In some ways this is a really ruthless book. The figure of the cowboy is given no possible redemption, no future. But what were we expecting? From the first it was clear that guys like John Grady and Billy are unforgivably short-sighted. They never "see" Mexico, they only fantasize about it (something for all you people who complained about the Spanish to think about--get a damn dictionary, for pity's sake!) They think of themselves as masters of all they survey, and as a direct result they end up dead or in despair.
And yet, and yet, and yet . . .
This is also a very serene and forgiving book that captures, more than any other western I can think of, the reality of the cowboy as worker--starved, broke, hanging on to the ranching life out of some kind of genuine love. If you get bored reading about the details of ranch life, just go read some pulp cowbody romance with shoot-outs and steamy sex scenes and get it over with.
McCarthy doesn't tell us which of his two visions of the cowboy is the true one, but he does leave them separate with no attempt to solve the problem he's laid out. I don't know whether this is good or bad, but McCarthy has brought a clarity and honesty to the Western that it was badly in need of.
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.