The book is Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy. It was originally published in 1998 by Vintage books. I read the paperback edition. I read it in November of 2024.
The cities of the plain in the Bible are Sodom and Gomorrah. The cities were so evil that God destroyed them with fire and brimstone from heaven. I’m not certain how that relates to McCarthy’s novel. It could be the eminent doom of the horse ranch. The book takes place in the 1950s and things are changing. The horse business is dwindling and there’s not much use for cowboys anymore in a modern world. Their futures are uncertain in more ways than one.
This is the third book in McCarthy’s border trilogy. The first being All the Pretty Horses, and the second, The Crossing. This book brings the protagonists from those books, John Grady Cole and Billy Parham together working on a horse ranch outside of Alamogordo, New Mexico breaking horses and being cowboys.
They frequent a brothel in Juarez Mexico and that’s where they meet Magdalena, a prostitute. John Grady Cole falls in love with her and she him and they make plans to run away together. But she’s being held there against her will by the pimp Eduardo who is also in love with her, or so he claims.
I read this because I’m working my way through Cormac McCarthy’s bibliography and this was next. They’ve all been a joy to read.
There’s a section where the men discuss what they want out of life. Neither of the characters ever really knew want they wanted. This made me think about what I wanted to grow up to be when I was a kid. I wanted to be an astronaut and learned that some astronauts were fighter pilots first. We went to a small church in a military town and we often had pilots attend for a few years and then leave. I thought they were so cool. One of them took me and my mom and sister up in a small passenger plane one time. That was the fist time I was ever in a plane. He let me steer and I made a turn. I don’t remember when I stopped wanting to be a pilot/astronaut, but it eventually fizzled out.
By middle school my ambitions completely deflated. I had no plan. I was really into movies and listening to music and reading books. I had no plan for college. I liked to learn and read a lot. I figured I would get some kind of job, maybe in a book store, get an apartment, and just hang out with friends, watch movies, and read books for the rest of my life. Maybe get married some day but not for a long time. That was about the extent of it. I basically expected to a be a loser.
I never had a specific career in mind. I asked a dentist friend how he decided to become a dentist and he said that when he was 5 years old he went to the dentist and saw the white coat and said that’s what he wanted to be when he grew up and he never changed his mind. I know that’s a rare trajectory, in fact I think it’s borderline psychotic. Who the hell picks a career at five and actually does it?
I just always did whatever I wanted to do, which was mostly read books and watch movies. Part of me still expected to have a house and a family and be like the sitcoms I watched on TV. It wasn’t so much of a goal as more of an expectation. I thought it was just what happened to you as you became an adult. All the grown ups talked that away in the movies. A middle-aged male character would say something like “How did I end up doing this mundane office job? 9 to 5 boring work life.” Meanwhile they had a nice house and family. Even movies like Fight Club and Office Space where cubicle guys were miserable made me believe a steady job with a livable income is something that just happened to you. I figured I would just naturally find myself in the same situation only I wouldn’t complain about it so much.
I watched 90’s sitcoms like Boy Meets World, where the dad was a manager of a grocery store and had a great house, a pretty wife, and three decent kids. As the years went by I learned that that expectation that it just happens automatically was wrong.
I’m not sure where the lie was. Were the TV shows lying when they showed that someone could afford a comfortable lifestyle on a random job? Or did that used to be true and inflation and economy just got so bad that it’s not possible anymore? Maybe it’s a little bit of both.
Something I think we all start doing as we get older is when we drive by a super nice house we think to ourselves, what do they do for a living? Maybe that’s the way to think about it, not so much of what do you want to be when you grow up, but what do you want to have?
Today as I find myself in the cubicle crucible, I’m starting to think not of what I want to be or what I want to have, but what do I want to do? What can I not retire from? What can I die doing? How do I want to spend the rest of my working days?
My first thought is reading. I could read all day every day. But no one will pay me to do that. It doesn’t produce anything for anyone else so I can’t get paid for it. Not unless I’m writing a review or something. I hate writing. And if I wrote reviews I’d probably be required to read a bunch of books I don’t want to read. That’s worse than writing.
There’s a passage in this book that actually helped me decide whether or not my wife and I should have another baby. Our third was just born this year. We’re getting older and we’re ready to be done. But it’s been nagging at us whether we should try for one more.
How do you know when you’re done having kids? Is it a sin to get a vasectomy in my late 30s after having three kids? Is it wrong for her to get her tubes tied? Be fruitful and multiply, right? Children are a blessing, right? We don’t actually have those doctrinal hang ups. But we do value family and children greatly as part of Christian kingdom building. It feels unfaithful to say we can’t afford to have anymore. We couldn’t afford our first one, but God provided and has been so good to us over the years. Ultimately that’s our faithful expectation this time. But this book helped me have peace about it. Maybe that’s by God’s providence as well.
John Grady Cole is in love with Magdalena and it’s been fixed in his mind that he’s going to buy her out of the brothel with a huge amount of money that he doesn’t have yet. Billy tries to talk him out of it but it’s no use.
“How did you ever get in such a mess?
I dont know.
How did you let it get this far?
I dont know. I feel some way like I didnt have nothin to do with it. Like it’s just the way it is. Like it always was this way.
There’s some things you dont decide. Decidin had nothin to do with it.” (p121)
It’s that last line that stopped me in my tracks. “There’s some things you dont decide. Decidin had nothin to do with it.”
It’s our choice to try for another baby or not but in a weird way, just asking the question shows what we really want, what’s going to happen. It’s what’s supposed to happen. It’s still technically our choice but in some way I can’t explain it’s also not. It felt great to be so understood by McCarthy. It’s a validation of sorts of my own seemingly contradictory thinking. We’re trying for a fourth baby now.
Of course this makes me think of free will vs predestination. Do we have free will to make our own decisions in life or is everything predetermined? If we don’t decide then who does? God? But then what about all these evil things people are doing? Is God choosing that to happen? It sounds like an obvious “no” but consider the most evil action in human history, the wrongful murder by crucifixion of the only truly innocent person to ever live, Jesus Christ. That was the most evil action ever to take place in human history. Was that by God’s plan? Absolutely.
Acts 2:23 “This man [Jesus] was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.”
Luke 22:22 says “The Son of Man will go as it has been decreed. But woe to that man who betrays him!”
Christ’s sacrifice was always part of the plan for humanity. 1 Peter 1:18-20 says “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake”
From before time began Christ was appointed to redeem us back to him by dying on the cross for our sins. It wasn’t a clean up job. It wasn’t a plan b response to the Fall in the Garden. It was God’s intention the whole time.
So does this mean we have no free will at all? Are we robots? Not at all. We have free will but it’s a free will according to our nature.
No matter how much I wish it or will it, I can’t breath under water. I can’t fly by flapping my wings. I can’t read minds or be in two places at once. That is not in my nature. I’m human. It’s the same with our spirit as well. We have a free will according to our nature.
There’s story of a dog that was trained by its owner to be a vegetarian. The owner claimed without a shadow of a doubt that this carnivorous animal had been reshaped to only desire vegetables and would reject meat if given the choice. They went on to a daytime talk show to test this claim. The owner swore that if there were a bowl of veggies and a bowl of cooked meat that the dog would go straight for the veggies. So they brought out those two bowls of food and the dog immediately ran to the meat. Why did the dog do this, against years of training and conditioning from its owner to only eat veggies? The dog ate the meat because it is in his nature. He had all the free will in the world, only according to his nature.
We are the same way. We have a free will according to our nature. So what is our nature? Well the Bible says we’re born with a sin nature. Psalm 51:5 says “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.”
Psalm 58:3 “The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray from birth, speaking lies.”
Ephesians 2:3 says “Among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
But the next verse is one of the best phrases ever to be written in any book in any language. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved”
We have a free will according to our nature, which without God is “dead in the trespasses and sins” We are “by nature children of wrath.” But God changes our nature so that we are alive in Christ.
Our hard immovable heart of stone is changed by God into a heart of malleable flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). We are changed. We were one way before, now we are different.
In sin and death we will always choose sin and death. But when we’re made alive in Christ our will becomes more free because only then are we able to please God. Hebrews 11:6 says “And without faith it is impossible to please him”
And we see in Ephesians 2 that faith is a gift. So God himself provides us with the very thing he requires.
This makes sense because “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” (Romans 11:36)
In the case of whether or not we should have another baby, we are free in Christ to choose either way. At this point, it’s a matter of what is a foolish decision and what’s a wise decision. We will need Christ in both scenarios either way, but one decision could be wise and one foolish.
Can it be foolish to have children? Yes. As with everything, it depends on context. A single, unmarried, 16 year-old girl should not willingly choose to get pregnant and have a baby. That’s extremely foolish and sinful.
In my case, I’m married and can technically afford it with some sacrifice and God’s provision.
The events of the world are unfolding as God has decreed by his sovereign will. We do not and cannot know all the reasons behind why things are happening the way they are. But one thing we can be certain of is that God is in control of it all. Nothing happens without his say-so which means nothing happens without a godly reason. We can take hope in that he knows what he’s doing. And wouldn’t we rather he be in control of everything? He is a good God and we should trust him. We have his commands of how to live our life and hopefully the wisdom to follow it. That is more than enough to get through this life in peace.
Along with God’s commands we have God’s forgiveness. This is unique to the Christian religion. God sent down his law and his Son to fulfill the law perfectly on our behalf.
The newest religion in our time of wokeness has no such forgiveness. There is a new puritanism of woke leftism. But there is no savior to be woke enough on our behalf.
McCarthy says “a God unable to forgive was no God at all.” (p206) This is certainly true and that’s exactly the god of wokeism, a god without forgiveness. Anyone with power is forever guilty. Their hell is to apologize forever. And any punishment inflicted on those “in power” is completely justified. This was proven on October 7th 2023 with the attack on Israel by Hamas.
Hamas was peak wokeness. (I use the past tense because they’re all but destroyed at this point). Israel was seen as the powerful oppressors and Gaza was the poor oppressed people. This cast Hamas as freedom fighters instead of terrorists. So any horrendous attack they would make on Israel isn’t evil, it’s backlash. It’s not crime. It’s rage.
This is the perspective of the woke left in the West because they serve the god that does not forgive. There is nothing the powerful oppressors can do to atone for their sins. The only remedy is to give over power unmerited to the oppressed. There must be a reversal of fortunes. The haves must give to the have-nots. But even then it will never be enough.
Reparations won’t work because how do you put a price on the evil of slavery? Is there a dollar amount that will make up for that? No. The payment must be continual. That’s the exact description of hell. You must pay for your sins for eternity. But this is worse because it isn’t even your own sins, it’s the sins of (maybe) your ancestors. There is no forgiveness. There is no mercy. There is not even a savior to come and make the payment for us. We must pay forever.
Money doesn’t buy happiness or so the saying goes. Cormac McCarthy himself was extremely poor, seemingly by choice. He lived in motels and had very few possessions. But then he got a MacArthur genius award which comes with $1 million dollars so he wasn’t sweating it later in life. In Cities of the Plain someone tells John Grady Cole that his daddy said some of the most miserable people he ever knew got exactly what they always wanted. John Grady replies “I’m willin to risk it. I’ve damn sure tried it the other way.” (p219)
Can money make you happy? It certainly makes the logistics of life easier. The problem is some people have no mission or imagination. The rich people who are miserable are the ones who are trying to buy whatever the culture says they should want. Money is a tool and if you’re on a specific mission in life, it’s a lot easier to get where you’re going with money. There are traditional status symbols like nice watches or cars. Some people have no genuine interest in those things but they can afford it so they buy them. But they provide no real satisfaction, not because they’re expensive but because the person buying them doesn’t actually find any personal value in them. Money can make you very happy if you’re using it to accomplish what you’re genuinely pursuing. The problem is most people have no mission. Money can’t help you if you’re not trying to get anywhere.
This is why it’s hard for poor people to hear rich people complain about money. Some poor people have a real mission or a calling in life and they’re being held back by lack of material means. Then they hear some rich celebrity cry and say “money doesn’t buy happiness.” And their response is “of course not, you’re not trying to do anything worthwhile.” But maybe that’s the naiveté of people who have little or no experience with money.
There’s a danger in thinking we have something figured out too soon. Early in life we’re working with very little experience. We haven’t lived enough life to see how things really work. We hear stories and get advice from other older people and we think that’s how it will be when we grow up. But then the world changes and the things you were taught are no longer relevant.
For example, all our teachers told us that it’s super important to memorize your multiplication tables because you won’t always have a calculator handy. That turned out to be a lie. Everyone has a calculator and the entire knowledge of the history of the world in their pocket all the time. We’re almost cyborgs with how attached we are to these resourceful devices.
Soon we will actually be physically integrated with our phones. But our teachers didn’t know that and vigorously taught multiplication tables. What don’t we know now about the future? We have to learn for the future but also be looking around the corner of what’s coming next. When I was a kid we didn’t know how relevant the internet was going to be. If we did maybe we could’ve made more of an investment in learning tech. But now AI is taking over coding and programming so maybe those job have an expiration date too. It’s hard to learn for what’s coming next.
Shortsighted education leads us to feel like everything we thought we knew about life was wrong. We watch romantic movies or see older couples and then get into a relationship and it’s completely different from what we were expecting. Or we see how we were raised and see other parents raising their kids, then we have our own kids and everything we thought we knew is wrong.
We can’t learn in a vacuum. There are two things to keep in mind. We should take advice and watch examples from people older than us, but we have to also keep an eye on how the world is changing because maybe the advice won’t be good in ten years. We have to alway be learning. Take current consensus and future projections both with a little grain of salt. Find where they meet and where they diverge and proceed down the middle.
This book made me think about All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing and the history of John Grady Cole and Billy Parham. It was strange how their pasts didn’t seem to have much effect on them in this book. They’re not much older and I figured they would be carrying the scars of their lived experience a little heavier than they’re shown in this book. Especially Billy Parham. The Crossing was an incredibly depressing book. I feel like it affected me more than Billy. When they find the puppies in the den I almost cried thinking of the wolf and her puppies. Billy didn’t react at all.
The lesson I learned from Cities of the Plain is to not go to brothels. Not only is it sexually immoral, but also you could fall in love with a whore and if you’re foolish enough you’ll try to steal her away. Don’t fall in love with whores. It was nothing but trouble for John Grady Cole.
The hero to emulate in the Border Trilogy is Billy Parham. His only foolish mistake was to not kill the wolf from the beginning. He should have just shot it and went back home. But then there would be no story.
Villains to avoid, besides the Mexican pimps and prison bosses would be John Grady. If I had to choose, I’d rather my sons follow Billy Parham. John Grady is too girl crazy. He falls in love way too easily and it’s always trouble for him. He thinks a girl is the answer. Very foolish.
I’d recommend the Border Trilogy to anyone who are familiar with love and loss. It’s extremely melancholic. If you like westerns and being sad then these are the books for you.
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Notable Quotables
“”””
Daybreak to backbreak for a godgiven dollar, said Billy. I love this life. You love this life, son? I love this life. You do love this life dont you? Cause by god I love it. Just love it. (p10)
“”””
There’s a kind of man that when he cant have what he wants he wont take the next best thing but the worst he can find. (p28)
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A man was coming down the road driving a donkey piled high with firewood. In the distance the churchbells had begun. The man smiled at him a sly smile. As if they knew a secret between them, these two. Something of age and youth and their claims and the justice of those claims. And of the claims upon them. The world past, the world to come. Their common transiencies. Above all a knowing deep in the bone that beauty and loss are one. (p71)
“”””
If I think about what I wanted as a kid and what I want now they aint the same thing. I guess what I wanted wasnt what I wanted. You ready?
Yeah. I’m ready. What do you want now?
Billy spoke to the horse and reined it around. He sat and looked back at the little adobe house and at the blue and cooling country below them. Hell, he said. I dont know what I want. Never did. (p78)
“””””
Her condition, the blind man said. You know her condition? He turned back. Sir? he said.
Little is known. There is a great deal of superstition. Here they are divided in two camps. Some take a benign view and others do not. You see. But this is my belief. My belief is that she is at best a visitor. At best. She does not belong here. Among us. Yessir. I know she dont belong here.
No, said the blind man. I do not mean in this house. I mean
ere. Among us. (p81-82)
“”””
What if you could be anything you wanted? I’d be a cowboy.
Really?
The boy looked up at him with disgust. Shit no, he said. What’s wrong with you? I’d be a rico and lay around on my ass all day. What do you think? (p98)
“”””
She told her that she would marry a great rich man and live in a fine house and have beautiful children. She told her that she had known many such cases. Quién? said the girl. Muchas, hissed the criada. Muchas. Girls, she told her, with no such beauty as hers. Girls with no such dignity or grace. The girl did not answer. She looked across the old woman’s shoulder into the eyes in the glass as if it were some sister there who weathered stoically this beleaguerment of her hopes. Standing in the gaudy boudoir that was itself a tawdry emulation of other rooms, other worlds. Regarding her own false arrogance in the pierglass as if it were proof against the old woman’s entreaties, the old woman’s promises. Standing like some maid in a fable spurning the offerings of the hag which do conceal within them unspoken covenants of corruption. Claims that can never be quit, estates forever entailed. She spoke to that girl standing in the glass and she said that one could not know where it was that one had taken the path one was upon but only that one was upon it. (p101)
“”””
How did you ever get in such a mess? I dont know.
How did you let it get this far? I dont know. I feel some way like I didnt have nothin to do with it. Like it’s just the way it is. Like it always was this way.
There’s some things you dont decide. Decidin had nothin to do with it. (p121)
“”””
What is wrong with this story is that it is not a true story. Men have in their minds a picture of how the world will be. How they will be in that world. The world may be many different ways for them but there is one world that will never be and that is the world they dream of. Do you believe that?
Why is that?
It seems like a betrayal of some kind. Can the truth be a betrayal? Maybe. Anyway, some men get what they want. No man. Or perhaps only briefly so as to lose it. Or perhaps only to prove to the dreamer that the world of his longing made real is no longer that world at all. (p134-135)
“”””
There’s a lot of things look better at a distance. Yeah?
I think so.
I guess there are. The life you’ve lived, for one. Yeah. Maybe what of it you aint lived yet, too. (p156)
“”””
They set to digging in the bare sunless earth that the rock had vacated and in twenty minutes they’d uncovered the den. The pups were back in the farthest corner huddled in a pile. John Grady lay on his stomach and reached down and back and brought one out and held it to the light. (p176)
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He once had been a strong and even a ruthless man, but love makes men foolish. I speak as a victim myself. We are taken out of our own care and it then remains to be seen only if fate will show to us some share of mercy. Or little. Or none.
Men speak of blind destiny, a thing without scheme or purpose. But what sort of destiny is that? Each act in this world from which there can be no turning back has before it another, and it another yet.
The world takes its form hourly by a weighing of things at hand, and while we may seek to puzzle out that form we have no way to do so. We have only God’s law, and the wisdom to follow it if we will. (p195)
“”””
He thought about what he believed and what he did not believe. After a while he said that he believed in God even if he was doubtful of men’s claims to know God’s mind. But that a God unable to forgive was no God at all. (p206)
“”””
My daddy once told me that some of the most miserable people he ever knew were the ones that finally got what they’d always wanted.
Well, said John Grady. I’m willin to risk it. I’ve damn sure tried it the other way. (p219)
“”””
She walked along the sandy desert road. The stars in flood above her. The lower edges of the firmament sawed out into the black shapes of the mountains and the lights of the cities burning on the plain like stars pooled in a lake. (p221)
“”””
Who did you think I might be? he said. Just somebody. Somebody I sort of been expectin. I thought I caught a glimpse of him once or twice these past few days. I aint never got all that good a look at him. What does he look like?
I dont know. I guess more and more he looks like a friend. You thought I was death. I considered the possibility. The man nodded. He chewed. Billy watched him. You aint are you?
No.
In Mexico on certain days of the calendar it is the custom to set a place at the table for death. But perhaps you know this.
Yes.
He has a big appetite. (p267)
“”””
In everything that he’d ever thought about the world and about his life in it he’d been wrong. (p266)
“”””
He said that perhaps death took a larger view. That perhaps in his egalitarian way death weighed the gifts of men by their own lights and that in death’s eyes the offerings of the poor were the equal of any. Like God.
Yes. Like God. (p268)
“”””
You sure you aint makin all this up. The man smiled. He looked out across the roadway and the fields and shook his head but he didnt answer.
Or did you want to come back to that?
The problem is that your question is the very question upon which the story hangs.
This story like all stories has its beginnings in a question. And those stories which speak to us with the greatest resonance have a way of turning upon the teller and erasing him and his motives from all memory. So the question of who is telling the story is very consiguiente.
Every story is not about some question.
Yes it is. Where all is known no narrative is possible. (p277)
“”””
The world of our fathers resides within us. Ten thousand generations and more. A form without a history has no power to perpetuate itself. What has no past can have no future. At the core of our life is the history of which it is composed and in that core are no idioms but only the act of knowing and it is this we share in dreams and out. Before the first man spoke and after the last is silenced forever. Yet in the end he did speak, as we shall see. (p281)
“”””
The martyr who longs for the flames can be no right candidate for them. (p281)
“”””
The events of the waking world on the other hand are forced upon us and the narrative is the unguessed axis along which they must be strung. It falls to us to weigh and sort and order these events. It is we who assemble them into the story which is us. Each man is the bard of his own existence. This is how he is joined to the world. For escaping from the world’s dream of him this is at once his penalty and his reward. So. (p283)
“””””
My belief is this, and I say it again: His history is the same as yours or mine. That is the stuff he is made of. What stuff other? Had I created him as God makes men how then would I not know what he would say before he ever spoke? Or how he’d move before he did so? In a dream we dont know what’s coming. We are surprised. (p285)
“””””
Yes. It is senseless to claim that things exist in their instancing only. The template for the world and all in it was drawn long ago. Yet the story of the world, which is all the world we know, does not exist outside of the instruments of its execution. Nor can those instruments exist outside of their own history. And so on. This life of yours is not a picture of the world. It is the world itself and it is composed not of bone or dream or time but of worship. Nothing else can contain it. Nothing else be by it contained. (p287)
Solomon White 
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