Lathon Lewis
Professor White
Literature 5535
Fall 2000

The "Seduction of Nostalgia" and the Unfulfilled Quest
in Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses

Many regard The Last of the Mohicans as the prime moment of American Romanticism and its protagonist Natty Bumpo (Hawk-eye, La Longue Carabine, Leatherstocking) represents the definitive romantic hero. James Fenimore Cooper’s hero is the ultimate frontiersman and fully realizes his existence when in nature. John Grady Cole, the protagonist of Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses I would say is the ultimate postmodern romantic hero with a love of nature and a nostalgic longing of Cooper’s frontier. Cooper’s novel helps perpetuate an American myth. That is, the white American male who both conquers and respects nature. Natty Bumpo dwells among the Indians but also has the benefit of being able to think civilized like the White man. D. H. Lawrence refers to Cooper’s portrait as a "wish-fulfillment vision, a kind of yearning myth," (Lawrence, 51). His love of the frontier, his love of horses, and his love for a woman are what drive John Grady Cole. His vision is presented to the reader as one of simplicity and purity. However, by the novel’s end John Grady Cole is disillusioned by the woman’s love and still longing for a frontier that is being usurped by industrialization. Cormac McCarthy’s novel overwhelms us with the Romantic ideologies of desire and loss as well as the quest (or journey). The present is technical and destructive and the protagonist is left to yearn for a pre-industrial past which resides somewhere in the midst of Cooper’s idealized frontier. In reality that place is something imagined—a wish—so desire is misplaced upon that which is unreal and the postmodern romantic quest (or journey) in fact goes nowhere or rather has to constantly move because it never nears fulfillment.

We may hope, as readers, for John Grady to reach a goal that he can grapple and squeeze some satisfaction from but we learn that the movements of his character is perpetual. That is, he is continuously moving but gaining no ground towards his goal. John Grady Cole and his two companions travel on horseback and if it is true that the trail speaks to the rider on horseback then they become connected to those that have gone before them and their story is just one book in a continuing series of the trail rider. Theirs is a journey of the frontier. The Old West is alive and well in the 1940’s. They intend to revert to a pre-industrial time, even more, to a pre-territorial time. It is in rebellion to the industrial world that is invading. At certain points on the trip to Mexico the travelers run into fenced lands, Rawlins asks, " ‘How the hell do they expect a man to ride a horse in this country?’ ‘They don’t,’ is the answer from John Grady,"(McCarthy, 31). When John Grady speaks there is no voice of profundity or prescience, or even much self-reflection. Mostly, there is just regard for the current surroundings. He speaks as one who is not focused on the past or future, but rather existing in what Frederic Jameson refers to as the perpetual present.

In his essay "Postmodernism and Consumer Society," Frederic Jameson describes two of the "significant features" of postmodernism as being pastiche and schizophrenia. Pastiche is related to parody in that it seeks to mimic (in this case) it Romantic source. The difference arises in that there is a "normal" standard in which to compare the parody. Its mimicry and exaggeration of a style exists as satire because there is an aesthetic norm to which it is compared. Jameson states that at the "moment" of postmodernism this normal standard has vanished. Pastiche, for Jameson, is "the imitation of a peculiar or unique style […] but it is a neutral practice of such mimicry […] without the satirical impulse […] without that still latent feeling that there exists something normal [….],"(Jameson, 114). The exploration of the American frontier is what is being mimicked in All the Pretty Horses. John Grady Cole serves as romantic hero; he is the embodiment of the rugged individual. Far from being satire, McCarthy presents the character with a strong sense of desire and loss. He even attempts to seduce the reader with the nostalgic yearning for a mythic America. The imposed wish is for a world where the romantic hero does not have to endure industrialism, or to be paradoxical, progress. The onslaught of the postmodern world has begun and though he is on a journey there is nowhere that the romantic hero can go to escape it. Even the language of John Grady is at times romanticized. His speech can be reminiscent of Hollywood matinee westerns and their mythology and seems unlikely for someone living in 1949, which is when the story is set. This, I think, holds true even with the setting being rural west Texas.

Because of this, and other factors, John Grady’s character reinforces the romantic over the realistic. We are given a person who is an expert horseman and cowboy, and who, like Cooper’s hero, can live freely off of the land. He has accomplished all of this at the age of sixteen. He is stoic and only fully realized when in nature. He is flawed but only in that way we expect from our romantic hero. From the moment he first glances at Alejandra we know that there will be a relationship and that the relationship will be doomed. And of course, the relationship ends with the woman saying that she loves the hero, but that she cannot be with him. The question to ponder is why to create such a character in such a setting at a time period when that image is fading as a realistic one due to a changing world.

Jameson’s postmodern ideas of pastiche and nostalgia come in to play here. He explains that postmodernism has replaced classical modernism because of the "death of the subject." Modernist (and Romantic) aesthetic was "organically linked to the conception of a unique self and private identity" that in turn generates "its own unique vision of the world and [forges] its own unique, unmistakable style," but theorists have come to explore "that that kind of individualism and personal identity is a thing of the past; that the old individual or individualist subject is ‘dead’,"(Jameson, 115). If we are to agree with Jameson’s theory then it can be interpreted that McCarthy is causing us to look upon a certain way of life and come away sympathetic for its demise. The creeping industrialism and capitalistic progress is what is preventing John Grady from taking his rightful place on the ranch. He is being driven into a journey to find that which is lost. Like the Native American before him, cultural progress has caused him to travel away from his homeland. By reading All the Pretty Horses as a postmodern work we can see how this character type satisfies in us—as members of a postmodern society—the nostalgic longing for a past that we may believe is better than the world we are in now. Our minds revert back to a time of individual production as opposed to the world of corporate production. Jameson writes that:

The corporate world, with its capitalistic impulse, has invaded to destroy and romanticize the past. Even as John Grady and Don Hector agree "that other than cattle there [is] no other wealth proper to a man," they both understand that sentiment is of world that no longer exists, (McCarthy, 127).

The question to ponder is whether that place ever did exist. "Nostalgia," as J.M. Fritzman writes, "comes from the Greeks. It marks their discovery, simultaneously their invention, of a link between a desire to return home (nostos) and a sensation of pain (algia)," (Fritzman, 168). Home in the case of both James Fenimore Cooper and Cormac McCarthy is the unmolested American frontier and the sensation of pain is the perceived loss of that mythical place. However, as D. H. Lawrence points out in his critique of Cooper, it is an America that never existed but rather a wish that propels a vision of perfection from which this country supposedly came. "Lovely half-lies," is how Lawrence describes the Leatherstocking tales which were born from Cooper’s own nostalgia of an America gone by just as All the Pretty Horses come from McCarthy’s reminiscences of the same. Progress manifests its negative self as the disappearing Native American in The Last of the Mohicans and as the disappearing frontier in All the Pretty Horses. However, from the time Europeans began to settle the North American continent the progress towards the disappearance of both of those things began. The very presence of the White settler precluded any ideal state of the American frontier. This reasoning is why D. H. Lawrence explains that, "America hurts […] because its has a powerful disintegrative influence upon the white psyche," and that, "America is tense with latent violence," (Lawrence, 51).

The nostalgia in both of these novels could be explained as a medicine for that white psyche—a remedy to ease the pain of progress. Cooper imagines Natty Bumpo, perhaps as the ultimate American—friend of the Indian as well as the White man. He is one that can speak both languages and though the Mohicans are disappearing he can befriend the last of them and fully understand what is being loss as it is occurring. It is wish fulfillment though because as distasteful as the thought may be to the white psyche the White man could not progress in America without the disappearance of the Mohican and as stated earlier progress is the reason that the white settler is in America in the first place. Therefore, the fantasy is put forth that there once was a time when the white settler was here and the situation was ideal. That, in effect, time stood still and progress—in the guise of disappearance and destruction—was non-existent. Cooper’s nostalgia resides in the hope to return to that imagined place. With Cormac McCarthy, we have progress displaced into faceless hands of the corporation and it is capital that drives progress. The ranch has to be sold simply because it does not make any money.

Progress is made the enemy as if it is an outsider encroaching on a pristine way of life but in reality it is internal and self-created. It is that which drives the way of life.

In her essay on the Chicano theatre in the United States, Catherine Wiley explains that "nostalgia for an idealized Mexico seduces the Chicano, on stage and off, as well as the non-Chicano American who wishes to posit Mexico as a quaint space of inexpensive vacations marked almost exclusively by its difference from the United States," (Wiley, 9). In other words, the desire for an ideal homeland—Mexico—causes the Chicano playwright to create a fantasy in his work that serves to reinforce the fantasy of his audience. The need to fulfill this fantasy is the seduction. Nostalgia for a pristine America seduces in much the same way in the postmodern American romance. The further that "progress" takes us away from that perceived state of perfection the stronger the nostalgic pull for the past.

So when John Grady Cole and his two companions leave on their journey they are attempting to travel back to the past. The characters along with the readers are being seduced by the nostalgic fantasizing of the way things supposedly used to be. However, by the novel’s end John Grady Cole is in the same situation concerning the ranch and even more disillusioned with life in general. Whereas Hawk-eye was able to complete his quest, America has progressed to such a point in John Grady Cole’s world that there is no longer any place for the romantic hero to exist except the past—the imagined past. John Grady’s quest to an imagined place could, in fact, go nowhere. He is not so much moving against progress as he is standing still and allowing progress to pass him by. As Wiley writes, "nostalgia unmediated by historical knowledge threatens to immerse the nostalgic subject in passive despondency," (Wiley, 2). Cormac McCarthy’s over romanticization of the John Grady Cole character accentuates that despondency and it is something that translates to the reader. McCarthy’s character’s nostalgic fantasies play upon the nostalgic fantasies of the reader. In fact, one could say that nostalgia is what is being sold in the novel. In comparison, one could make the argument that with The Last of the Mohicans Cooper is portraying what he believes is the ideal America, as I think the D. H. Lawrence essay suggests.

All the Pretty Horses can not make such claims because whether intended to or not it serves up romance as disillusionment. The romance becomes the inability to fulfill romance and this may be the only place for it in postmodernity. Nature is invaded upon by the technical—open lands are fenced in, drilling for oil populates the land—and the individual is forced to accept progress. With nostalgic fantasy as the only defense the reader is left disillusioned because progress is made the enemy but in reality progress continues on unhindered. In a positive spin, Fritzman posits this as a subliminal moment:

It is appropriate, I think, to mention Fritzman’s theory because the effect of nostalgia on the reader will affect how he or she reads a nostalgic work. The tone of disillusionment may reach the point of the sublime but only in its resistance to reality.

The seduction of nostalgia is the attempt to supersede the reality of progress. Within All the Pretty Horses we can identify stagnated movement as a consequence of nostalgia. Even from the most positive aspect all the subject can do is move towards a fantasy with the knowledge that it can never be attained. The predicament of the postmodern romantic hero is to face despondency brought about by false memory.

Works Cited

Cooper, James Fenimore. The Last of the Mohicans. 1826. NY: Penguin Books, 1986.

Fritzman, J. M. "The Future of Nostalgia and the Time of the Sublime." Clio. v.23 Winter 1994. p. 167-189.

Jameson, Fredric. "Postmodernism and Consumer Society." The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. Ed. Hal Foster. Port Townsend, WA.: Bay Press, 1983.

Lawrence, D. H. Studies in Classic American Literature. 1923. NY: The Viking Press, 1964.

McCarthy, Cormac. All the Pretty Horses. 1992. NY: Vintage Books, 1993.