Pain is Always New is one of a series of fine European book-length critiques of Cormac McCarthy’s work. Focusing on violence and narrative technique in Blood Meridian, death and religion in All the Pretty Horses, how the conventions of the western genre produce meaning in The Crossing and on the intertextual references of Cities of the Plain, Sabine Anders argues against prevailing critical trends that would reject McCarthy’s border novels as “true” westerns.