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.
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