Review | Cormac McCarthy draws on Sodom and Gomorrah for a tale of American carnage
McCarthy’s epic ‘Border Trilogy’ looks at a time and place where existence was cheap in prose that draws on the Bible and Melville
by Cormac McCarthy (read by Frank Muller)
Whole Story Audiobooks
What the world needs now is Cormac McCarthy, fearless documenter of American carnage. First published in 1998, Cities of the Plain completed McCarthy’s epic “Border Trilogy” that began with All the Pretty Horses (1992) and continued with The Crossing (1994). Part three reunites the heroes at a cattle ranch in New Mexico in 1952. McCarthy drew on the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah to create his liminal spaces and characters: farms so close to borders as to have no identity, transients (cowboys, prostitutes, soldiers) who know how cheap life can be. While the mood is aridly harsh, the prose echoes from the King James Bible to Melville’s winding cadences. Frank Muller’s voice is breathy, aged and weather-beaten enough to do this justice.