D E S I G N /// ck

Holy crap, Cormac McCarthy is a good writer. I'm going to start calling him Cormac here, because writing his full name over and over is getting old, and after reading a heart-rending book like The Crossing, I feel like we should be on a first name basis.

Cormac can write himself a good book. The Crossing is more melancholy than All the Pretty Horses- the Border Trilogy is steadily getting darker (though not all out dark, like The Road). It's another coming of age story, but not in the classic romantic sense. Cormac accentuates the dark disillusionment that comes when childhood is left behind. He continually examines The World (with a capital W, in the biblical sense) in relation to Man. With frequent philosophical asides from the people Billy (the main character) encounters on his three trips into Mexico, we see the World as Good, the World as Dark and Fallen, the World as an Illusion. Often God is called upon as a contrast to this mortal coil, or blamed for the plight of the World. Many questions are asked, few answers are pushed forward by Cormac. He leaves it to the reader to come their own conclusions.

So I stayed up late finishing reading it, and now I am tired. I already have a line on a used copy of Cities of the Plain at the Book Eddy, so the Cormac obsession continues....