[AnotherCat]

I have been wondering what to write about this book, I think one could write a book about it if so inclined. For myself, I'd rate as one of the best novels I have read, certainly among modern ones. That not because it was a pleasant story, it being loosely based on the brutal activities of the Glanton Gang (of which the real Judge Holden was also a member), but for its honesty, imagery and the relentless flow of the story written in flowing prose.

The book is so full of fine imagery I could not settle on any specific examples that particularly impressed me to quote, there are too many, I can turn to almost any page to find them. Everything described and used was real and correct, not contrived and came across as being based on experience or careful research; how campfire flames moved in the wind, how wolves crouched, the horses, the geographic and geologic features, the brutality, the filth, etc..

It was relentlessly honest with no fine and dishonest depictions of noble settlers and noble savages, times were hard and could be very brutal. The characters were not all in well laundered clothes, scrubbed faces, shampooed hair as one could readily be misled to accept as usual from films and TV. Instead filth, lice, smells, no "golden age".

I generally do not go looking for propaganda in novels and rarely make any assumptions as to what the author's message, if any, was. For myself, I felt the story fitted into a theme of the westward march of settlement and the conflagrations along that way. At the get go the title and subtitle of the book hints at that and for me the Epilogue does the same including alluding to the relentlessness of it - and alluding to the conflicts along the way (He strikes fire in the hole and draws out his steel. Then they all move on again.)

And did the Man die, I think he did, Judge Holden was to be the last man standing and the death was to be terrible. The Boy was born under a meteor shower and died under one (Stars were falling across the sky myriad and random, speeding along brief vectors from their origins in night to their destinies in dust and nothingness.), the stars are on a path throughout the book.

In the end, for myself, I am not inclined to concern myself as to whether or not McCarthy had any special messages to deliver, but take the events of the time as a frame for an honestly depicted and well written story.