The Border Trilogy

And then I was in a truck stop in Amarillo, Texas when I was 21 years old, and there was an audio book.

I didn't know anything about the author, and it was an abridged version of Cities of the Plain, which is the third volume in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy.

And I think it was read by Brad Pitt.

Oh, wow.

We talked about this.

I'm not saying that anybody should drop what they're doing, but put it on a list.

The Border Trilogy, you will not waste any time reading that.

I have a list of executions we're supposed to have in order to maintain this guild.

Okay, books.

You love Cormac McCarthy and the Border Trilogy.

Yeah, I got a lot of love of books from my mum, actually.

I gotta say, like she's like a really big reader and great taste in books, but she was coming over to see me when I was living in New York, actually, and she went into Waterstones, I think, and asked, for some recommendation recommendation but she was coming to new york um but this guy recommended this book which is set in um it's it's kind of around the border like you know texas new mexico and then crosses over into mexico a lot um so but so she got it and she absolutely loved it so she told me to read it and it was a couple years later i read it but um Yeah, it's just an epic saga.

Now, Blood Meridian, this is a book, if you have not read Cormac McCarthy before, I do not recommend starting here.

I recommend reading the Border Trilogy instead.

So if you're someone who's curious about Cormac McCarthy, but don't know where to start, I wouldn't recommend Bloodborne a place to start.

It is very disturbing.

It's, it's very, very small but But I think it's a very, uh, it, it's very visual.

It gives you a g- a great visual, and it really t- puts you in that place and that time, and it, it's a great way to, to bring you into the scene and to those little things, those little visuals, and I no- notice McCarthy has done that before in other books, thinking back to the Border Trilogy.

He does it a lot to add little, tiny descriptors that aren't so subtle or so simple, but they s- they seem simple after you read them.

They seem like something that we would all kind of expect to happen.

Well, I don't want to say it that way.

Were it a Cormac McCarthy novel that was in the vein of No Country or in the vein of the Border Trilogy, which begins with All the Pretty Horses, it would not got, w- it would not have gotten a 250,000 copy first printing.

I think Meta and the good folks over at the imprint knew they had a phenomenon here.

I don't think...

It is, it's, it's quite good.

Um, I really call it The Pretty Horses.

I think I've read the other two in the Border Trilogy, but I don't remember.

It's been 25 years at this point.

It's so languid, some of these writing, but the effect of that is quite spellbound.

I've read the Border Trilogy.

I've read Sutri or Blood Meridian, but in the Border Trilogy, it's...

What do you say? It's beautiful.

There is...

lot of blood, a lot of violence.

That kind of makes sense then.

But while the Border Trilogy followed that, from what you've said, because the Border Trilogy is all about a remnant of that time, dealing with the modern, the encroachment of the modern age.

He basically proved that genre fiction, specifically the Western, could be elevated to true high art.

And the Border Trilogy, which is All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain, that series contains three of the greatest Western novels ever written.

Masterpieces, all three.

Yeah.

So it's this, and being from the desert, being from this area, I love the descriptions of the landscape because it is so spot on.

And McCarthy, in his other books that I've read, and especially the Border Trilogy, he describes the desert and the landscapes the same way.

And I would imagine he's a big fan of the landscape just because of the way he describes them.

But... yeah that's really what stood out to me is is the gang their temperament And we don't get a whole lot of the kid.