All the Pretty Horses: What the heck is going on in the first 7 pages?

What repeats?  Who's "he," and why is there no antecedent to that pronoun?  Doesn't that break a grammatical rule right off the bat?  And where's the punctuation in that big paragraph on p. 5?  Where and when does this take place and how do you know?

Welcome, AP Lit class of 2012-13!

You got the email, you saw the questions, you cursed me for ruining a perfectly lovely first day of summer vacation.  Remember, you are the few, the proud, the going-to-be-reading-all-summer.  There is really no finer activity.