The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy: A Re-Evaluation

Time Stamps:
Plot Summary with Spoilers Begins: 4:45
Plot Summary with Spoilers Ends: 8:40
Dude Bro Discussion Begins: 17:44
DudeBro Discussion Ends: 25:58
The second in my series of review re-evaluating Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy
NOTE: In this video I say that the character of the girl seduced/ led one of the characters Boyd astray meaning that she led him away from the quest the main character Billy was on. That is Billy's perspective not Boyd's. It is clear that Boyd was happier with the girl than with Billy.
My Re-Evaluation of _All The Pretty Horses:
• All The Pretty Horses ...
Steve Donoghue's Seven Sins of "Dude Bro Lit":
• The Seven Sins of Dude...
#BookReview

[@TH3F4LC0Nx]

I still liked this book better than All the Pretty Horses. I would actually put The Crossing as either his 2nd or 3rd best book, but that's just me. Yes, it is very structurally disjointed, but it also contains some insanely evocative passages which really constitutes some of his best writing, imo. And plus the emotional reactions which this book elicited in me were DEEP. I should have known McCarthy wouldn't write a typical "boy and his dog (or wolf)" story, but damn did part one wreck me. And the ending was downright devastating.

[@BookishTexan]

That first section is so good that even with my criticism of the other sections in this video I too like the book better than _All The Pretty Horses_. But it is sloppy and overwrought in too many places, but I agree that it is often powerful. Thank you for watching and leaving a such a great comment.

[@t0dd000]

There is this section where someone is regaining consciousness in a jail cell after a severe being-it's been too long since I read these for me to be more specific-and McCarthy's prose describing that experience had to be the most impressive piece of writing I have ever read. I really need to find it and mark it. It's so artfully described. It just took my breath away. I'm pretty sure it was in The Crossing. Man I need to read these again.

[@justingable1]

Wasn’t the whole point of the story of the two airplanes to drive home the point about objects being anything and nameless when they are separated from the stories and names we assign them? Did I not read something write because I thought the gypsies were making a point about the insanity of Billy carrying the bones back. His brother is gone and only the story remains and it lives in Billy. Not the bones. Billy kept trying to confirm that the coredos he heard that sounded like his brother and the girl where truly about Boyd, but they were and they weren’t. It was just a story as old as time, maybe it was Boyd but it was also many who came before. The american he meets after the gypsies is a mirror of Billy’s absurdity and ego. He looking for something as if the something matters as much as the story we tell about the thing. Maybe just having read it makes me see things that aren’t there, but I see a boy preoccupied with making sense of a physical world and forgetting to make a place in it for himself.

[@BookishTexan]

I am sure you read it right. You got much more out of those sections of the book than I. Found them frustrating and even a bit dull. For me when McCarthy’s ideas/philosophizing overwhelm the narrative I lose interest. He only managed to walk that type rope a few times in his career.

[@nolliebags]

Only being 9 minutes into the video, I want to already ask, are there not parallels in the story? Taking the wolf back to Mexico, taking his brother back to New Mexico, and you say “long stories” of people in between but those are where the meat of the story happens. The characters say very little, do very little. But the idea is that we will be this way forever is made even stronger.

[@BookishTexan]

All very good points. Yes I see the parallels in returning the wolf and returning his brother's body as far as they give us insight into the main characters personality. I will be honest with you though, I still feel that they don't always contribute to the main story or even make that much sense. They are each -- the priest, the blinded man, the opera troupe, the Gypsies -- interesting and I suppose McCarthy intends for us to draw some meaning from them (though to be honest I also think its possible that McCarthy just had what he thought were cool ideas that couldnt be developed into novels of their own), but they didn't do that for me. That they added meat to the story for you is great. For me they were long digressions that took away from the more interesting story of revenge, betrayal, jealousy, etc. involving the brothers.

[@BrianMcInnis87]

20:28 I'm sorry, what? The Crossing doesn't give descriptions of what's going on? Describing what's going on is not possible if you also give lists of things? Who is this Steve person and what is he on?

[@BookishTexan]

There is a link to Steve's video in the description box.

[@averagenobody9906]

Dude bro lit? First there aren’t any dudebros reading books. Second, the premise of pretentious bookworms categorizing literature they don’t enjoy in a demeaning way is mind numbingly smoothbrained behavior. Read it if you want to read it or don’t if you don’t.

[@BookishTexan]

Ok…… Are you sure you understood the premise of my video?

[@averagenobody9906]

Don’t be condescending. I understood perfectly fine. I’m not speaking to the broad subject of the entire video, I’m speaking to the existence of the term, “Dudebro lit”.

[@BookishTexan]

@@averagenobody9906 Go back and read your initial comment to me for an example of condescension. You set the tone. Now you’re whining about the response. As I believe is stated in this video, my reread and review was done in response to a concept created by another content creator.

[@HankMorris-el6jg]

You don’t get it dude! But you just keep talkin.

[@BookishTexan]

Yeah, weird right? I’ve tried not talking in the book review videos I make, but I find it hard to get my point across. Your do realize that a person can “get” a book and still dislike it right?

[@fretpound]

You’ve officially used up your lifetime allotment of saying the term “dude-bro lit.” 😂

[@BookishTexan]

Haha!! I think this video might have been the last time.

[@fretpound]

@@BookishTexan lol

[@BenLaSoul908]

@@BookishTexan noooo

[@jokerraton8183]

I’d say it’s my 3rd favorite behind suttree and BM and I really enjoyed the philosophical coda he brought to his magnum opus. Where I thought it suffered was the denouement, especially the Gypsy’s monologue about the plane (even though it paid off hilariously)

[@BookishTexan]

I have issues with McCarthy’s monologuing characters in general. I’m s just not something I enjoy so much of the second half of The Crossing was a slog for me.

[@BrianMcInnis87]

19:19 'I am not a society person. The societies to which I have been exposed seem to me largely machines for the suppression of women.' - The Dueña Alfonsa, a feminist lodestar and as far as I can tell the most intelligent and learned character in any McCarthy novel, on page 230 of All the Pretty Horses. McCarthy wrote the whole first draft of The Crossing, then immediately began writing Pretty Horses as he was also writing the further drafts of The Crossing. So I guess your going hypothesis is that McCarthy was a misogynist while writing The Crossing, then instantly birthed a feminist alter ego he adopted as needed on the days when he was working on Pretty Horses. Of course the truth is McCarthy has always avoided writing major female characters whenever possible because by his own repeated public admissions women are very mysterious to him and he doesn't understand them intimately and so sticks to writing what he knows, which is virtually everything else. Except for a handful of cases, of course, and especially except for this new story he's spent over twenty years writing. And McCarthy's work in general and The Crossing in particular is peopled with archetypal characters by intention. That's why he names so few of them. But point out to your viewers one character in The Crossing who feels implausible or cliché.

[@BookishTexan]

First paragraph. I have a video on _All the Pretty Horses_ that covers this. Second paragraph: So McCarthy isn't a misogynist because he avoids writing complex female characters because he finds women "mysterious"? Implausible/ clichéd character, the ex-priest.'

[@jackeddemon]

I respectfully disagree with this video as well. It may not be his best book, but it’s a great book overall

[@BookishTexan]

Fair enough. I do think the first section involving the wolf contains some of McCarthy's best writing.

[@Idontneedeyebrows]

It’s clear that the style of the author is lost in this review. Grading criterion are of relatively low quality but removes any context of philosophical view point by separating answers into binary format. Overall low yield content, would consider taking a more analytical approach to the “unbalanced” or “boring” portions that give quite a bit of context to the world when viewed as a timepiece.

[@BookishTexan]

Regardless of whether I understood all of McCarthy’s philosophical ideas, my point was that the long philosophical sections in the book in which a character shared their/McCarthy’s ideas don’t work for me in the context of the novel. They stop the action, reduce the main character to a listener, are the literal definition of telling and not showing , and seemed wedged into the plot for no other purpose than allowing McCarthy to bloviate. Blood Meridian is no less philosophical than The Crossing, but the philosophy of that book is revealed in the action, the interaction of the characters and not in one sided conversations where a random character shares all their thoughts. This makes Blood Meridian a far better novel than The Crossing.

[@BrianMcInnis87]

16:31 I think you might be surprised at how many novels contain tales of woe. And ghostly encounters, although I couldn't name you many of those in The Crossing.

[@BookishTexan]

So your defense of McCarthy's use of old tropes and clichés is that they are common . . . . . I think you should film a review of _The Crossing_ and post it on your channel. I would love to see your full thoughts on the novel.

[@phoxfoenix]

I'm sorry bur i feel like we didn't even read the same book. If flows much like the Iliad and the Odyssey. The capture of the she wolf and returning her to Mexico is the Trojan war. Probably why our focused on that being the whole of the story. When i was younger my friends father and uncle, along with my father were surfers in California. Mexico, mainly Baja for the surf, but the place as a whole was presented as almost mythical. Families in huts that through friendship and interaction would invite you in, feed you and help guide you in what must have seemed at the time a verry strange land compared to modern America U.S.A. McCarthy uses this to his advantage b having the rest of the book, which I find to be the meat of the story, play along like the Odyssey. Small adventures in a foreign land that have morale and value, and some times chaos, every time the border is crossed. The priest in the falling down church showing faith keeps the ceiling up. The gypsies on obscuring truth with beauty and entertainment. And the part retrieving the plane that sometimes there is no meaning. Natures chaos, shit happens. Billy collapses finally crying at the end in the abandoned gas station with the mangy dog because through the whole story he's showed no emotion. It was go go go until that point of calm in the middle of no where that he's actually processing all the shit that went down. Stories are a part of the human experience handed down through time. When we feel a kiness to one it is because we have let it immerse us. You didn't read this story. You scanned it for validation, and worse, prophet.

[@BookishTexan]

I've read it twice. The opening section is brilliant. The rest is the kind of philosophical mumbo jumbo that doesn't appeal to me as a reader. That it obviously appealed to you and spoke to you is great. We don't have to agree, but you don't get to tell me what I think and spew nonsense about me not reading it. (And its profit by the way, not prophet).

[@phoxfoenix]

@@BookishTexan Touché..... Now on to Blood Meridian... The Devil is the Judge is a tiring trope...

[@BrianMcInnis87]

18:59 She seduces him neither literally nor figuratively. Each loves the other and they run off together.

[@BookishTexan]

Did he leave the quest he was on with his brother to follow her? Yes. Whether it was because he loved her or she loved him she literarily led him away from the quest that was his purpose for going to Mexico. How did that work out for him? Seduced has more than one definition.

[@BrianMcInnis87]

16:46 That gypsies make a brief appearance in a novel about Mexico does little indeed to suggest they were purloined from one particular other novel that involved gypsies. But McCarthy's said himself that books are made from books, and the multitudes Blood Meridian's admirers seem perfectly able to talk about its considerable borrowings from Moby Dick, Paradise Lost, several books of the Bible and many other sources without being embarrassed about them. It's not where you take things from, the saying goes. It's where you take them to.

[@BookishTexan]

So then you agree that _The Crossing_ does have things in common with _One Hundred Years of Solitude_ which is what I said . . . .

[@t0dd000]

I generally tell folks that Blood Meridian is his best work and my favorite fiction book of all time. That being said, the trilogy as a whole contends for that to spot. The Passenger and Stella Maris as a unit contend for second place of his works for me. I do agree The Crossing can be uneven here and there. Or more ... we are taken on tangents. But for whatever reason, with McCarthy, I shrug that stuff off. I see it as world-building, or further character development, or expanded setting, or exploring a theme, or something. But I love it. Hard to explain why. Hmm. Moby Dick is "uneven" as well. So... McCarthy is in good company. ;)

[@BookishTexan]

I think we probably disagree about what makes for a good McCarthy novel and a not good McCarthy novel, but I enjoy seeing your thoughts and ideas about his work.

[@t0dd000]

@@BookishTexan I just start with ... Did I love it or not. :)

[@CourtneyFerriter]

Do I want to skip the dude-bro stuff? Please, I am 100% watching solely for the dude-bro discussion! :-) I continue to be fascinated by this whole examination of what qualifies as "dude-bro" lit and why.

[@BookishTexan]

Haha! I think you and I might be the only ones fascinated by the Dudebro thing🤓

[@whiphess7658]

We do get the girl's view on God

[@BookishTexan]

That is true. Good point.

[@MarcNash]

I may have said this before, but most books use inventory lists rather than convey a genuine quality of the object or scenery

[@BookishTexan]

I guess that's true. I really think what sets McCarthy apart is the level of detail with which he describes processes and equipment etc. For instance after reading this book I have pretty good idea what size trap I need to catch a wolf, how to clean and oil said traps, how the traps work, how to set the traps, where to set the traps, how to bury the traps, etc.

[@BookishTexan]

I guess that's true. I really think what sets McCarthy apart is the level of detail with which he describes processes and equipment etc. For instance after reading this book I have pretty good idea what size trap I need to catch a wolf, how to clean and oil said traps, how the traps work, how to set the traps, where to set the traps, how to bury the traps, etc.

[@MarcNash]

@@BookishTexan You obviously haven't rad the early work of Nicholson Baker, who goes into microscopic detail about everyday objects as a sort of satire. One of his books is solely about a single trip in an office elevator, but oh my, the detail in that!

[@BookishTexan]

@@MarcNash Fair enough. That does sound a bit painful and I like some Nicholson Baker. But, then again I like McCarthy so maybe its my thing.

[@BrianMcInnis87]

19:19 What the hell do you think is goin to happen if somebody sees her ridin a stolen horse? Hell. Any horse. It aint stole. The hell it aint. She'll bring it back. It and the sheriff. What did she run off for if she wants to go back? I dont know. I dont know either. We come a long ways to get that horse. I know it. Billy spat into the fire. I sure would hate to be a woman in this country. - Page 273

[@BookishTexan]

This quote doesn't describe the girls thoughts. It describes the boys assumptions about the girls thoughts. Additionally, its essentially saying "Women are illogical and you can never tell what they are going to do or why."

[@BrianMcInnis87]

16:22 Hard to see how it could have a similar feel. I gave up on that book once I lost hope that it contained any actual scenes, and McCarthy's books are scarcely anything *but* scenes.

[@BookishTexan]

My comparison is, of course, just my opinion. You are free to disagree with it, but since you, by your own admission, haven't actually read _One Hundred Years of Solitude_ I'm not sure your opinion is based on solid evidence.

[@acruelreadersthesis5868]

I felt like this was the first McCarthy novel where those baroque, deliberately poetic passages worked almost all of the time for me. I on the whole liked the writing more than I didn't. In the others of his novels that I've read, those passages have been highly uneven in how effective they were for me. I think I'd agree that the novel as a story is uneven. In terms of its plot, I mostly enjoyed the episodic nature of it. It always took me 10-20 pages to get interested in each new crossing story, but as soon as I was, I didn't have much trouble getting through it. The random people Billy meets who tell him stories were especially uneven in how interesting they were, but I took that as an aspect of the novel that would open up on a reread. Actually, this novel made me think that McCarthy took Don Quixote as a starting point. Even the fact that there are three "crossings" in The Crossing, just as there are three sallies of Don Quixote from his home, and the way his brother becomes this mythic hero seems reminiscent of the way Don Quixote and Sancho Panza see how they've become popular heroes in the second part of the novel. I haven't read any Marquez, so I wouldn't have been able to pick up on that connection. What led you to say that the girl seduced Boyd? I didn't gather that from the way the story was written--I just saw it as Boyd and the girl falling in love. But I could've missed something. Not that the girl is a well-written character--I completely agree that she's one-dimensional and indicative of McCarthy's inability to write women. Did you get the sense that the way Billy "tamed" the wolf was a reflection of the way he might think a man must "tame" a woman? I thought there were some troubling echoes between the descriptions of his interactions with the wolf and certain sexist narratives of seduction. What I'm referring to is those stereotypical narratives where a man subdues and almost enslaves a woman, who at first fights back, but eventually begins to fall in love with the man despite (or perhaps because of) his mistreatment of her. Did you get that sense? This feeling was underlying my whole reading of that section, which I otherwise liked a lot. On the whole, I think I'd rank this as my second favorite McCarthy that I've read so far (after The Road), despite its flaws. I loved those parts of the stories that I liked, and I found it relatively painless to get through those parts that I didn't like.

[@BookishTexan]

I have not read _Don Quixote_ so I did not make that connection, but given what I increasingly think about McCarthy, that sounds right. There were fewer passages in the writing that stuck out to me as bad or over done in this book. In part, I think its because, to me, this book is much more allegorical than _All The Pretty Horses_ . That books is very realistic. _The Crossing_ is more dreamlike and surreal. I think this is one of my issues with McCarthy. For me his best books are either realistic or allegorical not both. _All The Pretty Horses_ is realistic. _Blood Meridian_ is allegorical. Both are good. Where I think McCarthy loses me is when he combines the two. In _The Crossing_ we start off with a pretty straight forward and realistic story and then it swerves back and forth between the realism of Billy/Boyd's quest and these surreal, allegorical, symbolic meetings with various, improbable characters, who tell fantastical stories. I didn't make the connection between taming the wolf and treatment of women. I thought it was just a man trying to tame/preserve nature simultaneously which proves to be relatively impossible. But your idea is really interesting. I used the word "seduced" to describe the Girl's affect on Boyd to align that with description of misogyny in Steve's sins of dude bro lit. I left a note in the show notes explaining that this "seduction" was something Boyd welcomed. That Billy's Quest isnt really Boyds. I will rewrite that line in my notes to make that more clear.

[@acruelreadersthesis5868]

@@BookishTexan Ah, sorry I didn't read the show notes more closely! Now that you point out the allegorical vs. realistic side of McCarthy's works, I think that the combination of those two elements is why I actually liked this a lot. I can see why you might not be a fan of it, though.

[@velvetram2975]

I can certainly appreciate the "dudebrolit" lense which you are evaluating this work through and that on the surface, the work can fall into some of those tropes. However, I think that in affirming those that seem to align, it is easy to miss the folly which McCarthy attributes to to the characters and their motivations. The book can be so frustrating in that all of the "macho" decisions Billy makes end tragically in such obvious fashion. It seems as though McCarthy makes these choices deliberately to demonstrate how futile they truly can be which I feel can undermine the "dudebrolit" criteria..

[@BookishTexan]

Thank you for this great comment. The "dudbrolit" criteria are certainly very surface area and they are built on the idea that there isnt much about books that fall into the category that is deeper or that what is supposed to be deep about them really isnt much deeper than a celebration of manly virtues ( virtues in the case of McCarthy that he clearly believes are being lost). That is of course inherently unfair. I think McCarthy has a deeper thread that runs throughout his works and that is that civilization hangs by a very thin thread. That people will abandon the trappings of civilization for money, sex, survival, power, etc. People, in McCarthy's books always men, who try to protect civilization (often literally represented as a flame, or a fire, or perhaps a child) are doomed but to be admired even when they seem to be behaving foolishly.

[@justinw947]

Cormac got me into poetry. Not sure when though

[@BookishTexan]

That's really interesting. Which poets?

[@BenLaSoul908]

I totally agree about it feeling uneven. Some of those stories were hsrd to get thru

[@BookishTexan]

Exactly. There’s just to much of McCarthy letting his characters monologue about philosophical stuff. I know some people like that McCarthy, but not me.

[@BenLaSoul908]

@@BookishTexan I was fast-tracking through that book until he met the man telling about the religious person. Those 4 pages took like 4 days to get through. It honestly felt exhausting lol. Do you have a video for cities of the plain? I just finished that

[@BookishTexan]

@@BenLaSoul908 I don’t have one for Cities. I got burned out and never went back to the trilogy.

[@BenLaSoul908]

@@BookishTexan I feel you, just makin sure I don't miss out

[@TheJudgeandtheJury]

My favorite author. Great upload! Have you read Suttree it's my favorite book by him besides The Road.

[@BookishTexan]

Great! I have read _Suttree_ and I liked it a lot. I'm not as big a fan of _The Road_