The Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy

• All the Pretty Horses (1992)
• The Crossing (1994)
• Cities of the Plain (1998)

What kind of man offers to share dry crackers with death? That's a question posed in the epilogue of the final novel of this trilogy -- a metaphysical question made both concrete and comical by the commonplace detail of dry crackers. Billy Parham is sitting by a deserted roadside in Texas talking with a stranger. He is totally destitute, starving, hot, sick, and old. He has offered his last bit of food to a random stranger, and has slipped into an allegorical frame of mind, acting and talking as if this stranger might be Death, finally ready to take him away. The stranger fields Billy's metaphysical questions with the greatest of ease, as if there was nothing out of the ordinary about them. Billy admits that he had invited the stranger over because he might be somebody he was expecting.

"What does he look like?"

"I don't know. I guess more and more he looks like a friend."

"You thought I was death."

"I considered the possibility."

Peculiarities of McCarthy's style add to the bizarre flavor of this scene. He doesn't use quotation marks for dialogue. He doesn't tell you who is talking; you have to figure that out from context. He doesn't even use apostrophes -- it's "dont" not "don't" in the text. And key passages are presented in Spanish, without translation, once again forcing those of us who do not read Spanish to try to decipher the meaning from context.

Here, for instance, the stranger doesn't say "What kind of man offers to share dry crackers with death?" Rather he asks "Que clase de hombre comparta sus galletas con la muerte?" And Billy replies immediately, "And what kind of death accepts them?"

The style creates an otherworldly atmosphere that persists even when the author is describing the most mundane activities in the greatest of detail. It also trains the reader to keep looking closer, trying to find meaning in the context, never expecting all the answers to be laid out clearly; and the implication is that life itself is just such a puzzle, which may or may not have a solution; and that you may not know you have the solution even if you've found it.

The epilogue seems to shed new light on the destiny of man and could stand alone as a great work of literature, like the Grand Inquisitor scene from the Brothers Karamazov. To appreciate it, you don't really need to know the plots and characters of the three novels; but it does help to be acclimated to McCarthy's unique style, and there is much to be gained by experiencing the full unfolding of the story.

As you get caught up in the narrative, what first seemed like weaknesses become strengths. Sometimes the author proceeds very slowly, providing lots of painstaking detail about dealing with horses and cattle, about healing people and animals, about fixing things. Step by ponderous step, he tells you everything you'd need to know to do it yourself. Some passages read like a handbook for the modern cowboy. But miraculously, the tedious detail helps provide a concrete and very credible background for the occasional flights of allegory and metaphysical insight. The detail is a heavy anchor, holding the narrative in place; it is also a dark background against which the brillance can truly shine.

The basic story is both gripping and extremely painful -- plans are broken, nothing works out the way characters want, random cruelty and violence erases all. But in the very telling, it is transformed; showing how through the ages man has added a flavor of the heroic to the mundane -- ordinary people and events turning into epics. The flat, ungarnished presentation of the facts is just the starting point for the tales that others will tell.

For instance in The Crossing, Billy Parham, a young boy from Texas, who was caught up in a series of dangerous circumstances in the wild wilderness of Mexico and is now returning to try to find his brother, hears a ballad and immediately recognizes that it is about his brother. The ballad is the first evidence he has that his brother was killed and how it happened. And that much is "true." But later he learns that this same song has existed for generations. It applies to his brother as it applied to others before him. The shape of the older story reforms the memory of the recent events. And the recent events lead to subtle changes in the ancient narrative. At other points we see people retelling events that just happened, that must be fresh in their minds, but telling them as legend, because legend shaped their seeing and their remembering.

These books are filled with men and the doings of men. Women appear as objects of desire and as ideal aspirations; but we don't get to see them as real living people. Magdalena, the young prostitute that John Grady Cole falls in love with in Cities of the Plain, is almost an exception. We see her idealized by Grady and also see her on her own and described by her pimp. But her name is used very rarely -- mostly she is just "she," an unknown and unknowable entity, the object of other people's desires, whose own desires remain a mystery.

All in all, McCarthy has created a modern allegory that works. He portrays concrete daily reality with the immediacy of a Melville, and manages to loll us with commonplace detail to the point where we accept, welcome, and savor his sudden insights into the nature and destiny of man.

Other book reviews by Richard Seltzer

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