
 |
|
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
August 24, 2007
/ 10 Elul, 5767
All the pretty horses
By
Linda Chavez
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
I had put off reading Cormac McCarthy's "All the Pretty Horses" for years, having picked it up when it first came out in paperback in 1993. But a Colorado vacation seemed a perfect time to take it up again. There's something satisfying about reading a book in sync with the locale where I happen to be.
Part of the book's appeal is simply that it is an adventure story, the tale of three young men boys, really who set off on horseback from west Texas in the late 1940s, seeking to recapture in Mexico a way of life fast disappearing north of the border. Instead they encounter a world so full of contradictions it destroys one of them, and nearly so the other two.
The Mexico McCarthy describes is a place of unspeakable cruelty, rigid convention and misplaced honor. It is a place where men can land in jail simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and where obtaining justice depends on whom you know, not what you've done.
But it is also a country where the young men find incredible generosity and kindness poor Mexicans who are willing to share their meager food and abodes with strangers, even to give them, literally, the shirts off their backs. McCarthy's Mexicans are both villains and heroes, intellectuals and peasants.
But in the end, it isn't the adventure or the characters that makes this book so mesmerizing. It is McCarthy's ability to capture a sense of place.
The Southwest has for generations sparked the imagination of Americans. Even today, when skyscraper cities have sprung up on the plains where people make their living sitting at keyboards rather than on saddleback, the land itself remains wide-open, wild and vast.
The beauty of the land is stark, often harsh. There are few green, rolling hills, but jagged cliffs that jut out from the sage-covered brush, remnants of long-dead volcanoes, and earth the color of dried blood.
It does not look hospitable, which may be why it is so quintessentially American. Certainly in the early years, eking out a living in a land so arid made for an unimaginable challenge.
I think back on my own ancestors and wonder how they managed my father's family arriving more than 400 years ago in northern New Mexico from a similarly unforgiving landscape in Estremadura, Spain; my mother's family coming to Wyoming by wagon train from Missouri not long after the Civil War. Yet, like thousands of others, they tamed the land and recreated themselves.
Today, it is still possible to see in the land itself something of its past. Driving west along Route 40 high in the Colorado Rockies last week, I saw a herd of horses, some 40 or 50 head, that looked as if they had just descended, wild and free, from Byers Canyon above. There were overos, palominos, chestnuts and pure blacks, running against a classic Southwestern cerulean sky with cumulus clouds that dwarfed even the mountain ranges in the background.
There are few more enduring archetypes than the American cowboy. Certainly McCarthy's ability to conjure up a world in which men still ride on the backs of magnificent beasts trying to master a natural world that is both alluring and hostile has made him one of America's most popular literary figures.
But as the Southwestern landscape retreats, as suburbs encroach on the range, as fewer and fewer people know what it is to tackle nature head-on, what will happen to the cowboy tale? Perhaps this generation will be the last to come across boys like Jimmy Blevins or John Grady Cole or to see all the pretty horses running free, and all that will remain is a collective memory evoked by writers like Cormac McCarthy.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Linda Chavez is President of the Center for Equal Opportunity. Her latest book is "Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.)
Linda Chavez Archives
© 2006, Creators Syndicate
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|