Gunsmoke & Grit: 'Tom's Crossing' by Mark Z. Danielewski

Disclosure: I received a free advance review copy of this book from the publisher. This post also contains Amazon affiliate links [*]. If you purchase through these links, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

It’s curious how the lens through which we view a book can shift radically depending on our emotional and physical state. Perhaps it’s just me, but I know my mood dances hand-in-hand with my thoughts about whatever narrative I’m reading. This brings me to Tom's Crossing ^[*] by Mark Z. Danielewski—an ambitious tome stretching over 1,200 pages, which I dared to tackle while feeling like I’d been run over by a freight train, thanks to a relentless case of strep throat and bronchitis. Was my opinion colored by my hazy, medicated brain? Undoubtedly, but in the moments when I could focus, I believed that even a sober reading wouldn’t shift my feelings too much. It's an odd twist, but for all its literary pretensions, I found myself oddly drawn to parts of it.

On the surface, the plot reads like a straightforward Western: in the small town of Orvop, Utah, nestled in the shadowy embrace of the mountains, a horrific crime in the fall of 1982 reverberates through the community, but it’s the extraordinary events beyond city limits that linger in collective memory. Nobody anticipated the dead would rise, yet rise they did. Nobody saw a mountain tumbling down like a stone-cold giant, yet it came crashing. And nobody expected a spectacle of courage that would leave an indelible mark on all hearts and minds associated with the Katanogos massif or the tranquil Pillars Meadow. As one brave Orvop high school teacher poignantly noted—mere days before her untimely passing—“Fer sure no one expected Kalin March to look Old Porch dead in the eye and say, ‘You get what you deserve when you ride with cowards.'"

When I picked up Tom's Crossing ^[*], I was stepping into a literary world that had garnered a fair share of praise from eager reviewers who seemed to echo each other a little too closely—leading me to wonder if they were all using the same playbook, perhaps run by an AI or chained to their loyalty to Danielewski. Shockingly, I had never encountered his work before this novel; I can almost feel the gasps of disbelief echoing from the literary community. “You’ve never heard of Danielewski?” Yep, you heard that right! I approached this story with fresh eyes, wanting to jump into its narrative without the weight of prior expectations.

What I found was a modern Western—or, as the cool kids now call it, a neo-Western—centered on the earnest tale of rescuing two horses destined for a grim fate, freeing them to roam unbounded across the mountains. Yet this precious thread of a story ended up stretched too thin, lost in a sea of extraneous musings and unfocused prose. If I had my way, I’d prune those 1,200 pages down to a clean 600 or 700, stripping away the incessant, somewhat obsessive references to Greek mythology. It felt as though Danielewski had developed an infatuation with The Iliad, which sent the pacing teetering and stumbling.

Reading Tom's Crossing ^[*] felt like trudging through mud, and it had nothing to do with the sheer length or the fever clinging to me like a shadow. When crafting a Western—or a neo-Western, for that matter—stick to the roots; there’s no need to pepper in superfluous mythos or the kind of highbrow literary Lean Cuisine that most readers never ordered. There’s an overwhelming urge to paint the scenery with a flourish, and yet, bizarrely, I found myself craving brevity. Am I really saying this? Yes—too many descriptions can weigh a narrative down like an anchor.

Danielewski’s prose aims to reach the heights of McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove or McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, yet it never quite grazes their brilliance. Like a young buck trying his luck in the rodeo, he flails and spins but never truly rides the bull. Tom's Crossing ^[*] is a curious creature—an intriguing, ghostly neo-Western ensconced in a sprawling mess. I find myself at a crossroads: I can neither wholeheartedly recommend it nor utterly dissuade you. Approach this literary endeavor with caution and be prepared to weather the storm at your own peril. ╌★★★✰✰

〜B.J. Burgess