Billy Bob's Book Review Corner

This, too, is an old repost, and quite possibly the only one of these I ever did where I was not being a total dick to the author.

Welcome back to another edition of Billy Bob’s Book Review Corner. In this episode (the second one of many?) I thought it might be better to review something I enjoyed reading to counterbalance my first, extremely negative, review of David Mitchell’s “Utopia Avenue”, so with that in mind, we are going to talk about “The Crossing”, one of Cormac McCarthy’s border trilogy books, a book to which only a total asshole would give a negative review.

The Crossing details three journeys into Mexico undertaken by a young man named Billy Parham in the late 1930s and early 1940s. In each of these journies, Billy is motivated by a different goal, which, in the style of many of McCarthy’s main characters, he pursues with a relentless, dogged determination that can seem out of place at times with the goal itself. A complex question presented by many of McCarthy’s books is why his characters consistently refuse to evaluate the world beyond their seemingly bizarre tunnel vision and nearly pointless fixation on carrying out tasks which the reader may often logically question the point of.

Rather than being a drawback from a literary perspective, however, this fixation in Billy’s case creates the fabric for an incredible series of misadventures in which his immaturity in evaluating the reality of the world around him sets in motion circumstances which force him to return again and again to Mexico, each time with a new motivation brought about largely by the consequences of his own actions.

In “All the Pretty Horses”, the first book in the trilogy, the somewhat similar character of John Grady faces, in his own journey to Mexico, a rather straightforward coming of age story in which he foolishly considers himself the master of his domain and learns a couple of terrible lessons about the reality of being a foreigner removed from the life he has grown into. Where The Crossing may be more difficult for fans of that book to accept is in its complete contrast to the idea of a young man growing up by learning hard lessons about life. Instead, it continually beats down the morale of the reader by exposing the failures of its main character. Does Billy’s idea in this chapter seem pointless in a universal sense, the book asks the reader. It is! Does it seem like maybe Billy doesn’t really know what he’s doing in a broad sense, despite being competent at any individual task placed before him? He doesn’t! Does it seem like maybe he hasn’t learned any lessons at all? He hasn’t!

A surface level outline of the plot of this book would make it fairly obvious why Hollywood didn’t find themselves a Matt Damon or Vigo Mortensen to make a movie out of this thing (not that The Road was a happy affair either, but still…)

Interestingly, lessons about Billy’s mistakes are told directly to him, quite often, in philosophical interludes interspersed throughout the parts of the book where he rides through the countryside alone, encountering other lonely people who’ve apparently had a hell of a lot of time to ponder the meaning of life. It is in these passages where you will find McCarthy’s most interesting prose in any of his novels I’ve read. These soliloquies open windows into what I can only describe as the soul of the novel. They are vast and often difficult to understand, and they are usually imparted out of concern for Billy’s misplaced and often dangerous motivations, and for the future of his spiritual health.

The nature of his character as I described should make it unsurprising that he merely absorbs the wisdom of the people he meets without pausing to reflect on it much and certainly without allowing it to change his path significantly. In this sense, it feels very much like these speeches are directed to the reader. If Billy won’t listen, perhaps you will.

Aside from all this, McCarthy’s prose is as beautiful as it has ever been, and so even if the considerable ambiguity and complexity of this book makes you think twice about starting it, you should do so anyway if you’ve liked any of his other work. I’d highly recommend checking this out.