SOURCE: "At the End of His Tether," in Washington Post Book World, Vol. XXIV, No. 23, June 5, 1994, pp. 1, 13.

In the following review, Dirda comments on the broad scope of The Crossing, lauding the craftsmanship of McCarthy's writing but faulting the "heavy-handed" and "grandiloquent" aspects of the work.

Two years ago All the Pretty Horses, the first installment of Cormac McCarthy's "Border Trilogy," rounded up raves from the critics, landed on the bestseller lists, deservedly won major literary prizes (National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction) and proved Scott Fitzgerald wrong.

"There are," said Fitzgerald on one of his gloomy afternoons as an author, "no second acts in American lives." For most of his career, Cormac McCarthy (born in 1933) roamed the literary fringes as a frisky Southern Gothicist, a nephew to William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor and Tennessee Williams at their most outrageous: In McCarthy's Child of God...