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This was the last proof produced by Knopf for The Crossing, following earlier proofs in two distinct states. Compared to those, this proof shows more refined printing and more complete copyright details.

The exact number of copies printed is unknown. McCarthy’s editor at Knopf, Gary Fisketjon, has guessed “about 750,” but acknowledges this is only speculation.

For unknown reasons, this proof—and a small batch of other books from the Murray collection—were not auctioned in December 2019 but five years later.

Copies are noted with promotional material and a dust jacket mock-up stapled to the verso of the front wrapper.

PRESUMED SIGNED STATE: In the mid-1990s, bibliographer Howard Woolmer reported that bookseller Peter Cobb had told him McCarthy signed 25 copies of the proof, but Woolmer noted no one seemed actually knowing nothing about it. A decade later, the APG cited bookseller Lloyd F. Dudley, who wrote in a 2003 catalog that McCarthy had been presented with a stack of proofs to sign, had signed 25, and then left. However, that probably has never happened. In fact, according to Fisketjon in a 2024 email to me: “I have no recollection whatsoever of Cormac signing any of the blue galleys. Or of any other author I edited signing galleys.”

NOTABLE COPIES:

• MATTHIESSEN COPY – Belonged to National Book Award–winning author Peter Matthiessen, an early reviewer of McCarthy’s breakout All the Pretty Horses. Contains marked passages, several holograph notes, and dog-eared pages. Offered, together with Matthiessen’s Cities of the Plain proof, by Captain Ahab’s Rare Books in 2015.

COLLECTING TOPICS: Flatsigned copies are scarce; I have seen only three. One was listed by an American dealer in 2023 at $1,800; another sold for $2,800 in July 2024.

Inscribed copies are decidedly rare. I have encountered only one—offered in 2010 by Beth Fisher of Quill & Brush for $2,700—with the inscription: “For Patrick Higgins / All best wishes / Cormac McCarthy.”

Patrick Higgins, living in New York and working at Knopf in 1994, is the author of Before Elvis, There Was Nothingand a guide to homebrewing and beer in literature. In an email to me, Higgins vividly recalled the circumstances in which his copy was signed:

“It was about 11 p.m. and all of us were still in the office. Cormac was visiting his editor, Gary Fisketjon. They were well into a bottle of Maker’s Mark. I walked by and Gary yelled for me to come in. He told me Cormac never signed books but was willing to sign 200 copies of The Crossing. Cormac told me he really didn’t want 200 copies of the book coming to his house and didn’t want to come back to NYC, so what could we do? I suggested we tip in a page as long as it hadn’t gone to print. I called the production department—they were still there—and it hadn’t printed yet. I told Cormac he’d just get 200 blank pages he could sign and then mail to the printer. He was thrilled. He then demanded I sit down and get drunk with them. I told him I knew he never signed books and rarely came to NYC, and would he consider signing a galley for me since it was all we had at the time. He said, ‘Patrick, you just did something really nice for me, so it’s the least I can do.’ Then we got even drunker and I think I slept under my desk.”

There is, however, a clear problem with this account: McCarthy told Richard Woodward in 1992—and reiterated many times thereafter—that he had quit drinking long before. As Fisketjon observed in an email to me:

“This makes me laugh. I do remember Patrick, as an exceptionally hard-working assistant who was around at that time. Afterward, I’m told he became an Episcopal priest and then a veterinarian in Vermont, but who knows? I’m glad he got a signed blue galley, since I sure as hell didn’t, but his account of that evening is beyond fanciful. Maybe he was just really drunk and forgot or misremembered how he got it. By 1994 I’d spent a little time with Cormac over many years, and knew he’d quit drinking a long time ago. Never saw him have a drink, obviously—whether on one of his exceptionally rare visits to New York, when we met in Tucson and went to a K.D. Lang concert, or at my wedding in 1997. It was just a fact, nothing we ever discussed, though I read somewhere that he told someone all his old drinking buddies were dead—therefore…”