After reading All the Pretty Horses (my review) last year, I knew it was just a matter of time until I devoured the next two books in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy. The Crossing represents Part II, but in my mind, it doesn't reach the same level as the poetically gritty and soulfully epic Horses (which received the coveted A+ grade here).
The Crossing lacks the simple lines of the earlier book and loses something in the resulting entanglement: Too many transient characters wax eloquently philosophic. Too many paragraphs in Spanish frustrate an English-speaking reader. The book falters at times under its own weight.
Nevertheless, Cormac McCarthy’s saga carries a heavy sorrow that causes one to examine the shape of this life and the end toward which the world tends. Billy Parham is straight-up and likeable, but unfortunate. Naïve seems too harsh a word, but Parham is seldom prepared for the branching events that hem him in, even when he takes the initiative. We find a capable man trapped within a fruitless journey, and to what end? Darkness and death? Or is there redeeming fire hidden in the ashes of despair? One suspects that for McCarthy, the answer is a blunt, bone-freezing grief. However, one book remains in The Border Trilogy. There's no way I'll pass on that final book, Cities of the Plain.
The Crossing is worth reading for its chilling effect on easy platitudes: There are sorrows in life that cannot be glossed over, and answers must be found.
Yes, it's on the Master Book List.
Saturday, March 03, 2007
The Crossing - Cormac McCarthy, A- (Book Review)
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4 comments:
I stumbled across your review and see your points. If "Horses" or "The Road" were your first introductions to McCarthy, I can see how "The Crossing" could be quite a headache at times. To his longtime readers, this book usually in their top 3 or 4. I actually prefer this and "Cities" over "Horses," all I love all three. I recommend reading his masterpieces Blood Meridian, Child of God, Sutree, and Outer Dark before reading the Crossing to get a full appreciation of his later works. The Spanish translations for all his books can be found at The Cormac McCarthy Society webpage, www.cormacmccarthy.com, and they help tremendously if you don't speak Spanish, like myself. It is VERY IMPORTANT to get these translations if you are going to read Cities, it is the most straightforward of the Trilogy, but the plot can be easily missed if you don't understand the Spanish. Actually, The Crossing is my all time favorite book.
Thanks for the enlightening comment, Tommy. I would have died for the Spanish translations when I was reading these books! And there they were, online, all the time...
I look forward to reading deeper into the McCarthy canon. If The Crossing ranks as an all-time favorite, there's probably something in the way of context that I'm missing.
'The Crossing' is definitely not an easy read, but, I felt, the most rewarding. After reading part 1 of it, I cried, and I don't cry easily. Men destroy that which they cannot tame, as well as the natural order of life. At the end, Billy rejects the bond out of his own self pity, only to realise his error when it has disappeared. To me, that is the most heartbreaking aspect of our culture, and McCarthy nailed it. Heck, it's been years since I first read it and it still gets me choked up. That men take advantage of the bond between themselves and the natural inhabitants out of their own selfishness, and to be able to illustrate that point in such a beautiful way. Any fans of McCarthy will say that their favorite works haunt them long after reading it. That's what 'The Crossing' did to me. There were so many levels underneath the basic plot, which there was little, that can open your eyes to the 'civilized' culture we live in today.
oh yeah, 'Cities of the Plain' knocked me out also, although it is the most simple of the three books. Some of the casual readers didn't like it as much, but regular readers of McCarthy loved it. It is an easier read than 'The Crossing', but expands upon the themes from both of the previous two. Also, it's nice to have the combination of the characters from both together. It was actually the first written, and then he went back and wrote 'Horses' and 'Crossing' to complete the stories of the two main protagonists, Parham and Cole.
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