Every “like some” in “All The Pretty Horses” by Cormac McCarthy

Andrew R. French
2 min readJul 2, 2022

I’ve noticed that Cormac McCarthy uses the phrase “like some” quite a lot in his darkly poetic novels. Sometimes in the same paragraph. Once you see it, it’s hard to ignore.

Here are all the “like some”s I found in Cormac McCarthy’s “All The Pretty Horses”.

“like some supplicant to the darkness over them all”

“like some ribald satellite of the coming sun howling and bellowing in the distance”

“like some kind of desperado”

“like some desiccated effigy from a tomb”

“like some phantom migration”

“like some sad and ill used serf or worse”

“like something enormous uncoiling out of the earth”

“like some baroque lampstand”

“Like some kindly advisor.”

“like some dark and reedy homunculous bent upon inhabiting him”

“like something that had been crouching there in the silence waiting for him to stir”

“like some maimed and raging djinn enconjured there”

“like some site of siege in an older time, in an older country, where the enemies were all from without”

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