Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeWaters
All I have read is "Horses" which I thought was good to very good, but nothing to jump up and down about. The second book of the trilogy, I have said before, I couldn't finish. His temptation to wax philosophical at the expense of bringing the reader with him, got the best of him, and I could not continue on that journey.
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Horses is his next to weakest novel (I agree with Wood that No Country for Old Men is not in the class of any of the others). The Crossing is magnificent. I've quoted some material from it in the companion thread, those clips from the exmormon's monologue. Altogether I'd definitely call the Border Trilogy (Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain) a more impressive work than The Road, which is really just a novella. The Crossing is the work that makes The Border Tilogy truly special. Horses and Cities of the Plain (maybe his saddest novel) bookend it. Together they make a truly great epic, a vastly underappreciated work (even though the NYT called it one of the ten best novels in the last 25 years).
Mike, you're really cheating yourself not finishing The Border Trilogy. It's got Mike Waters written all over it. The mourning of a vanishing American frontier landscape and ethos, survivalism, ranching/horses, theology and theodicity, war, star crossed love, complicated and intense filial love (a tragically bad ass younger brother), guns & knives, unrmitting cruelty punctuated by simple inexplicable acts of kindness, all amid breathtaking natural beauty. I think he uses Mexico as his canvas because the country is like a medieval time capsul in a lot of ways. The knife fights are out of this world.
Of course Blood Meridian really is his masterwork. A miraculous accomplishment.