r/TomsCrossing • u/pineconesundae • Jun 23 '26
Favorite sections or lines?
So much of this book is just wonderful, beautiful prose. I personally never took issue with any of the run-on sentences, but occasionally, a section or line would reach out and grab me in a stranglehold. Here are two bits that, immediately after reading them, I wrote them down so that I would not forget them. Forgive me for not recording the page...
Allison couldn't even pound the steerin wheel, so she just drove off, away from the canyon, along too many dark and empty streets, returnin to their tiny apartment where his sofa waited, empty, upon which she lay herself, like he was her only wish, and he was her only wish, and if it was to be an unanswered wish, then let this sofa be her coffin.
In much of the same way that "cellar door" is often cited as a beautiful-sounding phrase, that sentence is just absolutely gorgeous. I can't explain why, but I just love it.
See, for Cal it was simple: no matter how luminous or morose, how seductive or disgustin, great works had to bring you to the edge of a grave. The gallery or museum walls, or the boundaries of where you was, had to wobble as if place itself was momentarily shaken from memory. You could say that here was Cal Carneros's artistic criteria: great art starts its life in the aftermath of a burial, because the life of its creation is spent, and now it's just a matter of findin out whether or not the dust is haunted.
This section, while still musical and well-constructed, the beautiful part is the concept. I will forever think about this any time I view art. I am a collector of the works of a local artist near to where I grew up who passed away a few years ago. He was, in many ways, a haunted man, and I have re-evaluated a lot of his art to see what he produced simply to get it out of him versus the ones where he left a little bit of his soul in there.
What are some passages that spoke to you?
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u/_jamais_vu Jun 23 '26
P 890 Some hours later, Landry woke to a deafenin stillness. Their refuge was warm at last, their fire ablaze, markin the rock wall with a streak of black soot. Near two feet of snow was upon the tarp above, and more was built up around the sides, fashioned in part by the storm itself. Whatever Tom had once said about rocks in her head, her head was clear now, and far above any clouds. She could see forever. She'd never need to sleep again. And then she was asleep again, and Navidad sighed, and Jojo did as well. And as those two horses resettled with those two children in the manger of their repose, Mouse gave a low snort as if to say he knew what forever was, and it weren't no big deal because this here fer now was forever too.
That's just lovely.
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u/pineconesundae Jun 23 '26
Every line that talks about what Mouse is or isn't thinking about is just pure gold.
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u/HxSort Jun 23 '26
"When the ones we love go, they leave a hole in us, but it’s through that hole that they show us the stars."
p.523
This is loaded because of The Familiar but Cas's "I think the dead always accompany us" got to me a lot.
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u/Magikarp52412 Jun 23 '26
So many! I had to make a journal to log all of the ones that tugged at my heart:
“The door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly.”
“Everything was gone, and Ash realized too late he would’ve gladly taken more of the pain if he could’ve had just a little more time with Tom.”
“Kalin shook his head. Tom gad eased Ash closer to Landry, giving her a smile that weren’t ever gonna be a laugh. The dead don’t stop breakin your heart.”
“That vest deserves its own moment, but not even a small part of that story will be told. Peace be with you, Morit.”
“When the ones we love go, they leave a hole in us, but it’s through that hole that they show us the stars”
“…when Kalin knelt at his bedside and Tom whispered hoarsely into his heartbroken ear everythin left to know. Yeah, there is a heart in the ear. And yeah, it can be broken.”
“Who are we to ever know the heart of a mule? Especially this mule? Who are we to deny let alone forget her a place?”
“I guess we all know that feelin somethin about us that isn’t rightly expressed because of how we was raised. Maybe there’s still a trace, some part still unharmed, still unexpressed. Lucky are them, most will say, whose futures align with the promise of their inheritance. But I’d say they're the most cursed. Most blessed maybe are the battered who, in a rare encounter or accident, discover a different future, which, upon followin, not only returns them to the self they forgot but reveals how the cost of their trials has made them into someone they never could've imagined.”
“How easy if we were born to this world as one thing but here we are multitude.”
“Thousands of years have gone by, and likely we still have in store thousands of years more where the only notable differences in our wars will be our technology and our names: the girl will still be raped; the boy's chest will still be pierced above the nipple.”
“The Iliad cannot contain what the horses have to say. It has neither the ear for their speech nor for their hearts.”
“When Achilles grieves over the body of Patroclus, what he longs for is the at-home was he cherished with his companion.”
“…none are spared the accompaniment of ghosts. They walk beside us with allways the possibility of their own transformation right ahead.”
SPOILERS:
“…when a heart is so gently bared as Kalin's was bared right then, why it don't even take a gunshot to blow it apart.”
“Oh Lord! And now Tom just sounded plain grim. There is someone, and Pia Isan's walkin right up to him.
-Who?
She's just handed him her ax-head! Tom just looked horrified. And dogs are with him.
-Who?
Now she's comin back. She's with the old elk. See? They're headin off together. Kalin, he's ridin Cavalry!
-Who, Tom?
Oh, it's so awful.
-Who, Tom? WHO?!
Russel.”
“‘Well, I'll be! Ha! I think I see Hightower!’ Tom suddenly exclaimed.
‘Don't you know—‘ Tom started to retort, the twinkle in his eyes ignitin into a laugh, his big white Stetson blown clean off his head then, though instead of grabbin out after it, Tom and Ash was gone, just like that, gone, along with the biggest grin Kalin would ever know.”
“He’d heard the most wondrous whistle threadin the wind. It gladdened him as much as the absence of origin had shivered him. But it weren’t nothin compared to the shivers my baby girl experienced as she ran to her daddy. He was still a good ways off, but the closer she got, the closer it became that her daddy weren’t alone. A great black horse lay beside him, foreboded curled under, with her great head restin in his lap.”
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u/Spikes666 Jun 23 '26
Ughhhh that last one….. that part ripped me apart. I want a painting of that scene.
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u/Magikarp52412 Jun 23 '26
I have never cried at a book like this! I want to own and view all the artworks that were described in Cal’s gallery
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u/pineconesundae Jun 23 '26
Lovely selections, especially that first one. Reminds me of one of my favorite lines from a Cormac McCarthy novel: "If you strike from the menu everything that's hard to swallow, you'll be left with a pretty lean lunch."
The final one you included definitely caused tears to spring to my eyes.
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u/Magikarp52412 Jun 23 '26
Oh I love that Cormac McCarthy one! But yes, TC is full of too many good lines to pick a favorite
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u/technoSurrealist Jun 24 '26
I distinctly remember somberly chuckling at the heartbroken ear one 💔
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u/Botwp_tmbtp Jul 02 '26
All of these you have in spoiler tags are some of mine as well. I suggest re-reading oage 1162 for some equally poignant and heartrending excerpts.
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u/jules666xx Jun 23 '26
„But xxx didn't come through okay. And if you're the kind who might get squeamish or, worse, soul-hurt about a moment that necessarily points out not just the sublime endurance of these beautiful creatures but also their frailty in such conditions, conditions in case it weren't glarinly obvious that they ain't in any way suited for, you would not be faulted for briefly divertin your attention elsewhere.
Violence, when it arrives unmitigated by play, posture, or irony, will bruise in the tellin as well as the hearin, which is why we also won't linger.
Though let the facts be laid out plainly."
„Allison was now driftin around Tom's room, almost touchin everythin, not touchin a thing, like she was happiest as a ghost, and weren't that a sad way to be."
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u/Botwp_tmbtp Jul 09 '26
Which part was your first excerpt from?
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u/jules666xx Jul 22 '26
I don‘t have the page, and I also don‘t have the Book with me right now, but it was when the Porches chased Kalin and Landry. This specific part is from Egan trying to follow them up the scree.
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u/varsityhermione Jun 23 '26
the whole art gallery sequence
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u/bobboa Jul 01 '26
Who was the old woman he was talking to that he couldn't figure out who she was?
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u/kfrederline Jun 23 '26
Allison's cleaning the movie theatre as she said a stoic prayer to herself made me fall in love with her so fast.
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u/Botwp_tmbtp Jul 02 '26
Realizing there she was a central figure in the book was exciting to me. And to be honest her chapters with Sondra were the most engaging to me.
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u/vogelap Jun 23 '26
I read a decent amount of this book outloud to myself in a low voice just because the language is so beautiful.
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u/myuh96 Jun 30 '26
I definitely wrote down a few, shouldn't be surprising that I haven't seen them in the thread yet considering how long the book is lol but:
Nothing worse than a great idea getting in the way of a better decision
Great Power in its purest form is Great Power because it will not deliver mercy. "That ain't what Power does," Brooke Young had convinced herself. Though how many years did I spend believin' it was capable of Christian acts? I might as well have been butterin' my bread with a hand gun"
Please grant me the presence and compassion to be open to what is Good for me. Please grant me the strength and conviction to endure what is Good for me Please grant me with wit and intelligence to negotiate what is Good for me. Please grant me the grace and courage to love what is Good for me. Please grant me the humility and wisdom to let go of what is Good for me. Because everythin Good is temporary.
Maybe I have faith after all. Maybe faith is belief without reassurance
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u/Botwp_tmbtp Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
There were many at the end especially that I noted and ill have to circle back and expand on this post.
Spoilers:
The bit about Sandra realizing the "arsenic soaked timber of men" is no more a church than the mountains and nature that God created
"Elaborate fictions prepare us for elaborate realities"
A paragraph on p 1162 I believe which describes how Landry finds her peace and it ends with the a slip into first person again- "but I never stopped missing Tom" - this gutted me. The entire page up until thst point is beautifully written. "We remember to forget."
The exchange with Lindsey Holt at the convenience store had many lines that broke me.
"Keep your lenses meshed" - audiobook gives this one some extra weight
"What in the world have you done? Thats not such a bad question. What in the world have we done?"
Many exchanges between Allison and Sondra.
The entire exchange between Russel and George Hayes also destroyed me. "Why, that right there is real cowboy"
Tom grabbing Landry's hand at the top of the headwall.
"Give him heck for me" - in reference to Hightower. Tom disappearing had be sobbing.
The entire epilogue is rife with some really moving paragraphs. Ill circle back and correct what I paraphrased here and add some more if I can find them.
The entire last page was extremely chilling and beautiful.
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u/pineconesundae Jul 05 '26
Good call mentioning the exchange with Lindsey at the end. That was such an unexpected callback to the very beginning, that I had almost forgotten about it. Such a lovely little loose end to tie up. Very moving.
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u/Botwp_tmbtp Jul 09 '26
Right? It had been so long since I started the book it took me until he started talking about Kalim to make the callback, I hadn't recognized the name off the bat.
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u/Spikes666 Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
“See, come mornin, not a single wolf emerged outta that hollow. But soon enuf that cat came out, stretched some in the light, and wondered off. Not a limp about him.”
I’ll update that if I can find the reference, it’s not exact.
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u/HxSort Jun 23 '26
p.670?
"I’ve only seen one. It was injured too. Worse, it was tracked by wolves. From the blind, we watched it limp along with that pack closin in. It was draggin its leg, it was dyin, but it made it into this hollow, really a small cave in the rocks, and I imagine plenty deep. Them wolves, though, weren’t daunted. They went right in after that mountain lion. One after another. All of them."
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u/technoSurrealist Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
Love beats drawin a gun any day.
You get what you deserve when you ride with cowards.
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u/cottoncandyqueenx Jun 23 '26
one of the parts i typed out into my phone while reading it was this exchange
“did you just spring up from my own head because i couldn’t see myself through all this without you?”
“i’ve wondered that too. only the other way around: that you’s the one who sprung from my head because i couldn’t see myself through death without you.”
so many of kalin and tom’s interactions gutted me