Download All the Pretty Horses and more Exercises Literature in PDF only on Docsity! All the Pretty Horses A modern-day Western full of horses and gunplay and romance... -Newsweek All the Pretty Horses •Born in Rhode Island, 1933 •Grew up in Knoxville, Tn. •Move to El Paso in 1970s: Worked with A. Erskine, Faulkner’s editor at Random House •First novel published in 1965: The Orchard Keeper •ATPH published in 1992 •Border trilogy – All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain •Personal – married x 3, 2 sons, reclusive, independent All the Pretty Horses •Won National Book Award and National Critics’ Circle Award – 1992 • Often called McCarthy’s gentlest novel • Represents the search for the Romantic cowboy life • Puts “the cowboy honor code” to the test of reality Setting •Opens in the fall of 1949 •Journey begins in the spring of 1950 •Opening setting – West Texas ranch near San Angelo •Journey into central Mexico
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themes • coming of age (bildungsroman) • love, friendship, loyalty • origin and nature of evil • the role of fate • search for redemption • transience of life • inevitability of violence and death Themes continued • Realist vs. Romantic Outlook • alienation (social, cultural, gender-based) • consequences of actions • family (role & influence) • modern world vs. the cowboy myth… • and what about all the horses…? •His list of those whom he calls the "good writers" -- Melville, Dostoyevsky, Faulkner -- precludes anyone who doesn't "deal with issues of life and death." Proust and Henry James don't make the cut. "I don't understand them," he says. "To me, that's not literature. A lot of writers who are considered good I consider strange." ...from the most extensive interview McCarthy has ever given. New York Times, April 19, 1992 "I've always been interested in the Southwest," McCarthy says blandly. "There isn't a place in the world you can go where they don't know about cowboys and Indians and the myth of the West." More profoundly, the book explores the nature of evil and the allure of violence. Page after page, it presents the regular, and often senseless, slaughter that went on among white, Hispanic and Indian groups. There are no heroes in this vision of the American frontier. "There's no such thing as life without bloodshed," McCarthy says philosophically. "I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous." john grady cole lacey rawlins Jimmy blevins All the Pretty Horses directed by Billy Bob Thornton. 2000. matt damon lucas black henry thomas
