Cities of the Plain (Border Trilogy)

Product Information

So, the story comes to a head when it is time to get the girl, and I was just glad when it was over.

Fine cloth copy in a near fine, very slightly edge-nicked and dust-dulled dust wrapper, now mylar-sleeved. Then Rooney elaborates: "She tries to pronounce this in a way that communicates several things: apology, painful embarrassment, some additional pained embarrassment that serves to ironise and dilute the painful kind, a sense that she knows she will be forgiven or is already, a desire not to 'make a big deal. Haunting in its beauty, filled with sorrow, humor, and awe, Cities of the Plain is a genuine American epic. After drifting across the Southwest for many years, working ranches and living in hotels, Billy, homeless, takes shelter beneath a highway underpass. To the south, always on the horizon are the mountains of Mexico, looming over El Paso, Ciudad Juárez and all the cities of the plain.The novel starts with a bunch of young cowboys in the American southwest — just after World War II — volubly choosing whores in a tavern-cum-bordello. Lots of fabulous poetic writing, brilliant descriptions of the natural world and the usual cast of seers who provide a marvellous philosophical structure. For reference, my favorite of the trilogy was The Crossing, followed by Cities of the Plain, then All the Pretty Horses --though each book is a masterpiece in itself. The whole book presents a philosophy but this is presented for us to discover in the lives of the characters, at the end it is presented almost a a lecture given by one character to another. Given the cowboy code of taciturn humility neither John Grady or Billy tell each other about their experiences in Mexico except to say they had a rough go down there.

They are each other's brother, with John Grady filling in for Boyd, bringing out Billy's protectiveness.

John Grady Cole has an extraordinary innocence and openness of heart (something quite different from stupidity or naivete) that does not seem to belong in the dailiness of the modern world. The result of this style of writing is the feeling that I had imagined this story as opposed to ever having read it. The most moving relationships though are those the boy shares with the elderly Mac and his friend Billy.