This novel has all the makings of a good film Western, and it may be one some day. In the tradition of characters played by John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, John Grady Cole is a strong, laconic cowboy who has trouble with women. The novel includes good fighting, good riding, and good shooting.
About the only thing Hollywood has to complain about is the lack of a happy ending.
All the Pretty Horses also proves once again that American authors have excelled at the bildungsroman genre. Like Huck Finn, John Grady Cole grows to prefer a more natural, more primitive lifestyle so that he too seeks the frontier at the end of his novel. Like Henry Fleming.....
