The World as Tale: Ontological Dynamism and Metaphysical Unity in Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing

Abstract

The World as Tale:Ontological Dynamism and Metaphysical Unity in Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing Rick Elmore and Jonathan Elmore There is broad agreement that The Crossing is one of Cormac McCarthy's most philosophical novels. Despite this consensus, scholars remain divided on how best to read the philosophy of McCarthy's book, seeing in it everything from Romantic naturalism (Frye; Guillemin; Younesi and Pirnajmuddin), theological moralism (Arnold), Badiouian realism (MacKenzie) and Bakhtinian dialogism (Noble) to ecocriticism (Yasayan) and radical postmodern aestheticism. Scholars have also found in The Crossing a critique of the Western, with its emphasis on individualism, free will, manifest destiny, and toxic masculinity (Bourne; Edwards; Kollin; Mayne; Snyder). Although diverse and at times conflicting, nearly all of these readings see The Crossing as engaged in a thoroughgoing critique of Cartesian dualism and the problem of representation and as raising fundamental questions about the nature of reality and humanity's place in it. While these readings offer much to our understanding of the novel, the search for the philosophical truth of McCarthy's text has tended to downplay the metaphysical and ontological assertions of the novel itself. We argue that McCarthy posits in The Crossing an account of reality as fundamentally dynamic and contingent. As Don Arnulfo tells Billy, "You cannot touch the world. You cannot hold it in your hand for it is made of breath only" (46). Reality is, McCarthy asserts, "made new each day"; it is ontologically dynamic, always moving and changing (411). [End Page 61] On the basis of this ontological dynamism, McCarthy asserts the essential metaphysical unity of reality, the dynamic nature of existence troubling any attempt to contain it within clearly defined borders or boundaries. It is the assertions of ontological dynamism and metaphysical unity, articulated in the notion of the world as tale that, we argue, defines the philosophy of The Crossing and shows the depths of McCarthy's rejection of ontological dualism. It is, moreover, our insistence on this rejection of ontological dualism that marks our distance from the existing literature, these accounts retaining, for us, a problematic dualism in their explications of McCarthy's notion of the world as tale. More than simply a novel discussing philosophical themes, The Crossing is a serious investigation into the nature of reality and humanity's place in it, a view that allows for the possibility of reading McCarthy as a philosopher in his own right. Our first glimpse into McCarthy's account of the nature of reality comes in Billy's conversation with Don Arnulfo. Billy seeks out Arnulfo in hopes of buying scents that might aid in trapping the wolf that he, his father, and his brother, Boyd, hunt through the early pages of the novel. Arnulfo has no scents to sell, nor can he tell Billy how to make them. The matrix scent is not, Arnulfo insists, "so easily defined," both because "[e]ach hunter must have his own formula" and because "things were rightly named its attributes which could in no way be counted back into its substance" (45). One can know the ingredients of the matrix without knowing the matrix itself, as this scent is irreducible to the sum of its parts. In this sense, the matrix shares much with the animal it is designed to lure. "The wolf," Arnulfo tells Billy, is "an unknowable thing," irreducible to a set of properties such as "teeth and fur" (45). "The wolf is like the copo de nieve [snowflake]. … If you catch it you lose it" (46).1 One can understand neither the wolf nor the matrix as simply sums of their properties or characteristics; they are not the kinds of things one can carry in one's hand or possess as one would an object. One may certainly trap the skin, fur, or teeth of a wolf, just as one may catch a snowflake in one's hand, and yet one would still not possess the wolf. This is because, Arnulfo says, "The wolf is made the way the world is made. You cannot touch the world. You cannot hold it in your [End Page 62] hand for it is made of breath only" (46...