SOURCE: "Border Crossings, Real and Symbolic," in The New York Times, June 21, 1994, p. C21.

In the following negative review, Kakutani discusses the influence of Faulkner on McCarthy's writing and compares The Crossing to Faulkner's story, The Bear. Faulting The Crossing's "self-importance" and "pretentious prose," Kakutani dismisses the novel as a "loose variation" on the themes of All the Pretty Horses.

Though it's billed as Volume II of "The Border Trilogy," Cormac McCarthy's latest novel, The Crossing is less a sequel to his award-winning book All the Pretty Horses than a loose variation on its themes of loss, exile, violence and fate. Once again, Mr. McCarthy gives us the story of two resourceful boys who leave their home in the States and make the dangerous crossing into Mexico. And once again, their crossing becomes a kind of metaphor for the emotional traversing of borders between civilization and nature...