Review of The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy

A book that sticks in mind from high school is John Steinbeck's The Red Pony. A coming-of-age story, it tells of a farm boy who gets his first horse, at long last. Things not turning out as intended, however, he is eventually forced to confront hard realities of life. The Red Pony is a brief novel. Having now read Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing (1994), I can't help but feel McCarthy took Steinbeck's baton and ran with it, fleshing out the story with complementary themes to full length.

The Crossing is the story of Billy Param. A sixteen year old young man growing up in the wilds of New Mexico, his story begins with he and his younger brother encountering a wandering Indian. The Indian demanding food, the two brothers feel they have no choice and take an offering from their parent's meager stores and give it to the man.  It is an omen of things to come.  Disaster striking the family, Billy is forced to cross the Mexican border to reclaim what he believes is his own.  Fate dealing him another blow, Param grows up fast in the liminal zone between America and Mexico. 

Technically speaking, The Crossing is the second book in McCarthy's Border trilogy. Nothing linking the stories save theme, there is no need to read one to understand the other. That being said, the more one reads of the trilogy, the more its central themes and motifs rise to the surface. These inlcude: American West, Mexico, the early 20th century, loss, young men, coming of age, fading traditions, and others.  Regarding the last point, there is room to expand into the cycles of civilization, culture, and industrialization.

But where McCarthy has written some downright bleak novels (see Blood Meridian, The Road, and No Country for Old Men), he seems to reserve his hopelessness in the Border novels, The Crossing included, for a more nostalgic yet dark romanticism. The sharp minimalism McCarthy is known for is front and center, but rather than symbolically loading th reader with the black side of humanity, in this novel he reminds the reader of a Georgia O'Keefe painting: the beauty of mortality.

If All the Pretty Horses is classic Western, then so too is The Crossing. Written with a 21st century eye to realism (i.e. plausible, rather than John Wayne outcomes), it is romantic more in tone and setting than character and plotting. McCarthy having had 20+ years to hone his craft, the story is deftly, tightly written, guiding the reader through the tragedy and triumph of a young man cutting his teeth and having his teeth cut by the American southwest at the dawn of the age of the automobile.