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4.14 AVERAGE
4.14 AVERAGE
Another 3.5 Stars for me on this one. I’m beginning to think this trilogy is way more of a “standard” western trope than many of the other Cormac books I’ve read. This is not a negative quality, just not a genre I typically seek out. There is some absolutely gorgeous passages, language, and insights strung throughout the book that make it well worth the read. I will be polishing off the series here soon.
“And yet a sorrow of which there can be no hope, is no sorrow. It is some dark sister, traveling in sorrows clothing.”
“To see god everywhere is to see god nowhere”
“What we seek is a worthy adversary”
“Weight and Substance, but no Name.”
“And yet a sorrow of which there can be no hope, is no sorrow. It is some dark sister, traveling in sorrows clothing.”
“To see god everywhere is to see god nowhere”
“What we seek is a worthy adversary”
“Weight and Substance, but no Name.”
I liked this one better than All the Pretty Horses and when I think about it seems like an impossibly long book where an incredible amount happens - and yet it’s of average length. A boy on his family farm trying to get rid of a wolf bothering the livestock, then he catches it and can’t bring himself to kill it, so he tries to take it alive to his father. Then he decides he’ll take it over the mountains and release it in Mexico. While there it is stolen from him and he has to put it down because the government seized it and used it as a dog fighting attraction. Then the boy tries to return home only to find his family was slaughtered, save for his brother. He goes to his brother and then the two of them try to go retrieve their horses. They rescue a girl in the road and she sticks with them. They meet a traveling show of gypsies, and a bunch of other incredibly interesting characters. The boy is hardened and beat down by life over and over. His brother runs off with the girl and then his brother dies. It’s a crazy story where a lot of things happen.
This is perhaps the most melancholy book I have ever read. I’ve been a big fan of all the Cormac McCarthy books that I have read, and when I sat back to try to digest this one after I read the last few pages, I was surprised with the comparison that came to mind. But I think it’s valid.
To me it was so similar to The Road. While The Road is centered on the relationship between a father and son and their love for one another, The Crossing involves two brothers. But in both books, their love is undying with older of each pair doing all he can to protect the younger from the desperate situations that they find themselves in. You could argue that journey in The Road is forced whereas the three trips into Mexico in The Crossing are voluntary. However, in the mind of Boyd, they were not voluntary. He HAD to return the wolf to Mexico to save it, go again to reclaim his family’s horses, and for the last time to retrieve his brother’s remains.
Of course where The Crossing deviates from The Road is in the ending. With The Road the reader is left with a feeling of hope as the boy is taken into the community that has survived whatever ill has struck the planet. You can foresee a positive future for him. But The Crossing just ends with more despair that left me dumbfounded and depressed. But that the author can evoke these feelings in me speaks volumes of his amazing talent. What a writer. What a book!!!
To me it was so similar to The Road. While The Road is centered on the relationship between a father and son and their love for one another, The Crossing involves two brothers. But in both books, their love is undying with older of each pair doing all he can to protect the younger from the desperate situations that they find themselves in. You could argue that journey in The Road is forced whereas the three trips into Mexico in The Crossing are voluntary. However, in the mind of Boyd, they were not voluntary. He HAD to return the wolf to Mexico to save it, go again to reclaim his family’s horses, and for the last time to retrieve his brother’s remains.
Of course where The Crossing deviates from The Road is in the ending. With The Road the reader is left with a feeling of hope as the boy is taken into the community that has survived whatever ill has struck the planet. You can foresee a positive future for him. But The Crossing just ends with more despair that left me dumbfounded and depressed. But that the author can evoke these feelings in me speaks volumes of his amazing talent. What a writer. What a book!!!
"The priest spoke to this misguided man of the nature of God and of the spirit and the will and of the meaning of grace in men's lives and the old man heard him out and nodded his head at certain salient points and when the priest was done this old man raised his book aloft and shouted at the priest. You know nothing. That is what he shouted. You know nothing."
The Crossing is a book constructed with the deadened, dry bones of the southwest after the events of the Mexican Revolution. Through the wanderings of teenage Billy Parham between borders, we meet many individuals with lofty views on the human condition and their relationship to the divine. As with each passing character, each reader may take away something different from this novel.
Timeliness is a factor as well - with my faith in the state that it is, this book opened up many pathways to reconciliation. Given other external factors, I cannot say I am the same after having read this.
The book, like its predecessor, is laid out in a few distinct parts:
1. Let's go wolf hunting.
2. Let's go get our horses.
3. Let's go get a job.
It is an arduous but worthwhile journey. Notably, it also stands alone from [b:All the Pretty Horses|469571|All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1)|Cormac McCarthy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1538659953l/469571._SY75_.jpg|1907621], so it can be read on its own merit. And while the book takes us hundreds of miles from where we started, I am in awe of how the beginning's relevance paid its due in kind.
Similar to a couple other CorMac endings, the last scene is imprinted upon my memory like a rugged still-life portrait. Like the rest of the book, it exhibits miraculous beauty in spite (or at the expense) of unrelenting pain.
4 Stars
Brutal and Beautiful. The land is beautiful, but life can be harsh and brutal. The wildness of a wolf is beautiful, but the brutality of a trap takes that beauty and mars it. Adventures as a 17 year old male in the wake of the depression, can be beautiful. Adventures that turn to blood, respect, and what is deemed as fate; can be brutal.
The words put upon page are beautiful, but the tenacious manner of description by the author was brutal at times. Everything had to be described from the setting of the sun, to the blood flowing from flesh. It was not lost upon me.
This feels like [b:The Road|6288|The Road|Cormac McCarthy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1600241424l/6288._SY75_.jpg|3355573]. Initially, we may have had some hope; but we realize how things should be; not how they are.
Brutal and Beautiful. The land is beautiful, but life can be harsh and brutal. The wildness of a wolf is beautiful, but the brutality of a trap takes that beauty and mars it. Adventures as a 17 year old male in the wake of the depression, can be beautiful. Adventures that turn to blood, respect, and what is deemed as fate; can be brutal.
The words put upon page are beautiful, but the tenacious manner of description by the author was brutal at times. Everything had to be described from the setting of the sun, to the blood flowing from flesh. It was not lost upon me.
This feels like [b:The Road|6288|The Road|Cormac McCarthy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1600241424l/6288._SY75_.jpg|3355573]. Initially, we may have had some hope; but we realize how things should be; not how they are.
adventurous
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Cormac was the greatest writer of the 21st Century
The first third of this novel is 10/10...absolutely incredible. The rest was so tedious and unengaging that this is without doubt my leave favorite novel I have read from McCarthy.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
A moving exploration of the transience of life and its endless, tireless changing. There isn't really a plot to speak of, nor is the main character really developed in any major way (he is quite passive, in fact), but despite this, the novel is evocative and moving; I became unconsiously attached to what few semi-consistent things remain in the story—and to a surprisingly intense degree.
Much of the character 'development' revolves around conversations between the protagonist and the figures he meets as he travels. These comversations almost always involve the figures explaining (or proselytizing) their world-view—though apart from a few key moments, we don't really come to see how much of what the protagonist comes to believe. While conversations like this can be boring or overly intellectualized (in theory), they consistently engage throughout The Crossing, especially due to the differences among the characters themselves, contradictory viewpoints, and variety of topics (nature, the mind, reality, and truth). However, there is still something unsolved to Billy Parham, and his emotional interiority is glimpsed through similarly brief cracks as his intellectual one. These moments often surprise and, at their best, devestate. McCarthy's handling of these story elements seems to break the conventional rules of story telling but in a way that ultimately feels fully functional, more successful even than its more-conventional predecessor.
The limited understanding of Billy that we get (and the relative lack of plot) is the major area of difference between The Crossing and All the Pretty Horses. While I preferred The Crossing as a whole, this difference also left me with a stronger attachment to and appreciation for John Grady Cole than Billy Parham. By offering a more muted experience, the novel instead offers a more complex and nuanced exploration of its themes. While gunplay, horse-wrangling, and romance are present, they take a backdrop to the more subtextual elements and conservations between characters who enter fall out of, and re-enter the story constantly.
In terms of elements that both novels share, the place and the people who inhabit it stand as high points. Perhaps it was a function of sheer volume, but it seemed like Spanish featured more predominantly here than in APH. The diglot passages are some of my favorite as someone who can passably read Spanish (with some help from the dictionary). It allows not only for versimilitude but also for so much verbal texture and dexterity; I am floored by McCarthy's mastery of two languages and the mediating Spanglish between them. This also works well with the novel's philosophical concerns as ideas can be expressed twice in different languages and two scenes can feel distinct simply based on the language(s) employed. Working through the Spanish certainly slowed down my reading (and had my grasp of the language been worse, I could see it being a major detriment to what I got out of the novel) but if you have even baseline familiarity with Spanish it is an incredibly rewarding bilingual read. The masterful employment of two languages is, perhaps, my favorite aspect of the novel.
There is more to be said about The Crossing than what I can get into here, but I'll close by saying that it's an instant favorite within McCarthy's ouvre.
Much of the character 'development' revolves around conversations between the protagonist and the figures he meets as he travels. These comversations almost always involve the figures explaining (or proselytizing) their world-view—though apart from a few key moments, we don't really come to see how much of what the protagonist comes to believe. While conversations like this can be boring or overly intellectualized (in theory), they consistently engage throughout The Crossing, especially due to the differences among the characters themselves, contradictory viewpoints, and variety of topics (nature, the mind, reality, and truth). However, there is still something unsolved to Billy Parham, and his emotional interiority is glimpsed through similarly brief cracks as his intellectual one. These moments often surprise and, at their best, devestate. McCarthy's handling of these story elements seems to break the conventional rules of story telling but in a way that ultimately feels fully functional, more successful even than its more-conventional predecessor.
The limited understanding of Billy that we get (and the relative lack of plot) is the major area of difference between The Crossing and All the Pretty Horses. While I preferred The Crossing as a whole, this difference also left me with a stronger attachment to and appreciation for John Grady Cole than Billy Parham. By offering a more muted experience, the novel instead offers a more complex and nuanced exploration of its themes. While gunplay, horse-wrangling, and romance are present, they take a backdrop to the more subtextual elements and conservations between characters who enter fall out of, and re-enter the story constantly.
In terms of elements that both novels share, the place and the people who inhabit it stand as high points. Perhaps it was a function of sheer volume, but it seemed like Spanish featured more predominantly here than in APH. The diglot passages are some of my favorite as someone who can passably read Spanish (with some help from the dictionary). It allows not only for versimilitude but also for so much verbal texture and dexterity; I am floored by McCarthy's mastery of two languages and the mediating Spanglish between them. This also works well with the novel's philosophical concerns as ideas can be expressed twice in different languages and two scenes can feel distinct simply based on the language(s) employed. Working through the Spanish certainly slowed down my reading (and had my grasp of the language been worse, I could see it being a major detriment to what I got out of the novel) but if you have even baseline familiarity with Spanish it is an incredibly rewarding bilingual read. The masterful employment of two languages is, perhaps, my favorite aspect of the novel.
There is more to be said about The Crossing than what I can get into here, but I'll close by saying that it's an instant favorite within McCarthy's ouvre.