All The Pretty Horses
Cormac McCarthy
Read February 2008
Copy borrowed from Ramsey County Public Library, White Bear Lake branch
Essay written May 3rd, 2008
I don't quite remember where I got the idea that I should check out Cormac McCarthy, but I'm glad I did. I think he may have been one of the other writers to write a blurb for the back of The Big Sky by A.B. Guthrie, Jr. Perhaps. Or maybe I read online somewhere if you like X then you'll like Y and it lead me to Cormac McCarthy, I don't remember. Doesn't matter. The point I'm trying to make is that I sought this author out, rather than just stumbling upon him at the library one time. I put a request in for this book for pickup at the White Bear Lake branch. Wonderful cover, by the way. It's a Chip Kidd. In fact, I was doing a little research on Chip Kidd at about the time I read this book, and found an interview he did with NPR in which he refers to the cover of this, All The Pretty Horses. He said he had a college professor back in design school who drew a picture of an apple on the blackboard, then below it wrote the word "Apple." The prof then warned: "Never do this." Never put a picture there and then the word for what that picture is. Either put the word, or the picture, but never both. Chip Kidd recounted that on the NPR interview, and more or less apologized for breaking that rule for this book. It has a high-contrast black and white photo of a horse's mane on the cover. And it has "Horses" in the title. Oh well. That was pretty much his reasoning for it. Sometimes you just have to make exceptions.
So anyway. Pretty good reading. Too much Spanish. I understand that if it's all that important to me I could've just dug up my Spanish/English dictionary and translated what I didn't comprehend. That bothered me though. Like Mr. McCarthy was deliberately giving me more work to do. Like those annoying religious people who spout a Bible verse at you but then don't tell you what the verse says. "Look it up," they scold. If you're too dumb to know what Ephesians 4:29 says right off the top of your head, you're not a very good Christian. Same with all the Spanish in here. What? You aren't fluent in Spanish? Shame on you. Go look it up.
Thanks, Cormac McCarthy. Much obliged.
Out of spite I didn't look up anything. As a result I didn't understand a lot of crucial scenes. It made the plot more muddled in my mind, and that was my revenge on the author. You want me to understand your book? You tell me what your book means. Obviously a word or two here or there isn't going to require constant translation. But entire scenes of dialogue, crucial backstory explanation scenes. You could at least do subtitles, you know, the old "these people are speaking in Spanish now, even though I'm writing it in English" trick.
A few years ago I read The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. In English. But I found at the Saint Paul library a copy of it in the original German. Der Zauberberg. Sometimes while reading it, in English, I would wonder how that bit of text was represented as it came out of the author's mind, as opposed to seeing merely the translator's closest approximation. There were scenes in the middle of that in which the main character, Hans Castorp, is conversing with a Russian woman and the only language they both speak is French. Evidently, in the original German book, there are entire conversations going on in French that you, as a reader, better understand, because Thomas Mann isn't going to help you with it. My translator evidently translated both the German and all the French bits into English for me, seamlessly. That was nice. Anyway, All The Pretty Horses just reminded me of that.
That's my only complaint though, which is saying a lot. The characters were compelling and the landscape was wonderful. I'll seek out more by the same author, sure thing.
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