Book Review: "The Crossing" by Cormac McCarthy

The Crossing (1994)

5 Stars out of 5

Cormac McCarthy

426 pages

(Spoiler Alert: this review contains some spoilers.)

The wolf is a being of great order and that he knows what men do not: that there is no order in the world save that which death has put there.

“The Crossing”

Cormac McCarthy began his “Borderlands” trilogy in 1992 with “All the Pretty Horses”. Part two of the trilogy is “The Crossing”. I gave part one 5 stars out of 5, I like “The Crossing” so much, I’d like to give part two 6 stars out of 5. In “All the Pretty Horses” we met sixteen year old John Grady Cole, a young man cut loose from the home he grew up in 1947 Texas who is then free to make some choices with his life. In “The Crossing” we move over one state to New Mexico and back in time by about seven years to meet Billy Parham, also sixteen. Both of these young men will make journeys on a road that seems to be of their choosing that will take them across the border into Mexico. And as much as both books use fate as one of their impressive list of themes, there does seem to be a significant difference between John Grady Cole’s choice and that of Billy Parham: John Grady makes his own choice to make the crossing into Mexico and his future, Bill Parham seems much more drawn down that road; his journey is much more an act of fate than one of choice.

“The Crossing” is told in three parts, the second and third parts each repeating part one to some degree; but with each iteration there is a ratcheting upwards of the sense of indifferent malice from the land and some of its people that Billy must re-face each time. In Billy’s first trip and the book’s first section, McCarthy has written a story that could easily stand alone as novella. Billy is introduced to the reader along with Billy’s younger brother Boyd and their two parents. The Parham family ranches for a living in southern New Mexico; close enough to Mexico that the distant Sierra de la Madre Mountains can be seen. The Parham cattle are being preyed upon by a wolf and the Parhams must trap her (for it is indeed a “her”; a pregnant “her”) and put her down to save their cattle. It is the closing years of the Great Depression and there is little room for sympathy for the needs of the wolf or her unborn pups. As in previous McCarthy books the fact that this is the end of the Depression is a multi-faceted component to the unfolding scenes. It not only tells the reader of the financial hardships abroad in the land, but it also hearkens to a familiar McCarthy theme: the end of an era; one in this case that parallels the soon to be ending cowboy era. In any event, the Parham’s must find a way to trap the she-wolf and they quite frankly lack the means or the knowledge to do so.

The Parham’s learn of a trapper that lived alone in the mountains. Billy and his father find the lost trapper’s cabin. He’s gone along with the era of trapping, but not his medieval collection of tools. Billy will use these various traps and McCarthy will utilize his storehouse of knowledge as regards the various traps and techniques necessary to trap the wolf. It will take Billy’s ingenuity as well as the traps to capture the wolf, but once he has done so, he determines to take her back to her presumed home in Mexico. This quixotic trip is the first indication of the forces that propel Billy. He tells no one of his impending trip except a chance stranger that he meets along the way. Why would Billy feel so strongly about the wolf that he would leave his family without a word to take her on what must needs be a hopeless journey? Billy seems as much in thrall to some force, some fate drawing him southward as the wolf is to Billy. Billy has been drawn not just southward but also into one of the “doomed enterprises [that] divide lives forever into the then and the now”. He will have three such enterprises within this book.

Once Billy reaches Mexico during each of his three trips he is confronted with a vibrant mélange of people and events: circuses and gypsies, fiestas and revolutionaries, pilgrims, bandits and horsemen, rich and poor, male and female, old and young. It is this last comparison that McCarthy dwells upon repeatedly throughout the “Borderlands” trilogy: he will always use a young man just starting his journey through life filled with innocence and hope and have that young man interact with a series of old people (generally but not always, men) filled with the tears and disappointments of their years. Billy will meet on this first journey an old Mormon missionary, an aged Mexican trapper, and on a later journey a blind man with this summary of life:

“The light of the world was in men’s eyes only, for the world itself moved in eternal darkness and darkness was its true nature and true condition and that in this darkness it turned with perfect cohesion in all its parts but that was naught there to see.”

Is this intended by McCarthy to be his own bitter assessment of reality as seen through his inner old man’s eyes? Is he trying to talk to his inner younger man with his sober view of the universe? And if so, would he have his younger self be the ox in this other view of life by an Amerindian carter met by Billy:

"The ox was an animal close to God as all the world knew and that perhaps the silence and the rumination of the ox was something like the shadow of a greater silence, a deeper thought" and that in any case "the ox knew enough to work so as to keep from being killed and eaten and that was a useful thing to know."

Perhaps, McCarthy would like his inner younger man to simply accept life as it is; don’t try to explain the universe, don’t put yourself out there and expose yourself to the murderous possibilities of an indifferent world; don’t confuse your dreams of hope with the universe’s dark realities. McCarthy has further tests for Billy that will explore this concept. In Billy’s second journey into Mexico, he will take his younger brother, Boyd. A young man that Billy will assert is the better of the two brothers: smarter, harder, and wiser than Billy. Boyd will in time make his choices and they will feel like choices not some irresistible draw of fate. Billy’s choice (if indeed it was a choice) to take the wolf back to Mexico led ultimately to death, and Boyd’s choice to “flee” into Mexico will also so lead. The other consequence of Boyd’s decision will again force Billy to make a third trip into Mexico. All three trips will seem to be utterly hopeless, as if Billy were a modern Don Quixote; but drawn as Billy is to his dream or his fate, he will go into Mexico, into “that antique gaze from whence there could be no way back forever.” Billy will make it back and will indeed make into part three of the trilogy, but few of his various companions will do so.

Like the other two parts of McCarthy’s stunningly brilliant trilogy, the reader is feted with a “cowboy” story; there are bad men, good men of honor, lots of horses and horse knowledge. But only in a McCarthy novel is the reader treated to such a thoughtful exploration of the differences between dreams and reality, between the hopes of innocent youth and the bitter realities of the aged, and of the use of the “road” as a metaphor for growth from youth into adulthood. These three books are a kind of unique “bildungsroman” where the youth in question is not the one growing to maturity; he is instead a metaphor for man so growing. The road McCarthy wants the reader to take is presumably the one he has taken, a kind of Buddhist’s willingness to let go of our perception (our dream) of reality and to accept that the Universe has its secrets and we are little more than an ox in terms of ever understanding, let alone changing that deeper, darker reality. Yes, the world man lives in can be mean, cruel and corrupt, but it can also be the simple altruism of a shared meal with a hungry stranger. So, just let go and accept it.

This book, this trilogy is not going to be for every reader, but I think for me, it was in some ways life altering in terms of how one might look at reality. I can’t really recommend it as a cowboy yarn; it might seem to be one, but it isn’t really. This is an artful book that uses beautiful language to explore some of the root existential thoughts that plague man. McCarthy draws his conclusions in each book and reaches a cathedral of thought in the epilog of “Cities of the Plains”, the third part of the trilogy. Whether you as the reader will come to the same conclusions as McCarthy is obviously an open question; what is not, in my opinion is that this trilogy is a monumental work that combines McCarthy’s earthbound view of gritty reality with an ethereal though dark and indifferent view of the philosophy of existence.

Needless to say, I recommend it strongly.

Book Review: "Alexander Hamilton" by Ron Chernow

Alexander Hamilton (2004)

5 Stars out of 5

Ron Chernow

818 pages

“Justice shall be done to the memory of my Hamilton”

Eliza Hamilton

In this presidential election year of 2016, I wonder what the average American thinks when they think of our “founding fathers”? I imagine most Americans no matter their educational attainments could name a few characteristics of George Washington, maybe a few for Thomas Jefferson, but who else? This presumed American voter might well know that Alexander Hamilton (AH) is on our ten dollar bill, but would they connect the link from the 10 dollar bill to AH’s role as our first Secretary of Treasury; to him laying the foundations for the American economic juggernaut that America is today? As I drill down further to the details of our country’s formative years, and ignoring for the moment the specifics of AH’s role, how many modern Americans know how close it was for our country to emerge from our long War of Independence from England into a near fatal series of political and economic skirmishes (if not in fact minor wars). Skirmishes that were to define in much greater detail what our nascent country would be like: a strong centralized government overseeing a manufacturing-based economy or a decentralized, agrarian chain of states only loosely connected for defense or economy. Ron Chernow’s 2004 biography of AH entitled “Alexander Hamilton” seeks to delve deeply into the psychologies of all the major proto-American Founding Fathers and to a large extent carefully explore all the political events in late 18^th century America in his remarkable effort to answer these questions.

Chernow’s biography of AH contains, as one would expect, many features and aspects of Hamilton’s personal life that are enlightening about Alexander Hamilton. However, the most amazing thing to me as a reader is not Chernow’s well described American War of Independence but rather the aforementioned struggle after the war as the young country sought to govern itself via the Articles of Confederation. This unfortunate document with its utter inability to unite the new country as was partially demonstrated in the original battle over state’s rights (incredibly led by the State of New York and not the South!) versus a strong federal government; a strong central government that was sorely needed to properly unite the country into the United States of America. The cure for this legal and national identity malaise was the US Constitution. Again, how many modern Americans know what a close thing it was to get the US Constitution approved, let alone the use of a Constitutional Convention as an “end run” to overcome the opposition of local power brokers such as the Governor of New York, George Clinton? (As is so often the case, Clinton merely saw the changes that would be brought by the new Constitution as erosion to his personal power – the safety and security of the US were of secondary importance to Clinton.)

The most influential tool in terms of getting the Constitution approved (and it was never a sure thing) were the Federalist Papers. This incredible collection of papers was written by future Supreme Court Justice John Jay, the Constitution’s author James Madison, and most significantly in terms of effort and persuasion, Alexander Hamilton. The authorship of the 85 papers was kept secret at the time, though subsequent scholarship has shown that Jay has written 5, Madison 29, and AH 51. While the Federalist Papers would not only prove to be a singular factor in getting the Constitution approved, they have also been referred to by many scholars as the defining document that describes American governmental philosophy. The only weakness in Chernow’s book, if there is indeed a weakness, is that he spends rather too little time examining the various Federalist papers and AH’s philosophical opinions that informed his writing. Instead, Chernow preferred to comment again and again on how hard a worker AH was as he frequently marveled at AH’s work ethic. I’ll grant him this point, but will recommend the reader to Forest McDonald’s 1979 biography on AH as a better examination of the philosophical underpinnings to AH and the Federalist Papers.

Where Chernow shines is in his exploration of the events that led AH to be such a intellectual powerhouse in early America. Hamilton’s story begins on the West Indian islands of St. Croix and Nevis where AH will learn to despise slavery, to admire personal and national industry, and where one of AH’s personal defects will begin to take root: reflexive defensiveness over his reputation and honor. He was born to a ne’er do well fourth son (James) of a Scottish Laird and an already married English/French woman (Rachel Faucette). One aspect of Rachel’s situation was that her first husband (Johann Lavien) treated her so brutally she had to flee from him (and her son by Lavien). The consequence of this desertion by Rachel was that Lavien held all the legal powers as he sought to further destroy poor Rachel (and her later children) in court. As such, the unfortunate AH and his older brother (James) were legally described as bastards – their parents’ “marriage” never being sanctioned by the local law due to the first husband’s legal opposition. This event in AH’s life might well have played a significant role in his later years in America where he would fight every assault on his honor, no matter how insignificant. Little did he know but young AH’s troubles were just beginning. His father James (legitimate or not) would abandon Rachel and the two boys while AH was only 10. His mother would die two years later and the loving (though depressed) cousin that would take the boys in after Rachel's death would shortly thereafter commit suicide. And just to make an absolute mess of their situation, the newly orphaned and then re-orphaned boys would have what few assets they had inherited from their mother claimed by Lavien – all according to the local Danish law. Rachel was declared a whore (again thanks to Lavien) in the eyes of the law, the boys’ bastards, and all their assets seized. Pretty cool law, don’t you think?

This is where one of the oddities of AH really begins to appear. He is hard working and immensely intelligent; all quite at odds with his dissolute father and dim-witted brother; though it must be noted, not at all at odds with a very close childhood friend. Chernow notes that maybe AH’s mother did get around and quite possibly the Scottish Laird’s son was not actually AH’s father, but was instead a very successful neighbor and father to AH’s closest childhood friend/”brother”. In any event, AH’s abilities catch the eyes of several import/export businessmen. They will pave and pay the way for AH to attend college at Kings’ College (later Columbia) in New York City. AH will move there, never to return to the West Indies. He will excel at college as he begins an academic path to the law. Before he finishes school though, the American War of Independence will begin.

AH will seek opportunity to fight the English as a captain of artillery. He will have a couple of chances to prove his mettle; one chance even occurring during the final battles at Yorktown. But his real skills as a manager and tireless writer will come to the attention of George Washington. His abilities will prove so valuable to Washington that Washington will actively work to prevent AH’s desired move to an active military position. Such frustrations will play havoc with their relationship – at least from AH’s point of view. Chernow will make it exceedingly clear that this period in AH’s life is a crucial one for him and for Washington. The bottom-line being that the steadiness and reserve of Washington will pair very well with the frantic and intellectual AH, and further Chernow believes that neither man would have succeeded without the other. This point will be made again when Washington will serve as America’s first president (something that AH worked over and again to convince Washington to do) and AH as the first Secretary of the Treasury.

Chernow will expend the remaining bulk of his book examining the post-war and Presidential years of Washington and Adams and of AH’s immense influence over both administrations (though Adams little knew of it at the time). There were at least two significant lessons learned by AH during the war: during the winter at Valley Forge, AH experienced in painful detail the inability of American industry to either build the needed implements of war or to supply whatever they did manufacture them to the struggling army; the second lesson was AH’s frustration with the manner in which the war was administered by “committee” from Philadelphia. Hamilton would take both of these wartime experiences to create within his mind a theory if not  necessarily a detailed plan to forge a home-grown industrial base during his tenure as Secretary of the Treasury and to argue forcibly during the Constitutional Convention for a strongly centralized government with a leader that had near monarchial powers. AH did not get all he wanted in terms of the future President’s powers, and quite possibly he created a number of life-long enemies during the convention’s battles over doctrine and law, but because of the force of his will and the strength of his logic, the future American government and economy were considerably improved. One might even be tempted to suggest that his influence set the stage for an American government that would succeed where it would have otherwise completely failed, quite possibly leading to a splintering of the nation into a variety of mini-nations or even to renewed domination by England.

In Washington’s first administration, AH will try to create a new United States of America based on a manufacturing economy rather than the agrarian utopia sought by Thomas Jefferson and former AH Federalist Papers ally James Madison. Before Hamilton could get to his vision of a robust industrial economy, he needed to solve an intransigent problem that was badly eroding the cohesiveness of the country: war time debt. Some of the states (notably Virginia) had managed their debt, while others had big problems. These divisions were largely though not completely along North/South lines. AH’s solution was two-fold: nationalize the debt and create a national bank. Some of the states felt they had handled their debt and argued against bailing out those that did not, but it was as much a philosophical argument that split the country: what is the role of government in the economy. Jefferson, Madison, and fellow Virginian Monroe were staunchly opposed to the bank. Their supporters would argue that their opposition was based on philosophy; their opponents would argue it was out of political and economic self-interest. Was their opposition rooted in a desire to protect a slave-based economy, an opposition against to non-local governance, or just simply personal enmity directed to AH and his personality? You will find biographers that will support their subject materials point of view and deride their opponents. And one thing you will readily grasp from Chernow’s book is that he most definitely shares Hamilton’s antipathy towards Jefferson and Madison. Consider the following:

“It is a testimony to the political genius of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison that they diverted attention from the grisly realities of southern slavery by casting a lurid spotlight on Hamilton’s system as the paramount embodiment of evil. They inveighed against the concentrated wealth of northern merchants when southern slave plantations clearly represented the most heinous form of concentrated wealth. Throughout the 1790s, planters posed as the tribunes of small farmers and denounced the depravity of stocks, bonds, banks, and manufacturing—the whole wicked apparatus of Hamiltonian capitalism.”

One thing is certain for every reader that studies Chernow’s book is that the reader will truly understand and appreciate Alexander Hamilton’s role in forging the foundations of our country. He may not have a statue in his honor in Washington DC. He may have had had his history tarnished by political enemies that outlived him by 25 years or more and who as a result could polish in print their accomplishments as they tarnished Hamilton’s. Hamilton may have transitioned in his later years from an optimist to one suffering from depression and overly concerned about his honor (even leading to his fatal appointment with Aaron Burr in Weehawken NJ), but no one who reads Chernow’s book will doubt the immense debt modern Americans owe this man for his role (if for nothing else) in establishing an economic system that allowed America to transition within a span of 75 years to being one of the world’s manufacturing powerhouses. Possibly you may not agree with Talleyrand who considered Hamilton to be one of the three greatest leaders of their shared era, but you will almost certainly agree that AH’s legacy is one sadly under-studied by modern Americans. I think, too you will believe as I do, that Chernow has finished the job alluded to above by Hamilton’s widow, Eliza.

Chernow has written four books on banking and three on political history, the 2011 book on George Washington earning him the Pulitzer Prize for biography. Chernow’s explorations of political philosophies may be somewhat superficial, but his examination of the psychologies involved, at least as manifested in this book on Alexander Hamilton places this author near the top of my list of favorite biographers. I strongly recommend this book to every reader interested in American history, and personally look forward to reading his book on George Washington.