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john grady cole After work part of the morning was spent eating at a coworkers house. He had thrown a small informal party for the third shift staff. This was the second year in a row that he had done this for us and I think that its a really nice gesture on his part. Both his wife and him seem to go through quite a bit of effort to provide some good food for people that aren't related to them. Of course some would say that this is what the holidays are supposed to be. ... Late in the day I finished reading Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses and it was worth the effort. Years ago some review that I had read had prompted me to buy a copy of the book, but it wasn't until I found out about the Matt Damon film that I decided to read it. All that I knew before I started the book was that it was the first in a trilogy. Everything else was a mystery to me. Not having that many preconceived notions makes reading the book that much more of a surprise. The western genre has never had that much of an appeal for me, but I could appreciate what McCarthy was trying to do with the novel. It was more than just a book about horses, which was what Ann kept saying to me. Something subtle was being said as the main characters rode across the landscape. Now as to whether or not any of this comes through in the film has yet to be seen. I have no doubt that the film will take a completely different approach to the novel than I did. First of all they seem to be marketing it as a romance and I find this odd since the love interest only occupies about ten pages in the book. For me she wasn't that important of a character, but functioned more as a symbol. McCarthy presents us with a teenage boy going on a journey of self discovery which is something that always holds meaning for me. I see it as something very universal. People need to understand who they are as a person before they can truly be alive. Sadly very few people take or are given the time to fully know themselves and we are left with a world populated by lost souls or people with no direction. Ann kept wondering why it was taking me so long to read the book. She said that her four year old daughter could have read the book faster than I could. I took her teasing in stride. She couldn't possibly know what McCarthy was doing with the English language nor the way that he freely mixed in Spanish to enhance the story. Then again I do tend to be a snob when it comes to reading books and keep looking beneath the surface of what is being said. On a much more simple level, reading about crossing a dry if not desert landscape while snow fell outside my window was a nice contrast.
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