About two years ago I read most of Cormac McCarthy’s novels and found them very moving. In a sense you  feel that they all could be titled “No Country for Old Men” in that they depict an America which no longer exists. Characters in McCarthy’s books own little but seem to have more than us. What they have is the whole world. They live on the edge of death at every moment but, on horseback, are free to wander wherever they wish in a world to which they feel connected. The central metaphor is the road, the trail, the journey through this natural  world, a pilgrim’s progress of the South Western States.
I have just started to re-read the Border Trilogy and have completed “All the Pretty Horses”, the first of the three. Because I know the stories, what strikes me this time is McCarthy’s wonderful prose style. I realise now that it is just as much this style which grips you and carries you forward as the events of the books. The metaphor which comes to mind here is not so much a road but a river, a river of words. It has been commented before that McCarthy’s style owes something to the bible with its long strings of phrases which flow rhythmically on and on linked by a succession of “and”s.As you read you feel like a leaf being gently swept down a stream falling down a hillside. The meaning of the words is almost irrelevant..You trust the current as you float from one eddy to the next. Each phrase seems to bump up against an “and” and then twists and turns again downstream. It is mesmerising and strangely comforting. You feel cosseted, and though you have a sense of meandering you are secure in the feeling that you are heading somewhere, and when you reach the end of the paragraph it is like landing in the rock pool you always knew was there. I sometimes find myself re-reading such a paragraph, just so I can jump in once more at the top and, Disneyland-style, do the ride again.