ABSTRACT
It is an essential theme of The Crossing. is uncertainty about the past, and thus about the present also, helps to account for the existence of that cultural space into which myth insinuates itself, like a hermit crab into an empty shell. e irony is that it is the crab that is alive. It is myth that energizes a culture, for good or ill. Paz concludes his essay “e Philanthropic Ogre” with the words,
. . . before undertaking the criticism of our societies, their history and their actuality, we Hispanic American writers must begin by criticizing
ourselves. First, we must cure ourselves of the intoxication of simplistic and simplifying ideologies.³
In my view McCarthy pursues this aim. His texts are full of denials of the explicative powers of systems of thought, and criticisms of utopian gnosticism. ese systems are often present in mythic mode and thus McCarthy’s critique of American culture assumes a mythoclastic form. But of course he cannot assume a position that is detached from that culture; his critique has to come from within. Both myth and anti-myth exist within narrative and it is the creation of these deconstructionist narratives that is McCarthy’s purpose and achievement.
