Cities of the Plain: Border Trilogy (3)

No markings on pages. However, all the pages were very yellowed and saturated with the odor of stale cigarettes. I'm assuming the smoke caused the yellowing of the pages. I dont mind the smell very much myself, but I would advise a non-smoker to be aware of this before buying.

This final novel in the “Border Trilogy” collection continues in the same vein as the previous two. Like them, it takes place mostly in the mid-20th century yet is able to transport the reader along with its characters to something that feels like an earlier time. Two of the main characters are slightly older versions of themselves from the earlier novels in the trilogy—John Grady Cole from “All the Pretty Horses” and Billy Parham from “The Crossing.” They meet while working at a New Mexico ranch in this story.

Although like all the other Cormac McCarthy novels I have read, I enjoyed this very much, it must be said that “Cities of the Plain” spends quite a while getting down to business. A lot of time is spent on what must be the everyday life of a modern cowboy, and at least half of the novel goes by before the reader starts to feel that something is actually starting to happen. That action almost stirs to life reluctantly, and as with the other two novels in the trilogy, the events that start to really move the story are those that follow from the actions of a character who acts seemingly against all good sense. His choices set in motion a train of events that the reader instinctively knows cannot end well.

There are a few places in the story where characters go into some deeper philosophizing at unexpected times, but these instances are much less frequent than they were in the “The Crossing” (the previous novel in the series). A few character details in the story, presented as though they are significant, ultimately seem to lead to nothing in the end (although this is possibly just my imperfect understanding of the symbolism).

I am well acquainted by now with the works of McCarthy, having previously read (in addition to “All the Pretty Horses” and “The Crossing”) “Blood Meridian” and “The Road,” so it is safe to call me a true devotee. All of McCarthy’s works seem to convey at least an approaching darkness (if not an actual apocalypse).

McCarthy creates not just a plot. His descriptiveness also creates an accompanying mood. For me, this mood is almost the written equivalent of the sound track from a good film, in that it is hard to separate one from the other and judge it on just one of them. Sometimes readers are just looking for one or the other, and often are disappointed when neither stands up well on its own.

Cormac McCarthy is not for everyone. There are a few “surface features” to his writing style that some find off-putting. The complete lack of punctuation in his dialogue makes it hard sometimes to follow the identity of a speaker. Liberal sprinklings of Spanish sometimes make for hard going if the reader is not bilingual. (Hint: I read some of the phrases into Google Translate on my phone, and they translated quite easily—very impressive!) Some get bored by the descriptiveness of background, the countryside, the animals, and other details that are not in direct pursuit of a plot line. A few readers like this kind of writing instinctively, while others who give it a chance will find it an acquired taste. Many just never will like this kind of writing. For me it took some getting used to, but it has really grown on me over time.

The copy of this that I read was part of “The Border Trilogy” collection published by Everyman’s Library. It is a fine volume with high quality hard cover binding (unlike many mass produced hard cover books these days) that will stand up to repeated reading. It is a worthy addition to any collector’s library, despite being affordably priced.

"City of the Plain" is the final novel of a trilogy by Cormac McCarthy about two young men (John Grady Cole and Billy Parham) who scratch out a living as cowboys on the Texas/New Mexico border with Mexico in the mid-twentieth century. As with the prior two novels ("All the Pretty Horses" and "The Crossing"), its characters, prose, and story line are stark, beautiful, and alternately warm and tragic. The entire trilogy is about love, loss, tragedy, and remembrance. McCarthy is an artist of the highest quality, as his numerous writing awards attest. I rank him as one of my very favorite novelists.
In fairness, I rate the first two books slightly higher than this one. I thought the story moved a bit slowly at times. The book is largely driven by dialogue and the dialogue (admittedly excellent) might be a bit overdone at times. Also, the author paints beautiful word pictures of the stark desert scenery. He's a master at it and I enjoy the mind pictures he creates; but he does it so much in this book that it slows the pace of the narrative. These are minor quibbles of a superb story. I highly recommend "City of the Plains" by Cormac McCarthy.

I am in the process of reading all of McCarthy's books. I am trying to pace the books so I can enjoy them for a long time. In the beginning I felt this was my least favorite book but it got better and better. By the end it was wonderful. This is the last of a trilogy. I did not realize this at first. Although I had read the other 2 books it had been quite a while ago. John Grady and Billy are once again "cowboying." They can foresee their life style coming to an end. Times are a changing. These two pals are a perfect blend and they know it. They can almost read each others minds and are completely comfortable together. Life is good and everything is right in their world---THEN John Grady falls in love with a beautiful 16 year old Mexican whore. He wants to get married. Everybody tries to talk him out of his plan but he goes stobbornly ahead. Life becomes tragic for the cowboys. Two criticisms of this book. I had read 20 pages before I could figure who was talking and what they were talking about. Each new chapter starts with talking and it is hard to know who is doing the talking. McCarthy never tells the reader, it's just go figure it out. After the book had climaxed it goes on for 25/30 more pages. It is a completely different scene and time. I have read reviews that think the ending pages brilliant. I can't figure it out. It left me cold.

"Cities on the Plain" is the last of the 'border trilogy' set mostly in Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas. "Cities on the Plain," of course, refers to Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis, something of a clue to the story. In the same way, a line from Yeats, "No Country for Old Men," gives a clue to what will happen to the old sheriff in another great Western. Cormac McCarthy doesn't need any praise from me to establish his preeminence among American writers. There are plenty of good Westerns but none of them can capture the dialogue or the scenery the way Cormac can, not even Elmer Kelton. As a Catholic, I wish Cormac McCarthy was a religious person because he would be able to bring to life people of faith and make them credible the way he can bring to life his main characters in "Cities on the Plain" who were just aching to believe in something, including an afterlife. He not only brings characters to life but societies, in the way he evokes Mexico and the Southwest. There is ugliness and cruelty in this novel but outweighing that kind of reality is a great deal of credible nobility and plain old goodness that keeps popping up throughout the narrative. I read a lot of fiction and I try to choose carefully. I judge a good piece of fiction by how real the characters are and how much they haunt me. I don't know when I have read fiction as good as Cormac McCarthy's. He continues to haunt me, but in a most pleasant way.

I was really surprised at just how talkative this book is. It's got more dialogue than anything else Mcarthy's written. Which makes sense because this book evokes not just single lonely lives, but an entire, lonely lifestyle. Cities of the Plain partakes easily of the typical tropes of American westerns, doomed love, the sense of loss for an increasingly marginalized and antiquated cowboy culture at odds with a modernizing west, what have you. But it's much more than just a thin genre piece because of the two books that come before it and the harsh, painful lives that John and Billy have led up to this point. There aren't as many big blocks of prose here because we already know their hard lives so well from 'the crossing' and 'all the pretty horses'. And by the way, if you haven't read both of those, DO NOT read Cities of the Plain, because there is an entire layer of unspoken experiences and pains that won't make much sense, and which probably won't seem all that interesting without knowing what happened before this. Though I don't think it ranks among his best, this is still a good ending to the trilogy. Heck, I was sad when it ended but that probably has as much to do with the fact that it's the last book of his I haven't read as it did with the ending itself. Billy Parham is probably the best non-evil non-degenerate character he's written. And Eduardo (while not his best villain) is a refreshingly down to earth slime-ball pimp. I hope Mccarthy still has a few books in him.

I cried after finishing the epilogue.

By the end of this trilogy, we are brothers of the two close cowpokes, John Grady Cole and Billy Parham. They are old men in young men's bodies. John Grady is 19, Billy is 28. They have grown up ropin' and ridin' and aren't about to give up this hearty outdoor life, well, ever. This last book in the trilogy steers us through dreamer John Grady Cole's tortured romance with a young, embattled girl from south of the border. This improbable plotline pulls us through the novel.

But it's the diorama in which McCarthy sets the story that adds dimensionality. His great natural world of buttes, and mesas, and chasms, and draws and dry river beds. Of sunsets and long-views. Of long, long rides. And big sky. His wild west loving, nature-beholden, horse-worshiping cowboys. They can do everything: roping, riding, rustling, building, breaking wild horses, starting campfires, rescuing the weak, fixing trucks, winning fights and beating long odds. It's classic cowboy: Good guys versus evil at every turn. But they cannot control their world's slide into modernism. The world keeps turning, time ravages as it does, and our cowboy heroes become anachronisms. The grain silos turn into radar tracking stations on army annexed lands. The open range now a closed testing ground. Our cowboy hero is left, not in an undomesticated foreign land he knows too well, but in a domestic land foreign to him. It's why you'll cry at the end, too.

Read 'em in order, pardner. The Border Trilogy: (1)All the Pretty Horses (2)The Crossing & (3)Cities of the Plain.

Cities of the Plain is a satisfying conclusion to McCarthy's Border Trilogy. John Grady Cole and Billy Parham from previous novels in the trilogy are working together on the McGovern ranch in Texas in the 1950s, a time of rapid change that is threatening a way of life for independent ranchers in the Southwest.

John Grady Cole falls in love with a prostitute from Juarez, across the border, and he wants to rescue her and bring her back with him to the US. Billy Parham warms him of the perils of his plan but John Grady is determined to pursue a course of action that is almost certain to end in tragedy.

McCarthy's prose is powerful at times and his dialogue is sharp and insightful and always authentic sounding. The characters are rich and fully realized and that makes the doomed path some of them will follow all the more tragic. Like McCarthy's other work, Cities of the Plain is bleak in an understated way. The world is harsh and cruel, but its tragedies are never overwrought or melodramatic. This is a literary work, but at its core it's a compelling story with engaging characters. The expository epilogue is thought-provoking and explores the central themes of the trilogy in an intricate and lyrical dialogue between Billy, as an old man, and a mysterious stranger. The mysterious stranger tells Billy: "Yet there are no crossroads. Our decisions do not have some alternative. We may contemplate a choice but we pursue one path only."

The epilogue is open to the reader's interpretation as McCarthy weaves together dreams within stories and stories within dreams that consider fate and religion and identity and purpose. This is a profound and powerful novel and a fitting conclusion to an exceptional and important trilogy.

Although this, and the other two novels that form the Border Trilogy, can be read independently, the works reinforce each other and are best read together. Yet it is an unusual triology -- the plot of each book does not build on the other. Rather, they each tell the same story in a different way. And that is the story of young romantic heroes coming to ill when they do battle against the social and cultural forces arrayed against them. The use of Mexico as an alien and hostile society is a device to reinforce how difficult it is for the individual to triumph. The same thing happens within our own culture, but some of the myths and softened edges of America help to obscure it.

While critics characterize McCarthy's writing as borrowing elements from Hemingway and Faulkner (with the latter elements frequently and perhaps unfairly being criticized as the "bad" McCarthy), I think that there is another far different writer that McCarthy calls to mind: Dostoyevsky. McCarthy's Mexicans and American cowboys talk about big philosophical issues like Raskolinikov muttering away in his St. Petersburg garret. The best scene of the book involves a knife fight with a cynical nihilistic Mexican who would have been comfortable conversing with Stavrogin, the lead character in Dostoyevsky's "The Devils". Remarkably, this all works, and indeed the knife fight is all the more engrossing because McCarthy slows down the action with the philosophy and thereby builds all the more tension. The lines these characters deliver are terrific (i.e., "Your kind cannot bear that the world be ordinary"; "The one world that will never be is the one men dream of").

Having told the same story in three different ways, how does McCarthy resolve it? As the other reviewers indicate, on a positive and hopeful ending note. Like Dostoyevsky, McCarthy is too intellectually honest to be able to rebut completely all of the arguments of evil, but he still has faith and hope. However, I think that the concluding section of the book has some of the long-winded dialogue that some readers and critics have come to hate in McCarthy and would have been more effective in shortened form.

Still, McCarthy is a wonderful writer, and this is a masterpiece.

There's a passage in this book that almost made me stop reading Cormac McCarthy, it was so seething with quiet brutality. I'll leave you to discover which section that is or simply encourage you to choose another one that rips your heart out. Here, at the end of the trilogy, I'm stunned and quite overwhelmed, but for all the right reasons.

The story involves two characters from All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing, who now work together as ranch hands in New Mexico. In spite of their youth, they are two men who have led, to quote Thoreau, "lives of quiet desperation" up to this point, yet who have managed to forge a deep, abiding friendship. Having suffered much loss in their young lives, each man depends on the other as surrogate parent, sibling, mentor, defender, and priest.

I found Cities of the Plain to be slightly more traditionally narrative and therefore less philosophic (though barely so) than Books 1 and 2, which merely served to highlight McCarthy's style of unflinchingly presenting the frailty and violence of human existence. Some sections were so honest, they left me breathless and sad. As a reader, you invest in characters; it's almost unbearable when they force you to leave them behind.

As with the previous volumes, there are some passages that drip with profundity and unparalleled beauty:
"He knew that our enemies by contrast seem always with us. The greater our hatred the more persistent the memory of them so that a truly terrible enemy becomes deathless. So that the man who has done you great injury or injustice makes himself a guest in your house forever. Perhaps only forgiveness can dislodge him."

"The ribcage lay with its curved tines upturned on the gravel plain like some great carnivorous plant brooding in the barren dawn."

"Holding himself close that he not escape from himself for he felt it over and over, that lightness that he took for his soul and which stood so tentatively at the door of his corporeal self. Like some lightfooted animal that stood testing the air at the open door of a cage."

It's a great joy coming across passages like that.

McCarthy's female characters generally don't have a lot of depth, nor are they well developed, merely serving to addle the hearts, minds, and sexuality of the male characters enough to drive them to desperation. One could argue that McCarthy's intention is to demonstrate just how mystified the male characters are with their female counterparts: the women don't deserve to be fleshed out because the men in their lives only understand them superficially. It's as if McCarthy's barren world is a cold satellite bereft of feminine influence and thus stagnated by the weight of its own male-centric gravitational pull. Thus, the only relationships that can thrive in this dying atmosphere are the fraternal and the adversarial.

Throughout the Border Trilogy, and in a broader sense, across the gamut of McCarthy's canon so far, I've also been intrigued by his take on God. Occasionally, certain characters get to voice their concerns: "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."

However, more often than not, McCarthy's characters call on some entity for mercy, only to have their supplications go unheeded as they slip irrevocably toward some horrific denouement. Maybe that's McCarthy's point: No answer is at once the most profound and catastrophic response of all.

This book was the least enjoyable of the three. While written in McCarthy's usual descriptive elegance, the story itself became pretty predictable once the love-element came into the picture. That it ended the way it did was no surprise. Thus, the journey was the reward, not the arrival.

Of the three books in McCarthy's border trilogy, the Crossing has the largest number of Spanish-language dialogue sections...some of which are quite lengthy.

Cities of the Plain contains some foreign-language passages, but not nearly to the extent of The Crossing, or even All the Pretty Horses. Still, there were a couple of Spanish vocabulary words I'd never heard used before, one of which I had to look up in the dictionary. Talk about distracting.

Many books I've read follow foreign language sections with some commentary (from the protagonist or the narrator) giving the contextual meaning of the foreign language section. McCarthy apparently loves the concept behind the word "sparingly" in his use of explanatory devices.

I happen to speak and read Spanish, so this wasn't an issue for me, but if you don't, you'll either spend a huge amount of time trying to translate or you'll just skip over the dialogue, missing some good passages.

Overall, the books were great, though by the last one (Cities of the Plain) it was pretty easy to figure out how it was going to end for the protagonist(s), though the epilogue for that book was unexpected.

I started reading McCarthy with The Road, and moved to the border trilogy. His ability to describe topography, landscape and scenery is very good, in my opinion, in that I could imagine myself right alongside John Grady or Bill Parham (or both) in all three books.

While Mexico plays a huge role in all three books, I really think McCarthy did a disservice to non-Spanish speaking readers with his extensive use of the language in The Crossing, and generalized use in the other two.

I enjoyed it and for me it added a lot in terms of "feel", but for the rest of his readership, I think he could have cut it back significantly without losing anything, and gaining much.

This final novel in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy of the southwest brings together the themes McCarthy has developed throughout the trilogy. In the first novel, All the Pretty Horses, McCarthy stresses the romanticism of John Grady Cole, who runs away to become a cowboy, suffers a heart-breaking loss at love, and returns, sadder and perhaps wiser, to find solace in the solitude of his work on the plains.

Times are changing as the 20th century progresses, and the independent life of ranchers is threatened. In The Crossing, a far darker novel, Billy Parham, another young man, takes off with his brother, crossing the border into Mexico, to explore its older traditions and ways of life. Cities of the Plain, with Biblical suggestions in the title, brings young John Grady Cole and the older Billy Parham together, as they work on the McGovern ranch in Texas in the 1950s. The wilderness is disappearing, cities are encroaching, and an army base may take their land.

Focusing less on the harshness of ranch life than in past novels, McCarthy here concentrates more on character, in this case, that of John Grady Cole, who falls in love with a prostitute from Juarez and wants to bring her across the border to his way of life. Billy Parham counsels him against marrying her, but John Grady is determined to wrest her away from Eduardo, her manager, and give her the peace that she has never known. Life is harsh, however, and outcomes are bleak for dreamers and altruists. John Grady soon finds himself engaged in a struggle with Eduardo which is vicious and unrelenting, a metaphorical struggle between honor and evil, and between civilized values and the "justice" of tooth and claw, hope and desperation, and acceptance of change and adherence to the past.

McCarthy's gorgeous descriptions of this vanishing way of life on the ranch are as effective here as they are in the other novels in the trilogy, though they seem to be presented nostalgically. Times are changing, and the "old man," the ranch owner, is now becoming senile. Civilization is drawing closer, and John Grady, the cowboy, uses taxis instead of horses when he is in a hurry to travel. As McCarthy draws the reader into John Grady's story, the reader knows that the struggle between him and Eduardo is a mythic struggle, and s/he also knows what the likely outcome will be. The elegance with which the ending is drawn, however, gives both potency and poignancy to McCarthy's message. Mary Whipple

"Where there is no penalty there can be no prize" pretty well summarizes the book. I really believe it is McCarthy's descriptions of the situations, people, places, rather than the story itself, that makes this book grab hold of you. The story itself has been told before in other novels and in other ways but, of course, when all put together, rarely so well as does McCarthy. The other reviews will tell you what the book it about. As to the writing . . . the prose is beautiful. However, this book contained several dialogues between two persons and I found McCarthy's choosing not to use quotation marks, etc. sometimes made it hard to follow which character was saying what. Perhaps that was intentional. Could the situation of the one character not have been the situation of the other if each of their lives had been only slightly different? So, perhaps in some of the dialog it made little difference which character was saying what. I did think this book was better written -- flowed along toward a conclusion -- better than The Crossing which was about 50-80 pages too long. Also, in The Crossing I found myself counting the use of the word "like," used to introduce a descriptive phrase, and found its overuse a bit annoying particularly during the last third of the book when I was wondering if it was ever going to end. As a whole I enjoyed the three books of the trilogy but, in the end, I was glad the story had reached an ending.

The last installment on the Border Trilogy proves to be well worth the wait. Although not McCarthy's best effort, any effort by McCarthy shines out like a lighthouse beacon over the dark waters of the standard fare of modern fiction (one shrinks from using the word literature for 99.9% of published fiction). McCarthy intertwines and concludes the tales of John Grady Cole from All the Pretty Horses and Billy Parham from The Crossing. A 20-year-old John Grady and a 28-year-old Billy Parham are working together on a ranch in New Mexico near El Paso in the early 1950s. In this tale, Billy becomes the everyman, doomed to walk the lands in search of the ever receding revelation which will give meaning to his life and healing to his pain, while Cole becomes the symbol for honor and redemption through deeds in a fallen (and still falling) world. All of the key elements of McCarthy's body of work are here - the quest, the violent nature of our race, the recurring nature of societies in an ancient land, our search for meaning in the seemingly arbitrary events of our lives, the pathos of our struggle against overwhelming fates. The epilogue is fifty years after the heroic Cole has done battle with the beast in his lair (there is something of the Norse myth about McCarthy - warriors in a recurring cycle of violence, Ragnarok when the gods and the forces of darkness annihilate each other at the end of all days) and has killed and been killed. (The best that can be hoped for in McCarthy's world is a hard fought draw in the unending battle with shadow forces.) A 78-year-old Billy, wandering his world aimlessly, homeless, waiting only for death, encounters a nameless stranger who is a shaman, a dream interpreter. The final scene is the summary statement of the Border Trilogy, and a defining moment in modern American literature. The basic questions of our existence - who are we and why are we here? - are answered in the only manner possible, with beauty and simplicity.

This novel concludes the Border Trilogy. It follows protagonists from "All the Pretty Horses" and "The Crossings" through a final epoch. John Grady falls in love with an epileptic prostitute in Mexico and the men go down to try to rescue her. Grady intends to marry her.

This was the least interesting of the three books. McCarthy documents the day-to-day life of a ranching culture fast dieing out. Most of the dialogue lacks the brilliance of the previous books. Many of the scenes and much of the dialogue are simple give and take, with little revelation or philosophy. The epilogue is the exception. A brilliant conversation, falling in and out of reality, probing the meaning of death and purpose of life, takes place between an aged Billy Parham and a stranger. This final chapter is classic McCarthy.

Unlike the other books, which can be read on their own, much of the gravity of this book relies on previous books. The book would have little meaning to the reader who did not read the previous works. And this perhaps takes something away from the work itself, though I don't know how one could conclude a trilogy without falling back on the previous works.

But there is something else that the book lacks. It meanders for the first 150 pages, seemingly without purpose. John Grady is in love with a prostitute, the army is buying up ranch land, a way of life is dieing out.... The other books begin with a very clear direction, and though that direction shifts, there is always a strong sense of purpose to the narrative. The characters are driven and their actions and dialogue are inspired. There is tension. "Cities" falls short of that expectation. It is not a bad book, but it is not nearly as good as the others.

So much of the book is written in Spanish. There are entire paragraphs of conversation. McCarthy offer no explanation or restatement. I don't know what it would be like to read the book and not be able to read the conversations. I suspect that it would be annoying. But as a reader who can follow both conversations, the use of the Spanish seems authentic and almost expected.

This final novel in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy of the southwest brings together the themes McCarthy has developed throughout the trilogy. In the first novel, All the Pretty Horses, McCarthy stresses the romanticism of John Grady Cole, who runs away to become a cowboy, suffers a heart-breaking loss at love, and returns, sadder and perhaps wiser, to find solace in the solitude of his work on the plains.

Times are changing as the 20th century progresses, and the independent life of ranchers is threatened. In The Crossing, a far darker novel, Billy Parham, another young man, takes off with his brother, crossing the border into Mexico, to explore its older traditions and ways of life. Cities of the Plain, with Biblical suggestions in the title, brings young John Grady Cole and the older Billy Parham together, as they work on the McGovern ranch in Texas in the 1950s. The wilderness is disappearing, cities are encroaching, and an army base may take their land.

Focusing less on the harshness of ranch life than in past novels, McCarthy here concentrates more on character, in this case, that of John Grady Cole, who falls in love with a prostitute from Juarez and wants to bring her across the border to his way of life. Billy Parham counsels him against marrying her, but John Grady is determined to wrest her away from Eduardo, her manager, and give her the peace that she has never known. Life is harsh, however, and outcomes are bleak for dreamers and altruists. John Grady soon finds himself engaged in a struggle with Eduardo which is vicious and unrelenting, a metaphorical struggle between honor and evil, and between civilized values and the "justice" of tooth and claw, hope and desperation, and acceptance of change and adherence to the past.

McCarthy's gorgeous descriptions of this vanishing way of life on the ranch are as effective here as they are in the other novels in the trilogy, though they seem to be presented nostalgically. Times are changing, and the "old man," the ranch owner, is now becoming senile. Civilization is drawing closer, and John Grady, the cowboy, uses taxis instead of horses when he is in a hurry to travel. As McCarthy draws the reader into John Grady's story, the reader knows that the struggle between him and Eduardo is a mythic struggle, and s/he also knows what the likely outcome will be. The elegance with which the ending is drawn, however, gives both potency and poignancy to McCarthy's message. Mary Whipple

This is a numbingly tragic tale, but one at the same time that is rich in humor and wisdom. "Cities of the Plain" beautifully captures cowboy life in west Texas and New Mexico during a time when that lifestyle was slipping away, and reveals how through our choices simplicity is lost—and love and the loss that accompanies it becomes a fate which we are powerless to overcome. It is a wonderfully economical story, where every scene (no matter how gentle, mundane, or extreme it may be) helps to establish a crucial character trait. To me, only McCarthy's "No Country for Old Men" would rate higher among his novels. Reading this book is like being lifted and swept away by a monsoon flood, something residents of the Southwest—and any of us who have experienced a doomed love—can understand all too well.

"Cities of the Plain" finds John Grady Cole (from "All the Pretty Horses") and Billy Parham ("The Crossing") working on a ranch in New Mexico in the early 1950s. Not much older and more or less wiser, the two men have formed a friendship amid the horses and countryside. But everything's about to change when Cole falls for a Mexican prostitute, an event which leads to an inescapable conclusion.

This isn't a neat and tidy sequel; but if you've read the two previous entries in the Border Trilogy, you know that. Nor is "Cities" the strongest of the three; I still argue that "The Crossing" is the strongest of the lot, with "Horses" coming in second. However, "Cities" is a superb book, emotional and powerful, with one of McCarthy's most gripping climaxes. Yet it's not about the plot, really; it's about the characters, the language, the themes and beauty of McCarthy's prose. "Cities of the Plain" is yet another mesmerizing book by one of America's greatest contributors to literature, and also stands as one of his more accessible books, which may be why it isn't as highly regarded as it perhaps should be.

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.

Cormac McCarthy wrote one of my favorite books ("All the Pretty Horses") and is one of the more poetic American writers going. The Border Trilogy, of which "Cities of the Plain" is the final volume, features great writing with some occasional humor and more than a dose of tragedy. So what about this book?

"Cities of the Plain" features John Grady Cole and Billy Parham as the primary characters. Those who have read the previous novels in this series will remember some of their childhood antics and to be honest, John Grady Cole is a rather childlike character in this novel. "Cities of the Plain" is essentially an incomprehensible love story interspersed with adult musings on life and death. The writing is great with some annoying segments written entirely in Spanish as we learn about 1950s New Mexico (and Old Mexico) and follow Cole on his poorly conceived love quest.

The highlight, however, is a beautifully described incident involving a cat on page 125--A tale so inspiring that I've started calling my wife's annoying tabby "Comet". On the otherhand, the Epilogue was even more incomprehensible than the love story. Not McCarthy's best, but worth reading (except for the Epilogue).

About 20 years ago, I bemoaned the lack of heroes in our society. The "anti-heroes", the good-bad guys had taken over and there were only the ones you love to hate in the spotlight. Cormack McCarthy wrote the first volume of his trilogy around the same time and I found some of the heroes I'd been looking for. McCarthy hasn't created his cowboy heroes, he communicated or maybe "channeled" them. It really seems to me that like some of the ancient storytellers, he serves as a medium for the ancient voices. That is not meant to minimize Mr. McCarthy's talent. No-one has been more successful as he in capturing the language and personalities of real cowboys.

"Cowboy" is more than a little ambiguous in our language. Some use the word to describe those who would take advantage of opportunities to scratch advantage from others without regard to conventional ethics or morality but for me and others, it suggests the rugged individualist who follows his own path, his own code, in the pursuit of his goals.

Maybe there's no place for cowboys in our current society and maybe that's too bad

CITIES OF THE PLAIN has the feeling of a third book, an add-on in many ways dissimilar from the first two books in the Border Trilogy. ALL THE PRETTY HORSES and THE CROSSING feature John Grady Cole and Billy Parham, respectively, two young bucks full of wisdom, the last cowboys on the frontier of the latter half of the twentieth century. The two meet in CITIES OF THE PLAIN, with Parham twenty years Cole's senior. They appear as the same character, really, at different stages of a cowboy's life. Cole gets mixed up with a Mexican prostitute, again giving his all for the love of a young woman. Parham, who never seemed to have much time for women, watches Cole self-destruct, much as his brother, Boyd, had in THE CROSSING. McCarthy obviously loves John Grady Cole, this wise-before-his-years teen who can beat anyone at chess and can tell a horse's worth from his gait. I love Cole, and all of McCarthy's creations, too. THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN doesn't quite work, however. In many ways, it's predictable. The book is driven by dialogue, whereas in the previous two books in the Border Trilogy dialogue was sparse, the few words all McCarthy needed to help us understand. If you're paying attention, you should be able to figure out the direction of Cole's affair long before it reaches its crescendo.
I would have given this book five full stars, except that it isn't as good as the previous two, which I've given five stars, and for the strange epilogue, which I tried to read three times, then gave up and slammed the book shut. A weak, weak ending to a glorious trilogy.

It has been a very long time since I've written a review for the store...simply lost interest in sharing, I guess. After finishing "Cities" I've sat here for the best part of an hour in tears. Tears for the characters, for the lives unlived as well as those lived. With my late dad raised in Deming and my mother in Alamo, McCarthy puts me in my distant past. One could take a few paragraphs from each of the trilogies each day and spend years examining the depth. For example, "But what is your life? Can you see it? It vanishes at its own appearance. Moment by moment. Until it vanishes to appear no more. When you look at the world is there a point in time when the seen becomes the remembered?" I am amazed at McCarthy's detailed knowledge of Western culture from this era. Sometimes I feel like he's writing personally for me. Clearly as good as it gets.

Billy Parham and John Grady Cole, the protagonists of Cormac McCarthy's preceding books in his Border Trilogy, are friends working on the same ranch in 1950s Texas. The romantic John Grady falls in love with a Mexican prostitute and decides to marry her, against the wishes of her possessive pimp. The more pragmatic and jaded Billy feels compelled to aid the couple despite his misgivings. The stage is set for a tragedy.

Prepare to have your heart broken. McCarthy presents expertly realized characters with honorable motives and good souls and sets them down in a nihilistic world where their best instincts only hasten their destruction. He depicts the best and the worst in human nature and though the good people suffer terribly, the end result is ennobling because their essential decency remains. This novel has a long, heartrending denouement that may have you wondering about the next homeless old man you see.

Cities on the Plain is the final volume in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy, a loosely tied together trio of novels that deal with life along the U.S.-Mexico border. This novel focuses on the protagonists of each of the first two books - John Grady Cole from All the Pretty Horses and Billy Parham from the Crossing. Now the two of them are working together on a ranch in New Mexico in the early 1950s.

The rather sketchy plot involves Cole who has fallen hard for a Mexican prostitute. His love for her has more than a little bit of obsession to it, and Cole is willing to risk all to be with her. It is his eventual intent to bring her to the U.S. and marry her, although her pimp may have other ideas.

At times, however, the story is secondary as we follow the other smaller adventures in these characters' lives. McCarthy's great gifts are with his descriptive ability. He is not always an easy read, however: he never uses quotes to set off his dialogue and he uses a lot of Spanish, much of which is left untranslated and (for a non-Spanish speaker) can only be partially gleaned from context.

Despite these difficulties, the book is somehow a pleasure to read (although it is probably the weakest in the trilogy). In some ways it is reminiscent of the movie Brokeback Mountain, if only because it follows the rough life of modern cowboys. Cole and Parham live tough lives with little hope of any permanence or prosperity, but they are also somewhat content with their choices.

McCarthy is probably an overrated writer, with his distinct style providing an illusion of greater ability than he actually has. But even if he is not great, he is still good and if you have the patience, you may find this an enjoyable book.

I loved All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing and looked forward to Cities of the Plain as it brought the protagonists together from the first two books. Cities is vintage McCarthy with a strong story and locations in Mexico and my home state, New Mexico. Unfortunately, McCarthy uses the last third of the book to philosophize. Some is interesting, but this is ways too much. The last fifty pages or so left me waiting for him to end it...maybe a bullet to the head. McCarthy does end it well. If he had stopped before the last scene, I would have rated this three stars or even two.

Brings the trilogy to a full and sad close, drawing in gentle lines the inexorable passing of cowboy life. This was foreshadowed at the beginning of Pretty Horses when John Grady Cole buried his father and forfeited his land to modernity, embracing voluntary exile to Old Mexico. And for Billy Parham and the wolf who made the Crossing to that arid yet strangely rich land in the second novel.
This final novel brings John Grady and Billy together in a celebration of cowboy life and language. The story pivots on John Grady falling in love with another woman who will be denied to him, Billy doing what he can to bring them together. But the beauty of the novel lies in the sketches of cowboy life that come before, after and during the unfolding of the crossed lovers plot line. John Grady and Billy ride the range, work fence lines, exchange clipped profundities, hang out in the bunk house, eat in the farm kitchen, drive cattle, philosophize around camp fires, admire and endure miserable or magnificent weather across and through McCarthy’s marvellously drawn landscapes. These vignettes drip authenticity. Some have a haunting vividness. The ad hoc, on the road tire repair for a disintegrating, Mexican-laden pick-up truck is one such, the scene evoking memories of the famous frog hunt in Cannery Row.
But as John Grady and Billy go about their work and make their way through their world it is fading, disappearing, ending. The final end for John Grady is beyond poignant, one of the sadist endings of a novel and a life I’ve encountered. McCarthy’s land, weather, birds and distant lightning remain, indelibly re-created again, and again (and again!) through his crisp, tactile, at times crushing, prose paintings.

When I read the previous two books in the trilogy I couldn't put them down -- read each one in just a few days. It was with great anticipation that I waited years for the final installment. Had I known that I would be this disappointed I wouldn't have bothered.
This book lacks everything that made the first two so great. It wasn't until the final 10 pages that anything of any interest happened. And I was mostly disappointed that Billy had been reduced to a "Robin" role to John Grady's "Batman". I found Billy to be a much more interesting character than John in their respective installments.
It almost seems like McCarthy had decided to write a trilogy for the sake of writing a triology. He seems not to know what to do with these character's lives in this installment. They wander aimlessly through this book, revealing nothing new about themselves. Not until the (overly long) epliogue is there any valuable dialog, any revelation.
My advice: if you loved the first two, don't ruin that experience by reading the third.

Cities of the Plain is the last of a The Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy. Everyone is probably familiar with All the Pretty Horses, so if you want to know what became of John Grady Cole, read this one. It picks up a few years after he left Mexico and his first love (if you don't count horses) behind and came back to the USA, where he works as a cowboy on a big ranch in a town across the border from Juarez. This time, he has the misfortune to fall in love with a beautiful young whore, and he determines to marry her.
John Grady's friend and mentor, Billy Parham (read The Crossing to learn his equally powerful story) tries to help him out - but to tell much more of this tale would be to tell too much.
Like in the other two books, McCarthy has a loooooooong passage of philosophy spoken as almost a monologue by some wise old dude. It's good stuff, but it's okay to skim through it if you're not in the mood for about 80 pages of a pretty good speech. It really has no bearing on the story; it's just McCarthy doing his thing.
I'd advise reading these books in the proper order; there's a pathos and continuity that can't be appreciated otherwise. However, they do read as complete within themselves, so, whatever. I flat out loved each one.

This was the most anticipated book on my list for quite a while. I consider All The Pretty Horses to be perhaps the finest novel I've read, and The Crossing profound, if a little turgid. Cities of the Plain is also incredibly well written, and I'd still read McCarthy's next book before any other, but there's no new ground here, stylistically or emotionally. Unlike some of the commentators who've griped that the Trilogy books aren't particularly realistic portrayals of cowboy life, I never expected them to be, but there's something almost comical about a knife-fighting pimp expressing his philosophy of life -- as articulately as only Cormac McCarthy can -- as he slices up Our Hero, whose suicidal urge is a little hard to fathom even if we knew he was a romantic. The book is certainly worth reading, but I hope no one starts the Trilogy with it.

I truly enjoyed reading the trilogy Cormac McCarthy has a unique style that paints such a vivid and raw image. The stories were excellent and I loved the way he bounced between Spanish and English. Great read!

In recent years, a lot of people have noticed that book clubs demand a lot of books. No surprise, but the next conclusion is that the taste of book club audiences influence what gets published. I think this is why we have books like "the Devil wore Prada" that are soon followed by "Prep." This is why people who read "Evensong" soon pick up "Brick Lane" and "The Liars Club." My wife belongs to a book club. They have read all of these books.

If men participated in books clubs to the same extent that women do (and I wish that they did), then Cormac McCarthy novels would spawn their own genre.

Cities of the Plain is not about balancing your career with your relationships. It is not about good shoes or good sex. It is about important things like falling in love with the impossibly wrong girl. It is about vast open spaces that leave room for men to make decisions. (Maybe that is what it takes.) Also, it is about horses and guns and blood and honor.

This is oversimplification. There is a specific plot: John Grady Cole works with his friend Billy Parham on a ranch near the border with Mexico. John Grady falls in love with a prostitute at a brothel on the other side. He wants to marry her. Their union is ill-fated.

John Grady feels that he loves her. To him, his love is worthless if it not worth dying for. That is the question he faces.

I encourage people to read this book. It is the last in a trilogy. It was my favorite of all three.

McCarthy finishes off the Border Trilogy with this absolute game killer of a book. This final part of the trilogy set in the early fifties in a rapidly changing America. John Grady (protagonist from the first book; All the Pretty Horses) and Billy Parham (protagonist from the second book; The Crossing, are friends working on a ranch just outside of Alamogordo New Mexico. The military is about to buy the land in which the small downtrodden ranch is located and is a signal that the old western ways are fast dying out. From the get go we know that this book is going to be a little different. It opens with us finding John and Billy in a brothel. The comedic interaction between the two facilitated by stunning dialogue had me laughing out loud. Although the rest of the book features the Cormac standard descriptions of tough life in the borderlands, the author lays on story of John finding love in a young, troubled Mexican prostitute who suffers from an unspecified malady. With increasing desperation John tries to come up with a scheme to rescue his love from the high end Mexican brothel she works in in Juarez and bring her back over the border to come and live with him in a small adobe shack he has renovated for them both. His friend Billy, tries to reason with him - citing that the villains that run the brothel as one of many problems John's plan faces - again via some brilliant and funny dialogue but begrudgingly lends a hand. It would impossible to go into more without giving too much away, but just when you think this is going to be the same old same old. McCarthy hits us with a conclusion and epilogue that is quite out of character for his usual. And by god it was juts the thing. An absolute classic story. do read All The Pretty Horses and The Crossing before this'un. But this book is way out there in terms of storytelling. As an author myself I could only look on in awe at the masterstrokes of who I consider to be the greatest living writer.

The conclusion of Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy is a solemn and beautiful exploration on the erosion of the classical west. McCarthy's dialog is truly masterful and naturalistic-the swing of the interactions paints a remarkably vivid picture of friendship and trust. We are also fed typical McCarthy elements: horrendous violence, prostitution, dog fights, horses, and sun-baked malaise. I found that the guarded and impenetrable nature of the protagonist's stoicism made them even more intriguing, and the climactic sequence demonstrates an impressive ability to manipulate tension. Cities of the Plain is a very fine aesthetic accomplishment, even if the concluding sequence is overly self-conscious and postmodern.

Cormac McCarthy cleaned up his larger than life prose without compromising his trademark beauty of language. The final volume of his award winning Border Trilogy is a clean, gritty tale of love and fate. The only book close to it in recent literature is Del Amor y Otros Demiones by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The love story isn't a study of love as much it is of a man's dreams, his views of life and his obsessions. All this leads to the violent climax and philosophical reckoning of its two major characters, John Grady Cole and Billy Parham who appeared respectively in the previus novels of the trilogy. Many reviews beginning to come in on Cities of the Plain have reviewed this novel as a novel unto itself. It isn't. It is the final novel of the trilogy but should be viewed as the final chapter of a masterwork. Regardless Cormac McCarthy has concluded with the best part. All the Pretty Horses was dreamy and beautiful. The Crossing was violent and existential. Now The Cities of the Plain has combined the best of his pre-Suttree novels and the best of the novels since then. McCarthy is a craftsman of prose, an artisan, and here, he is at top of his craft and art. This is a great novel. Read it. Savor it. Love it.

When I found out the two heroes of the first two books, John Grady Cole and Billy Parham, were united in this one, I went out of my mind to read it. Unfortunately this book is neither as exciting as "All the Pretty Horses" or as philosophically rich as "The Crossing." McCarthy's concentrating on the girl prostitute reveals his weakness in understanding a woman's viewpoint. "Cities of the Plain" works best in tandem with the first two books. Taking the trilogy as a whole, the necessity of this girl becomes clear, though that's up to the reader to pick up. The epilogue, which is really the epilogue for the whole trilogy, indicates the meaning of John Grady, of the women he loved -- and more importantly, the meaning of Billy. Get "Cities of the Plain" as the key to "All the Pretty Horses" and "The Crossing"; read the other two first.

First: I read the Border Trilogy this week. I haven't read any other McCarthy literature. I was told that if I liked Larry McMurtry, Steinbeck, and Salinger then I would love McCarthy. The first thing I bought was The Crossing. Upon realizing it was part of a trilogy with All The Pretty Horses as the first installment, I was very disappointed. I had no intrest in a Hollywood western novel. But, I grudgingly purchased All The Pretty Horses and read it. (Have not watched movie). That said...
Cormac McCarthy far surpasses any living writer with which I have come in contact. If I had the masterful ability with language that he does, I could express that in a much more emphatic manner.
Any reviewer who complains about things such as puncuation, grammer, or spanish-I feel compelled to respond with this:
1. Would you prefer that all painters created exact duplicates of their subject matter? Are we not better, as a society and as a species, for taking our interpretations further and showing those things we are already intimate with in a fresh or different way? Would you say 'cubism', for instance, is too complicated for you?
2. Are you 25 years old or less? Do you have any true ability to surive in a harsh world without parental aide? The struggles depicted in this novel would, of course, be difficult to fathom in that scenario, especially when teamed with non-traditional grammar and punctuation and a lack of a personal translator.
3. If neither of the two applies to a negative reviewer, perhaps your solution would be ritalin. It is supposed to assist in 'focus'.
On to the review:
All the Pretty Horses is the 'prettiest' of the three. The least bleak, possesses the least darkness. John Grady Cole, loses what he allows himself to lose. He is afforded by McCarthy some level of self determination. He rarely states a prediction that does not become so. He never throws a rope without catching what he intends. Even in the darkest scenes, if John Grady fights for something, he seems to get it.
The Crossing's main character was just the opposite. Billy Parnham will never get anything he for which he fights. He will always align himself most closely with a losing cause. It seems that he is completely asexual, and the closest bonds he forms almost always precede the demise of said character/animal.
There is something striking in the fact that the moral stance, character, sense of justice are nearly identical for John and Billy. Yet John wins, and Billy loses. Repeatedly. Yet it is Billy who survives all contests, all tragedies, all of his closest bonds. Billy's 'heart' is never joined with any group or idea or convention larger than land and animals. At some points his 'heart' is rejected; but is his survival possibly attributed to his lack of truly 'giving' his 'heart' to any passionate cause? The passion Billy gives us in the final scene of The Crossing, the self-realization and anger and utter despairing are so exceedingly rare that your tears are nearly required after finishing this book.
As you might be able to tell, it would take far more than the 1000 word limit to fully explore the metaphors, symbolism, or intentions of McCarthy's characters.
The Cities on the Plain brings the two that abadonded their families in favor of the dust of the road together in this final installment. While personally jostled by Billy's transition from complete and total sorrow (in the conclusion of The Crossing) to the casual, easy going buddy (in the opening of The Cities), that is the only fault worth mentioning.
The theme may or may not be this: We don't know anything and neither does anyone else. The nuggets of wisdom that our heroes encounter from the journeying, extrapolating, strangers they meet are proof of this, and, an indication that these books could be re-read hundreds of times.
The Crossing, in my view, is the strongest of the three, with The Cities of the Plain second and All the Pretty Horses, obviously, third. The Cities of the Plain would be wasted as read without the other two.

Make no mistake on Cities: It is the weakest of the Trilogy... But owing to McCarthy's writing it is still a wonderful journey. Watch out as you read, because at least 200 of the 292 pages are simply three or four ranch hands bullshitting about everything from the best rifle for coyote to how to make fence to how to get howlin'-at-the-moon drunk to how best get a piece of tail in a cat house. Believe me, I've heard plenty of cowboys shooting the breeze and the IQ level is no better than room temperature - the topics about as appealing. What I'm trying to say is this: 200 pages of bunk house batter gets real old, real quick. You find yourself screaming, "When in hell am I going to get some story here?!" I wanted plotting like Horses and Crossing... I would venture to guess that McCarthy fell prey to what got Hemingway in the end: He wrote several real great books loaded with wonderful dialog and people swooned all over him telling him how great it w! ! as. And I'd bet too that writing dialog for McCarthy was real easy. You can guess the rest: He over wrote dialog on this book much like Hemingway did with Trees later in his career. Now don't get me wrong, there are excellent passages in the book. Most notable is the knife fight in the end - haven't read better violence in quite some time. My stomach felt ripped open and my leg hurt for the rest of the night... Bravo on those pages. The Epilogue was wordy, impossible - a failure... I felt like a prisoner on those pages - much like I feel when Faulkner takes me on a flowery ride in Go Down Moses or something. Now don't get me wrong, Cities is worth a read and when coupled with the Trilogy, strong. Make no mistake, it is the Weak Sister of the litter, but such a wonderful departure from his early works where the main character kept dead bodies in a cave and buggered them regularly... I'll take a knife fight in a whore house alley any day over that....

I read a review of Cities of the Plain in the Philadelphia Inquirer in which the reviewer said McCarthy was no good at flushing out women. I read all three books of the Border Triology to find out about men who are cowboys -- if I want to know about women I look into myself, talk to my friends, read Joan Didion or Laurie Colwin. McCarthy is so good at describing men in love and what they will do to get their women, how they are torn up when they lose their women. At the same time his men are falling in love, he shows them as professional cowboys who cope with bad circumstances to do the job at hand: his men persevere. Though his characters may try to take care of each other, this is an impossible task when it comes to willful men and women. I also like the tension he shows between Mexico and the U.S. -- the dangers in our country attempting to dominate Mexico and how ill will plays out in personal relationships. After I finished Cities of the Plain, it was hard to pick up another book -- feeling sad about John Grady and still wishing it wasn't so awful, knowing I won't get into another novel until I find characters like McCarthy's who wrap you up in their longing and dreams.

This final installment to the Border Trilogy, like the preceding volumes, stands on it own, but stands on it's own less than either of the other two.

This wouldn't be the book to read if you've never read Big Mac before. If you're a hardcore reader, go for Blood Meridian (his best). Or Suttree (his other best). If you're testing the water, and only used to reading pop crime novls or medical mysteries and want to delve a little deeper, start with All the Pretty Horses and work your way into the rest.

What's it like? Think of Faulkner, then have him write a John Steinbeck story, with Hemmigway editing.

Mac is better than Steinbeck, has more flower than Hemmingway, not as much as Faulkner.

But make no mistake, he work is peer to the old masters. America's finest living author.

Readers, there are many problems with the Border Trilogy: the infuriating too-clever-by-half use of Spanish, which to a someone with little more than a basic grasp of the language, leaves large chucks of dialogue opaque; McCarthy's difficulty, at times, in rendering what he is describing as truly and eloquently visible; a penchant for repetitious overly dragged out scenes (how many times in The Crossing did Billy really have to wander from town to town, towards the end of the book?) - but the Cities of the Plain completes what is unquestionably a masterpiece of American literature. What great work of art is not flawed? Thank God for the flaws, in fact, so we have them to counter-pose against the great moments in the three books and therefore see them as truly rare pieces of writing.
So many reviewers have questioned the ending of Cities of the Plain. I fail - so sadly - to see why. Quite simply it is heart-breaking, devastatingly beautiful. Billy's final scene - the very last pages of the book - are almost too painful to read. Few books reduce me to tears - and to be able to do so is, for me, the mark of greatness - but McCarthy tore the heart from my body in the final moments of his trilogy. All I can say is, 'Poor, poor Billy'. To make a reader love a character is perhaps the surest sign of a talent that verges on brilliance. The epilogue has to stand with the work of Beckett in its ruthlessly bleak, but loving and tender, summation of human life.
Like the most memorable books, the characters McCarthy has created - John Grady and Billy - will stay with you forever. Leaving them will be terrible. But remembering them as clay in the hands of a great writer - and the lives they lived for us - will remain a life-affirming gift.
But please, for the love of God, read the books in the correct order - to do otherwise would reduce a reckoning with literature, that should change your soul, to an experience that is all but pointless.
You will enjoy these novels - although there are moments where you will be angry with McCarthy for letting himself down and not living up to the peerless standards he has set for himself as a writer - but in the end, when you close Cities of the Plain and put the trilogy down, you will be a better - if sadder - human being.

This book was a good finish to the border trilogy. McCarthy has portrayed the loss of the old west in devestating fasion. The men in his world are no longer desperat boys, but men desperate for more out of life. The west as they knew it is ending in front of their eyes and their desperation about this fact leads them to desperate acts. His two characters learn in hard fasion that "you can't go back again." Once again, McCarthy has painted the beauty of the landscape in his words intertwined with the violence of life. This is an emotionally exhuasting book well worth the read.

Of the three novels that comprise Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy, Cities of the Plain is probably the least realized. McCarthy buries the plot in a wealth of details and sidetracks. The details are amazing, the sidetracks rich, but they distract from the overall thrust of the novel. When McCarthy gets back to the main action, there is the feeling that something vital has been lost. The sense of urgency between the two main characters has been all but submerged. Loose ends just don't tie together.

Certainly, this novel should be read. As part of the trilogy, it is a necessary addition. The coda provides an end to the Billy Parham saga. But the book gets lost along the way. The reader just needs to hang on and trust McCarthy's skills as a storyteller to get us there.

be sure to read ALL THE PRETTY HORSES and THE CROSSING before jumping into the third of this trilogy by Cormac McCarthy..it brings you John Grady Cole from PRETTY HORSES and Billy Parham from THE CROSSING..working as ranch hands in New Mexico..their life consists of trail drives, horse auctions and stories by the campfire...their lives change forever when John falls in love with a Mexican prostitute..Billy agrees to help resuce her and the ensuing events told in the masterful words of Cormac McCarthy make for a classic story that will stay with you for a long time..

Although Cities of the Plain doesn't lead the reader through as much of the McCarthian borderland as the previous 2/3 of the trilogy, the finale takes us to a place of even greater mystery - a place where a new western mythology is built around our beloved cowboys as they struggle with the end of their era. The imagery of the novel from the crucified owl to the doomed epileptic prostitute provides the symbolic stepping stones for the reader to intuit the psychological struggle of the heroes. McCarthy's words provide a startling example of the brilliant evolution of our language.

Cities of the Plain brings together one main character from each of the first two books in a powerful conclusion to the "Border Trilogy," certainly worth of its predecessors. At times terribly dark, yet with what I perceive to be a gleam of meaning or redemption by the end. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of humor between the men. I'll come back to this one, the whole trilogy in fact, again and again.

Having completed the entire trilogy in the last three weeks, I was deeply moved by the sadness of how death cut down these youth in their prime. From the first book's exciting evocative descriptions of the West, there was never again anything so lyrical as the author's ability to paint pictures of sky, horses, cowboys at work and their shorthand communication. I loved the compassionate portrayal of poor honest Mexicans and the fatalistic violence controlling the destinies of so many people. [I struggled with the spanish - but I think I caught most of it - what a master of dialogue!] I most confess that I had real problems appreciating the epilogue - I guess I have to go back and re-read that!

Regarding McCarthy's finale to the Border Trilogy, and following along with the common thread throughout his corpus thusfar, comes a deep if complex sense of satisfaction. Somewhat 'visceral', as if having come up from the ground and through the feet into ones' body, ones' embodiment, is how the act of reading his work could be described. The characters unfold into a tale in an amorphous fashion, indeterminate and fascinating, not unlike 'they'whom we meet in extemporary experience, perhaps not unlike that which refers to us 'as ourselves'. The story line moves forward in an unconventional manner, deftly avoiding serial connections into a narrow beam of easily discerned plot markers. No, with McCarthy, one walks into a landscape of great breadth and sensate qualities, buttressed by the detailed description of settings themselves that tie you as reader, co-conspirator, into his inner world creation. One wonders at times whether it is the characters history you are reading, or that of your own? The reading therefore is requiring of a dialogue between the author and you as participant, and this occurs seamlessly; you participate in his creations. The context of the tale, it's continuation in this case to a finale, revolves around change, around a dissemination of a once known world and its ways, into an uncertain future. There is consanguinity with our times in this, as has been expressed throughout the time of humanity's fumbling progression toward an unknown future. It isn't always pleasant, often profound, mostly mystifying {eventually}, and McCarthy splays this outward and across the pages, mindful at times of Philip Larkin's poem, 'Aubade' wherein, "the dread of dying, and being dead, flashes afresh to hold and horrify." Yet there is hope. There is hope; there are characters and events, segues, histories, amusements, burlesques, all richly allayed and of deep and insightful rendering, all leading into a landscape of eternity wherein we put the last page of the novel down. We could! then, perhaps, walk outside, observe the clouds rolling by, and feel a part of the unfolding of the world, It is in part our world, along with all the worlds richness which we are infused within. McCarthy's novel, as in all his corpus, brings us home. It remains to be seen whether our home will be the same thereafter.

I couldn't wait to read this book after reading and enjoying the first two book of the border triology. "All the Pretty Horses" is my favorite book of the series; the writing is lovely in its description of the western landscape and the cowboy lifestyle that is disappearing in the modern world. The beginning of the second book, "The Crossing", is marvelous in its evocation of the link between man and nature, and natures link to the true law or character of our world. The rest of the book had too much philosophy and mysticism for me, but it was still an interesting read. "Cities of the Plains", the final book of the triology, has both the main characters from the previous novels. This is my least favorite of the three, but I still think McCarthy's work is of a very high caliber. In this novel he tries to combine the themes (death of the western lifestyle, the existence of a world of truth beyond our own, the indifference of the universe to the events of our lives) of the previous two two novels. I think that he ultimately succeeds but the much of the writing does not contain the lyrical beauty and poinancy of the first two novels. I also find the habit of writing some of the important dialogue between two characters in Spanish very annoying. It is difficult enough to understand what is meant in the passages of this book, as McCarthy does not express or explain the thoughts or emotion of his characters, without trying to understand the Spanish. Also the end of the book contains a mystical, philisophical conversation about a dream which may be puzzling to some readers, although I think that it enhances the meaning of the plot and themes of the novel. I recommend this book as a challenging and interesting read, especially if you have read the previous two novels of the border triology.

There is little doubt to me that McCarthy is the best living American writer, and that even his weaker work (which Cities of the Plain unfortunately is) is still better than anything else I have read since The Crossing. McCarthy should be commended for having the courage to take up an impossible task. The worlds of All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing do not really intersect. The former is McCarthy at his grittiest and most realistic (even more so that in Suttree and Blood Meridian whose intensity pushed past realism)and the latter is McCarthy at his metaphysical best, combining the everyday observation and heartbreaking poetry with a philosophical sophistication usually lacking in contemporary American writing. The Crossing combined early McCarthy weirdness with the straighforward parched power of his Texan phase. Cities of the Plain should have sounded more like The Crossing. That is the way McCarthy was obviously trying to go, but I suspect that he lost his nerve to some extent. His treatment of the metaphysical has always been unabashed, and just as the wolf was the conceptual persona of the Crossing, the central image around which all of the poetry and thought cohered, so Magdalena should have been in this novel. McCarthy made a step in that direction by making her disease a kind of ersatz sacrament. The philosophy of love, of mystery (and of the false search for mystery), of death, of the innocence of degradation, all cohere around the figure of the girl. But where is the poetry around her? Where are the speculations, the lyric flights, the gravity of an image taken up and filled with meaning? Take this passage from The Crossing, when Billy buries the wolf: "He took up her stiff head out of the leaves and held it or he reached to hold what cannot be held, what already ran among the mountains at once terrible and of great beauty, like flowers that feed on flesh. What blood and bone are made of but can themselves not make on any altar nor by any wound of war. What we may well believe has! the power to cut and shape and hollow out the dark form of the world surely if wind can, if rain can. But which cannot be held never be held and is no flower but is swift and a huntress and the wind itself is in terror of it and the world cannot lose it." Where are such passages in Cities of the Plain? The girl was the perfect image on which to base the novel, but I worry that McCarthy feared such a speculation would not be accepted (the woman as muse, as metaphysical conduit, etc). Too bad. He would have done it beautifully. What he does do is push the life of Billy Parham even further past the point at which he left him in The Crossing. He also gives us a picture of John Grady Cole that opens up his reticence and makes it even more poignant. How do we fit into the world, and into the picture of the world we carry with us? How does loss push past negativity to become the very materiality of our lives? "This life of yours is not a picture of the world. It is the world itself and it is composed not of bone or dream or time but of worship" There is much beauty and truth to be found in this novel. McCarthy is probably the only living American writer who knows that great writing is not done with personalities, but with those forces, natural and supernatural that make possible what we recognize as the personal, the psychological, the ethical. Read Cities of the Plain (and the rest of McCarthy) before you read any of McCarthy's contemporaries.

Cities of the Plain is quite different from the first 2 installments, but it is no less powerful. Cities' narrative focus is tighter, with a greater emphasis on dialogue which makes much of CM's signature descriptive work stand out in even greater relief. He brings the west and the men and women and creatures that inhabit it to life as only he can and I highly recommend it (you need not have read the first 2 of the border trilogy to enjoy Cities, but I wouldn't have missed them for anything).
There has been some criticism of the doomed love affair--criticism with which I do not agree. This aspect of the book seemed ultimately convincing and effective to me, and fit with my understanding of the character. Further, it was consistent with the larger theme of a person's ability/need to imagine a world that is good, a world of possibility, but that imagining is almost an act of self defense b/c it is in direct contradiction to the way the world really is, and the way things tend to go for us mortals.
My one criticism is that it was concise and tight--these are virtues, of course, but I wanted even more to chew on. Not mentally, because the book lingers with the power of its story and the great writing, but in terms of pure volume. This is an extremely short work (particularly considering the ample margins and generous sections of dialogue). I found myself slowing down toward the middle of the book to make it last. Obviously this is less a critique--wishing the book were longer--than a compliment. So I guess I will have to satisfy myself with re-reading Cities or revisiting some of his earlier work.

There's no telling what kind of pressure McCarthy must have felt when setting out to present a finality to the original novel that made him a National Book Award winner. Despite any inadequate feelings he might have had (though I personally doubt any existed), McCarthy produced a novel that was powerful in itself succussful and did not mimic all of the elements that made ATPH a success. While Cities of the Plain did not surpass ATPH's greatness, McCarthy still transcended a genre that I would ordinarily turn away from and made it wonderful and beautiful, as well as dark and horrific. I personally applaud McCarthy for beginning the grittiness that the story requires from the start. While he seemed to start off soft in ATPH and The Crossing, there were seedy clubs, dirty cowboys, and mexican whores from page 1. Though he did begin his style right off and carried it throughout the novel, the plot was a little different. The main story of John Grady's love affair with the Mexican prostitute emerged slowly, halfway through the book a reader might not be able to explain what it is actually about. Another interesting technique employed by McCarthy is dumping the reader into a myraid of new characters, revealing nothing of thier identities beforehand, and leaving the reader to sort through it all. Though all of this is profound in itself, McCarthy's best technique is the use of blood imagery, particulary the violent deaths of animals.

All three of the books are a great read. Descriptions of horses,frontier families, man,wild dogs, wolf, first love, the land, the weather, the stars and relationships between the young and wise invite you to become part of the stories. I know that they're working on the first book/Pretty Horses as a movie, but would like to see it as a total story and perhaps the way Hollywood does things, it will become like the "Godfather," parts one, two and three.

I read the previous installments of the Border Trilogy, each in one day. After 70 pages of this one, I had to put it down. Maybe my time is more valuable now that I am out of college, but I just couldn't justify any more time with this one. The scene with the epileptic prostitute was downright embarrassing. Throughout my 70 pages with this book I couldn't help but feel as self-conscious as McCarthy must have felt while writing this drivel. Cormac, do yourself a favor and sell the movie rights for Blood Meridian to Robert Rodriguez--it pays more and if it's as dull as this book, at least the blame will fall on someone else's shoulders.

I read this final volume of the "Border Trilogy" because I had read the first two. I was massively disappointed with the plot. It is far more pessimistic and dark than the first two volumes, and can leave the reader depressed. Yes, indeed, the language is as outstanding as ever, and one can hear the authentic speech of people in the particular place and time, but personally, I found that to be another reason to find the plot depressing: the more you feel for the characters, the more you want them to come out of the story at least somewhat intact.

All I can say without giving away too much is that those of us who feel compelled to finish this set of books need to get ready for a serious downer.

Frank Muller, reading CITIES ON THE PLAIN, captures Cormac McCarthy's western characters, his unique rhythm, and voice with such profound understanding that this recording itself is an American classic. A story of commitment and loss, CITIES ON THE PLAIN explores the relationship of John Grady Cole, a maverick innocent holding to principles as pure as the nature of horses in a land reshaped by forces of corruption, and his world-wise companion Billy Parham, who shares his convictions for the sake of loyalty and friendship. Cole's quest to rescue and marry a teenage prostitute from across the border, becomes not just an obsession but a meditation that gains strength with each encounter in the novel. With moments of high comedy and tragedy, the adventures of John Grady Cole and Billy Parham attain a philosophical resonance found in Melville and Morrison. Frank Muller casts McCarthy's spell upon his audience, revealing the author in all of his strength. The power of this novel is not easily shaken off. It will stay with you along with Muller's performance.

To say I was disapointed in the book would be true, yet it is still one of the best books I've read recently.
I was disappointed that we did not learn more about Billy and john Grady. Obviously, more could have been done to compare their pasts and their "comings of age". Very little was offered to help us understand how their experiences in the other books shaped their view of the world.
As with the other books, this story paints a wonderful image of the landscape...it almost becomes another character in the book.
The threat of the military taking the land looms over the story, yet McCarthy never makes effective use of it.
I was left wanting more but completely satisfied.
Once again I was frustrated with my inadequate Spanish dictionary. I know I am missing numerous subtle points because of McCarthy's constant use of Spanish dialoge. Frustrating, but I fear that something would be lost if he used English for these characters. Maybe the publisher will offer an edition with English footnotes.

I had heard bad things about this book, so I was hesitant about reading it. And to be honest, I was disappointed to see John Grady Cole and Billy Parham united. Billy wasn't much of a surprise, but after the end of ALL THE PRETTY HORSES I didn't expect to see John Grady again. Eventually I was able to put my preconceptions aside and discovered that I was reading a marvelous book. The essence of ranch life is captured in all its painful detail. The death of this way of life is felt with every word, and the entire plot of the novel seems to be a metaphor for that extinction. The lyricism of McCarthy's writing was ever-present. Vastly superior to THE CROSSING.

This is a book that requires a lot of patience from the reader who must at times think he is in the Mild rather than the Wild West despite the ending that is straight out of High Noon when the good guy meets the bad guy.

The basis of the plot - a young American cowhand who falls in love with a Mexican prostitute and his determination to free her from the clutches of her pimp - promises and provides an exciting (if melodramatic) ending.

The idea is ridiculous, of course, and the writer does not give a convincing enough reason to justify it - whether over-the-top Wuthering Heights-type passion or bodice-ripping corny love story.

As a result, the book is structurally weak and the climax is predictable.

However, that is not the only problem. McCarthy's buildup is so slow that the reader is lassoed into a series of detours and trips that are maddeningly slow - numbing descriptions of meals in which every forkful of food is described or grinding dialogue between cowhands that make you scream out for some action.

Here are a couple of samples of what to expect:

Mornin cowboy, he said.
|Mornin. What happened to the windshield?
Owl.
Owl?
Owl.

Or

I know who you are, he said.
You know who I am?
Yes.
Who am I?
You are the trujaman.
What's that?
You don't speak spanish?
I speak spanish.

When the Big Scene arrives and the all-American hero faces the Mexican baddy, we end up with dialogue that reads like something from Graham Greene's absurd Argentinean novelist Dr Saavedra whose dense books always end up in knife fights and a body lying in a pool of blood on the floor.

I wonder if McCarthy read The Honorary Consul, in which Saavedra appears, where one of the main characters, an Englishman, also marries a prostitute.

On the hand, some scenes are well written and exciting - the opening pages in a sleazy cantina-cum-brothel or a long description of a hunt for pack of wild dogs that has been ravaging a herd.

The style - no punctuation to show dialogue, idiosyncratic dropping of capitals and raw American dialect mixed with whole sentences in Spanish - is another feature that takes getting used to.

Overall this is not a bad read but I feel the writer imagines that his blunt, stark prose is enough to convey what is a rather feeble plot and clichéd dialogue. Despite this, I rather liked the book overall.

On the other hand, if the blurb comments are to be believed then many critics feel that McCarthy is one of the US's greatest writers, a claim I find it difficult to take seriously.

Two friends try to "hang on" to the passing age of cowboys in New Mexico. Modern days are fast approaching sending them to Mexico which still offers a taste of the Old West. Poetic narrative prose holds interest and respect in a novel that becomes a tragedy. Worthwhile read.
Evelyn Horan - teacher/counselor/author
Jeannie, A Texas Frontier Girl Books One - Three

O.K., O.K., I finally finished reading "Cities of the Plain" so now I can say that I did it, but I can't honestly say that I found the experience to be very enjoyable. There is much in this book to be loved, savored, treasured forever - no one, and I mean no one, writes dialogue like McCarthy - but . . . he typically displays enough of his annoying "artistic" idiosyncracies and affectations to make this a very frustrating and, ultimately, unsatisfying read. His extensive use of Spanish, his mystical, long-winded, wise men, his character's constant spitting (what's up with that?), yet another climactic knife fight . . . . I could go on, but what's the point? What is so aggravating about McCarthy is that he is The Man - the one author, in my opinion, capable of writing the perfect book, but DAMN HIM he just won't cooperate - - - he just keeps writing like Cormac McCarthy. I can't imagine living the rest of my life without having read this boo! ! k, but you couldn't make me sit through reading it again.

Just like the previous books in this series Mr. McCarthy effectively captures the mythic elements of the American West and it's eventual destruction under the weight of encroaching civilization. The dialogue and the descriptions are as strong as ever for him and the tragedy of all the characters was conveyed quite heart breakeningly. These qualities will cause many to consider "Cities of the Plains" a "a great book...a classic". Unfortunately, I cannot echo this sentiment. You see, I was captured by Mr. McCarthy with "All The Pretty Horses". An adventure/morality tale of bravery and youth. Perhaps I wanted "Cities of the Plains" to recreate this and am dissapointed that it did not. All this considered, I encourage you to read this book.

This is the final and, perhaps, my most adored of McCarthy's Border Trilogy. The brilliant dialogue, the breathtaking description, and the tragic beauty of the story all leave me awestruck. McCarthy is as fearless as he is masterful. If there is any hazard to reading McCarthy's fiction it is that you will never be quite so satisfied with anyone else's. There is no living writer who can approach his talent.

I like the liberal use of Spanish in this novel. It's rhythmic and adds authenticity to it. John Grady speaks nearly flawless Spanish except on page 55 when inquiring to the barman about the whereabouts of the young prostitute. He says "Eres muy joven or You're very young." He meant to use the third person "Es muy joven or she's very young." He's lucky the barman didn't punch him for propositioning him.

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.

As he does in his other books, McCarthy writes in layers. Here, the story is simple and pure, but the subtext is deep and heartfelt. His vivid descriptions of the western landscape and the contrasting crisp dialogue of the characters, weave effortlessly together. In this story, the reader will travel from ranches to bars and brothels, from horses to whores, from knife-fights to love-making.
Now maybe you don't like westerns, and maybe McCarthy can't make you want to be a cowboy, but he will make you understand a cowboy's life, and he will lay out the simple truths that seem so basic and real when you're sitting in a saddle or sleeping under the stars. And it is these simple truths that we sometimes forget in our stressed-out world.
Read this book.

the most easily read book of "The Border Trilogy." The story is easy to follow and didn't leave me as confused as the others. The previous main characters were brought into a world I am more familiar with.
I can't say I enjoyed all of the authors choices, but the book is definitely worth reading. Especially before reading the reviews.

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.

This is by far the most emotionally engaging and thrilling book out of the border trilogy. The way that Cormac McCarthy can incorporate comedy, love, hate, and suspense all together in this book always left me wanting to read more. The friendship between Billy and John always warmed my heart with their jokes and the way that they will always be there for one another. This book jumps from emotion to emotion and has a unforgettable ending that will forever stay in my heart. The life lessons in this story have changed some of my perspectives on life and have touched me in ways I can not describe. This was an excellent end to the trilogy that no one should go without experiencing.

McCarthy's books mean more to me than almost any I've read--anywhere, ever. But praising a fatally flawed book does no one any good. Nor does guessing at the interplay of forces and pressures that occasioned its birth. It's a mess. I thank God for McCarthy in this world of literary lemmings. But not because of _Cities._

One quick thought after finishing this novel. As in the previous two books of the trilogy, this novel displays two of McCarthy's strengths: evocative description of man in the landscape and the musings of startlingly erudite, mysterious strangers (as in the epilogue). As for me, I'll take the landscape, e.g.: "They were met upon a clay floodplain bereft of grass or any growing thing and the only sound the wind made was in their clothes. The dark clouds stood banked in a high wall to the north and a thin and soundless wire of lightning appeared there and quivered and vanished again. The rider leaned and spat and waited." (page 231)

Every bit as good as the two previous works comprising the Border Tilogy. McCarthy's feel for the southwest is unsurpassed. His use of language puts the reader in the story and when it comes to the knifefight; Whew! You feel the blade as it slices the outer layer of your skin.

Not everyone will like the author's style and stories but they ring true and are well crafted. McCarthy is not a happy ever after kind of author so do not expect everyone to ride off into the sunset smiling.

Cities of the Plain presents a challenge for any reader who mistakenly chooses to bypass the first two painstakingly accurate and eloquent tales of the American Southwest with its ever present magical realism. Perhaps McCarthy has ascended the same breathtaking pinnacles in "Big Bend" to scan the Mexican horizon or has dug his fingers in the sandy dust of the desert scrubland, all the while assimilating those same visions of his characters Billy Parham and John Grady. Through his intricate Romantic descriptions of the Southwest, I have become a believer in the lure of the 'cities of the plain'.

A very difficult read. Normally I have difficulty in putting a book down but with this one the difficulty was picking it up. The lack of punctuation was very off putting. I sometimes had to read passages over and over before understanding who was speaking to whom and then the Spanish would start and I'd be lost again.
However, there were a few touching passages and the ending ALMOST brought a tear to my eye. But overall it was rather disappointing. The sentences were too long, the descriptions a bit too descriptive (to the point you forgot what he was describing) and the Spanish just too annoying.
I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone.

This is a different book than the first two installments of the trilogy. It is much more concise and an easier read than the first two. Does this make it less of a book? On its own,this is still better than anything currently being published. It was an almost impossible task trying to combine the two main characters of each book and improve on them. It would be a shame not to read this book because it is different than the first two. I can't hope to read a better new book this year.

This is the most engaging and entertaining of the border trilogy. Compared to the first two novels, the characters have more life and, because they are older, their dialogue has more liveliness. The characters and the plot show great wit. Simultaneously, they evoke strong empathy.
Then there is the bonus of the epilogue. In it, the author uses the metaphor of a dream to show us how he relates to his characters. It is a revealing confession of the degree/lack of control and of responsibility he feels for the characters' behavior. I really enjoyed this book.

Well, I suppose I will be the one to stand against the stream on this one. McCarthy was a little disappointing in his third installment of the Border Trilogy. It was well written, but he fails in Cities much the way other writers fail in making their books much too predictable. All the Pretty Horses was excellent because you did not know where you would end. By the end of The Crossing McCarthy had started his characters down the path of destruction, and we knew it.
By the way, do not become too enchanted with Cormac's descriptions of life as a southwestern cowpuncher. His verbal paintings of the geography are fantastic, but his understanding of the people are simplistic.

To be honest, after reading the first two books in the series, I was a little surprised by this novel. It's a lot less ambitious and a lot quieter (relatively speaking). Still, Mccarthy remains a marvelous stylist and I found Cities of the Plain a true joy.

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.

I have read this book. I have read the trilogy. I am humbled by the experience.
I read also most of the reviewers' reviews. In fact I don't remember how I first heard of McCarthy. But I read the first two books and watched out for the third. When it was published, in anticipation, I re-read the first two.
I also hear everyone say how much they think that McCarthy is America's greatest living writer. That may well be. But please, give the guy a break. He's excellent, but I want more and more and more of this stuff.
Let him get on with it.

Enjoyed this book very much. Always feel sad when I think about this book. I think that the 'knife fight' scene is great. Would seem impossible to me to have read the first two books and not 'the ending'. I look at the 'boys' as metaphors of myself in the ways that they would rather 'pay the price' than 'obey the rules'.

Absolute Masterpiece. The entire trilogy sings....The Crossing being my current favorite. I'm so grateful for this work. PS...if your Spanish is rusty like mine...seek out the translations online. The dialogue is critical. Me entiendes?

What a letdown this book was! With such a strong start in "All the Pretty Horses" that continued a bit less strong in "The Crossing," this third of the trilogy ends predictably and most unsatisfactorily. It's hard to believe the same author (and one of America's best) wrote "Blood Meridian" and "The Orchard Keeper." One can only hope Mr. McCarthy will recover from this mediocre effort and resume his true form as one of the preeminant authors in America today.

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.

Macarthy's final book of the Border Trilogy is indeed, a depiction of the final chapter of the great American mythic hero, the cowboy. Eminent domain, the love of horses, a beautiful Mexican prostitute, authentic dialogue, the sad old rancher...they're all here, along with Macarthy's other, omniscient character, the landscape. Maybe a brush a little too broad this time, but he's definitely got the dialogue down.

This novel is one of the greatest eulogies to the American frontier. Two of my favorite characters in literature come together, proving to be the antithesis of each other, yet having so much in common. That was what touched me about Cities of the Plain: the interaction between John Grady and Billy. Both with different backgrounds, reflected in everything they do.

Cowboy 1: Hey, Bud, did you read that new book by Cormac? Cowboy 2: I might of looked at it. 1: Care to opine? 2: Well, I've read better. 1: You can say that again. 2: John Grady deserved better'n that. 1: I don't know if him or the dog was better off. 2: And how bout that epilogue! 1: I know, what you're sayin', Bud. I mean I gotta blow my nose in the morning, but I don't share it with strangers I meet. 2: I guess ol Cormac thought predictable and windblown was the way to go on that one.

Mr. McCarthy's writing remains powerful and his gifts evident. The epilogue adds a mystical slant to the story that is very thought-provoking. The dialogue betweeen Billy and the dreamer alone is worth the purchase price.

This is a wonderful reading of the closing "chapter" of Cormac McCarthy's Border trilogy, but it's terribly abridged. A pity--it's one of the best things Brad Pitt has ever done. McCarthy has really stumbled upon a most engaging formula: Aeschylus meets Louis L'Amour.

While I will be the first to admit a bad day reading McCarthy beats hell out of a good day reading anyone else, I couldn't shake the notion that the entire border trilogy has been watered down from McCarthy's best. For as much as I enjoyed this book, what it made want to do most was go back and reread Sutree or Blood Meridian.

Although I am not a fan of Western frontier stories, I found this book a fantastic experience. McCarthy's writing style and attention to detail places you on the Mexican ranch, riding an Arabian stallion! The characters were dynamic and gallant.

Wait...wait...wait...wait...wait...wait, and for nothing! Billy and John Grady would have been disappointed to know how poorly the book and their lives turned out. Cities of the Plain lacks sound and fury and still signifies nothing. We all deserve better.

Did I read a different book than the other reviewers? 'Cities of the Plain' was absolutely terrible. I can't believe I managed to make it through the whole thing. I listened to it on cassette so I guess it must have been Brad Pitt's voice that kept me going...because it sure wasn't the writing. It was overly descriptive of background stuff that wasn't essential to the plot and that I didn't care about. The plot was flat and predictable. Don't waste your time or money!

Being a fan of such authors as J.R.R. Tolkien, H.G. Wells, and C.S. Lewis, I figured I'd try and broaden my horizons by reading a book about the American West, a sort of historical fiction that might be entertaining.

I did some research and Cormac McCarthy seemed to be the author to start with. He got very good reviews (from this site and professional critics). I find it amazing that he received such great reviews... this book failed to impress me in the slightest bit. The book seemed to fly away from the plot for a while and suddenly, unexpectedly return to it. I have never read a book like that before. After completing this book I had found out more about the life of a prostitute than I ever wanted to know and also I received a free lesson in swearing. I understand that it was custom in the West to swear, and dealings with prostitutes was common, but I think McCarthy went over the top. This made it uninteresting and redundant. Then there was the fact that he rarely used punctuation other than periods, question marks, and exclamation marks. I did not see a single quotation mark and the word "and" was excessevely overused due to the exclusion of commas. Dialogue was at times hard to follow and seemingly run-on sentences were monotonous. After reading this book I also felt ignorant being uneducated in the Spanish language. Much of the dialogue I could not understand in the least bit. There were entire conversations written exclusively in Spanish at times when it seemed relevant. I felt like I missed a lot of important information in the story.

I did find that at time McCarthy did use some beautifully crafted language but the formerly mentioned factors left a very bad impression on me. I don't suppose I'll ever read a book by Cormac McCarthy again.

I am listening to the cd version of the book. This narrator is killing me!!! I am so bored and annoyed.
I have blanked out over 100 times and the reader's voice is horrible, he's so breathy and boring. I am trying to finish this book but I dunno...

I would love to read this trilogy on my Kindle, but why have book 3 of a trilogy on Kindle and NOT book one? It doesn't make sense to promote any part of a series in a Kindle email when the entire series is not available for Kindle!