There is something fascinating in the western. Something of America; the southern states, of Mexico and the legend of the cowboy, of the caballero; something about the spirit of the horse and the bleak, rugged landscape has a grand power to capture the imagination. There must be something in the western philosophy that appeals and transcends the genre because you find the same themes, the same spirit, in other kinds of books. The classic American road novel, for instance; in Jack Kerouac and his tales of outsiders and sub-cultures, whole groups of people with histories and lives somewhere just outside of common law; there’s something of the western in these, too. It’s in accordance to this fascination that I have read and now present two classic but contemporary westerns: Patrick de Witt’s The Sisters Brothers and Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing; second in his Border trilogy, and sequel to the perhaps better known All the Pretty Horses.
