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4.15 AVERAGE
4.15 AVERAGE
It's not you, it's me.
This story has beautiful prose (it is Cormac McCarthy, after all), but also turns the reader's face to the darkness of humanity, and won't let them close their eyes or look away (it is Cormac McCarthy, after all).
For its merit, it deserves a 5. For its darkness, I almost couldn't finish it. If you have a thicker skin then I do, you'll love it.
This story has beautiful prose (it is Cormac McCarthy, after all), but also turns the reader's face to the darkness of humanity, and won't let them close their eyes or look away (it is Cormac McCarthy, after all).
For its merit, it deserves a 5. For its darkness, I almost couldn't finish it. If you have a thicker skin then I do, you'll love it.
Some really nice prose, and I was involved in Billy’s story. But McCarthy greatly overestimates the reader’s appetite (patience) for lengthy parables and winding philosophizing.
Mexico is to Cormac McCarthy sort of what Africa was to Joseph Conrad. And I include all the attendant racism and (eventually) posthumous shame that goes along with that.
The Crossing is less a Western, in my opinion, than it is an apocalyptic look at human beings reduced to a state of nature. The 1930s United States that Billy Parham starts off from is only the thinnest veneer over the gaping chasm of hell that McCarthy has chosen to call Mexico. Shapes menacing, kind and indifferent waft in and out of the darkness that the main character wanders south of the border.
I get the temptation. The allure of the west is supposed to be that it was that last wild horizon that hasn’t been gated in, like the rest of our world. And once the American West was conquered, the frontier turned southward, so it’s only natural that much of McCarthy’s work is set there. And it could well be that things really were that violent, I don’t know. But if I were Mexican, I’d feel a little miffed by this constant characterization.
Don’t mistake me: I really, really Cormac McCarthy’s fiction.
Like No County and Blood Meridian before it, The Crossing cuts right to the central questions in any thinking person’s life: is there such thing as fate? Is it possible to be a good person in an amoral world? What do we really owe another human being. What do we owe our family? Can we know God?
Seriously, read this:
This man speaks truths I can only verbalize on my best days. And it's such fun to read him, because these nuggets of wisdom tumble out of the mouths of the most unlikely characters.
His main characters aren't quite as pleasantly verbose, but tell a good story in their own right. The story with Billy Parham and the wolf in the first quarter of the book was absolutely beautiful, a swansong to those last wild things on the frontier before he descended into the dark hearts of men.
His characters stray so close to the edge of the abyss, but something always makes them turn back. It's this hope on the edge of darkness that keeps me coming back.
The Crossing is less a Western, in my opinion, than it is an apocalyptic look at human beings reduced to a state of nature. The 1930s United States that Billy Parham starts off from is only the thinnest veneer over the gaping chasm of hell that McCarthy has chosen to call Mexico. Shapes menacing, kind and indifferent waft in and out of the darkness that the main character wanders south of the border.
I get the temptation. The allure of the west is supposed to be that it was that last wild horizon that hasn’t been gated in, like the rest of our world. And once the American West was conquered, the frontier turned southward, so it’s only natural that much of McCarthy’s work is set there. And it could well be that things really were that violent, I don’t know. But if I were Mexican, I’d feel a little miffed by this constant characterization.
Don’t mistake me: I really, really Cormac McCarthy’s fiction.
Like No County and Blood Meridian before it, The Crossing cuts right to the central questions in any thinking person’s life: is there such thing as fate? Is it possible to be a good person in an amoral world? What do we really owe another human being. What do we owe our family? Can we know God?
Seriously, read this:
The world has no name, he said. The names of the cerros and the sierras and the deserts exist only on maps. We name them so that we do not lose our way. Yet it was because the way was lost to us already that we have made those names. The world cannot be lost. We are the ones. And it is because these names and these coordinates are our own naming that they cannot save us. That they cannot find for us the way again.
This man speaks truths I can only verbalize on my best days. And it's such fun to read him, because these nuggets of wisdom tumble out of the mouths of the most unlikely characters.
His main characters aren't quite as pleasantly verbose, but tell a good story in their own right. The story with Billy Parham and the wolf in the first quarter of the book was absolutely beautiful, a swansong to those last wild things on the frontier before he descended into the dark hearts of men.
His characters stray so close to the edge of the abyss, but something always makes them turn back. It's this hope on the edge of darkness that keeps me coming back.
I do enjoy McCarthy, even with his pain-in-the-reading style, though I'm sure I missed a fair amount out in this one by not knowing Spanish.
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
He smiled. We think, he said, that we are the victims of time. In reality the way of the world is not fixed in any place. How would it be possible? We ourselves are our own journey. And that's why we are time too. We are the same. Fugitive. Inscrutable. Ruthless.
emotional
sad
slow-paced
adventurous
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
dark
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I understand the complaints regarding this books messy feel and contrast between the sections. That being said this book is still a masterpiece and is far from a weak link in the border trilogy.