and stark devotion to a Mexican prostitute. This is a love story to match the best through the ages. It is deeply moving and stays with the reader long after the close of the book. Cities of the Plain is the fitting conclusion of McCarthy's border trilogy. It capitalizes and punctuates the lessons learned in the two prior books in a way that is both precise and painful.
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Summary: Start Elsewhere
Review: sadly, "Cities of the Plain" disappoints in comparison with the first two volumes of the Border Trilogy. It is possible that I expected too much, but I think it is merely a less successful book. The story itself places Billy Parham and John Grady Cole, the protagonists in the previous books, together on a ranch in New Mexico in the 1940s. The setting has the same romantic feel of the other novels and there is good action throughout, but the story does not flow as well and it is less believable then the previous books. This edition relies on too many flashbacks, wasn't as well written and didn't add much to the series. I think it is important to read "Cities of the Plain" if you've read and enjoyed the rest of the trilogy, because the story really comes full circle here, but it is not a good starting point to become familiar with McCarthy. He has written much better material then this book and I hate to think of people thinking this is a good representation of his talent.
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Summary: The End of an Era
Review: The third book of the Border Trilogy brings us to the cusp of an irrevocable loss -- of a way of life, of a landscape, of a dream of openness and freedom that is uniquely American. With it, Cormac McCarthy has cemented himself as one of the great American writers of our time. Both compelling and starkly beautiful, "Cities of the Plain" evokes a sense of awe and loss for those who came before us. Beautifully told, impeccably narrated, this is an important work.
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Summary: Epilogue destroys otherwise beautiful contemporary westerrn
Review: There are many moments of simple beauty in this book. I liked that the two characters from the first two parts of the trilogy got together. I liked the ruminations on love and death. I thought the love story with the teen whore was sweetly played out. The ending was tragic and tearful. And the book should have stopped there. But, McCarthy has to go on for another 70(?) pages wherein one of the characters describes his journey to old age as well as a vivid, strange dream. I'm sure the whole thing is very deep and metaphorical, but it borders on the pretentious. This entire last part ruins an otherwise simple masterpiece. For better McCarty read Blood Meridian, Suttre, or Child of God. If someone can explain to me that epilogue, especially that dream, please do so.
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