Reading Order
Cities of the Plain Reading Order
Cities of the Plain (1998) by Cormac McCarthy is the conclusion of the Border Trilogy — the book in which John Grady Cole and Billy Parham, the protagonists of All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing respectively, finally appear together on a New Mexico ranch in 1952, and in which the trilogy's elegiac meditation on the dying West reaches its conclusion. John Grady falls in love with a Mexican prostitute named Magdalena, who is controlled by a violent pimp named Eduardo, and his attempt to rescue her leads to the deaths that the trilogy has been building toward. Cities of the Plain is the Border Trilogy's most novelistic volume — it has the clearest plot, the most conventional dramatic structure, and the most emotionally direct content. It is also the most sorrowful: the world of the Border Trilogy (the last working ranches, the cowboys who know horses and the land) is visibly ending, and John Grady Cole's death at Eduardo's hands is the death of the last romantic hero. Billy Parham survives but is left alone — the old man at the novel's coda, standing by the side of a road. The coda itself (Billy in the 1990s) is the most moving passage in the Border Trilogy and one of the most moving passages in McCarthy's work.
Where to start
Cities of the Plain — any Vintage International paperback. Best read after All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing, as the convergence of the two protagonists only has its full emotional weight if you know both their histories. The coda at the end requires both.
Complete Cities of the Plain Book List
- 1Buy
Cities of the Plain
Cormac McCarthy·1998·The novel — John Grady Cole and Billy Parham on the last New Mexico ranch, John Grady's love for Magdalena, Eduardo's violence, and the elegiac conclusion; the Border Trilogy's most emotionally direct volume. - 2Buy
All the Pretty Horses
Cormac McCarthy·1992·The Border Trilogy's first volume — essential for understanding John Grady Cole's character, his excellence with horses, and his romantic nature; the predecessor that makes John Grady's second love affair and his death in Cities of the Plain carry their full weight. - 3Buy
The Crossing
Cormac McCarthy·1994·The Border Trilogy's second volume — essential for understanding Billy Parham's character, his three journeys into Mexico, and the losses he has already carried; the predecessor that makes Billy's survival and his late coda in Cities of the Plain carry their full weight. - 4Buy
Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy·1985·McCarthy's masterpiece — the essential companion; the border violence that the Border Trilogy romanticizes is, in Blood Meridian, its historical truth; reading Blood Meridian after Cities of the Plain reveals what John Grady Cole and Billy Parham are the last survivors of. - 5Buy
No Country for Old Men
Cormac McCarthy·2005·McCarthy's most accessible major novel — the companion in his meditation on the end of something; the West Texas of No Country is what the New Mexico of the Border Trilogy becomes after the ranches close and the oil money takes over. - 6Buy
Lonesome Dove
Larry McMurtry·1985·McMurtry's Pulitzer-winning Western — the most important companion in the American Western literary tradition; Call and McCrae's cattle drive is the epic, large-scale version of what the Border Trilogy's three cowboys represent — the end of the cowboy as a possible American life. - 7Buy
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald·1925·Fitzgerald's great novel — the companion in American literature about the death of romantic dream; Gatsby's inability to accept that the past is past is the companion to John Grady Cole's inability to accept that the world he believes in no longer exists. - 8Buy
Suttree
Cormac McCarthy·1979·McCarthy's most personal novel — the companion in his meditation on what people who are out of their time do; Suttree's voluntary exile from his class is the Tennessee version of John Grady Cole's voluntary exile from the modern world.
Cities of the Plain — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Cities of the Plain about?
Cities of the Plain is set in 1952 on a ranch in New Mexico, where John Grady Cole (from All the Pretty Horses) and Billy Parham (from The Crossing) are working together as cowboys. The ranch itself is about to be sold — the land will be absorbed into the White Sands Missile Range — and the world the two men know is ending. John Grady falls in love with Magdalena, a Mexican prostitute working in Ciudad Juárez who is epileptic and controlled by a violent pimp named Eduardo. John Grady's plan to buy Magdalena's freedom and marry her is opposed by Eduardo, and the novel builds to a confrontation between John Grady and Eduardo that ends both their lives. Billy Parham survives alone.
What is the coda at the end of Cities of the Plain?
The coda is set decades after the main narrative — in the 1990s, probably — and shows Billy Parham as a very old man, homeless on the side of a road somewhere in the American Southwest. He encounters a woman and a young man, and the young man tells Billy a long, strange story about a dream — a story that connects to the philosophical preoccupations of the entire Border Trilogy. The coda is McCarthy's most formally unusual ending (it is appended to the main narrative after a clear break, more like an afterword than a chapter) and his most moving: Billy at the end is alone with everything he has survived, and the gap between 1952 and the 1990s, implied but not described, is the measure of what he has lost.
Who is Eduardo and what does he represent?
Eduardo is the pimp who controls Magdalena and who is the novel's antagonist. He is not simply a villain: he is a highly skilled knife fighter, a man of his own code, and — in McCarthy's rendering — a figure who understands exactly what John Grady Cole represents and despises it. Eduardo sees John Grady's love for Magdalena as a form of possession and his idealism as a form of arrogance. Their confrontation (a knife fight) is the Border Trilogy's defining violent act: John Grady Cole, who is skilled and brave and genuinely in love, loses to Eduardo, who is more skilled and less romantic. The romantic hero, McCarthy insists, is not rewarded in the world as it is.
How does Cities of the Plain conclude the Border Trilogy?
The Border Trilogy is a meditation on the end of a way of life — the cowboy, the working ranch, the Mexican border as a place of romance and possibility rather than drug violence. All the Pretty Horses introduces the elegiac register and the romantic hero. The Crossing deepens it and makes it more philosophical. Cities of the Plain kills the romantic hero and leaves the witness (Billy Parham) alone in a world that has completely left behind the world they knew. The coda — Billy as a homeless old man in the 1990s — makes the elegiac structure explicit: what was is completely gone, and the person who remembers it is reduced to wandering. Cities of the Plain is one of the great elegies in American fiction.
What should I read after Cities of the Plain?
After Cities of the Plain, Blood Meridian is the essential McCarthy companion — the violent historical truth of the border that the Border Trilogy romanticizes. No Country for Old Men shows the border territory a generation later. For the American Western tradition the trilogy belongs to, Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove is the most important companion. Suttree is the companion in McCarthy's meditation on men who are out of their time. The Road is McCarthy's most recent major companion in his meditation on what fathers and children owe each other.
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