12-01-2016, 11:42 AM
After finishing Child of God, I decided to donate it to the library I stole it from -- the Mountain View Library.
Alarms went off when I entered. I gave some vague explanation at the front desk. Anyway, the book is now in their custody and I am not.
Child of God is a short book with big type and two-page chapters. It would appeal to most kids and young adults. But I'd recommend that you instead lock it in a safe inside a bigger safe inside a still bigger safe, using quantum encryption all the way down.
This is McCarthy at his nastiest, right up there with Blood Meridian. It deals with a reprehensible character doing reprehensible things. Subsistence living is again the name of the game. A young guy doesn't quite make the bottom rung of the social ladder and becomes a hermit with unusual tastes. Not for the faint of heart.
McCarthy has said if a story doesn't deal with life and death, it isn't literature. So he loads all his books with living things dying. But here's what I don't get. Why does he always write about the dregs of society and subsistence living? Isn't there life and death among intelligent and socially successful people? People who are thoughtful and complex and clever and funny and constructive? I just question whether writing about lowly souls of marginal intelligence represents a deep exploration of the human condition.
Though I do think his work can help prepare us for the hypothetical of a civilization in collapse. But really, that would require some crazy ass dude seizing control of a powerful nation, and that just ain't going to happen.
Alarms went off when I entered. I gave some vague explanation at the front desk. Anyway, the book is now in their custody and I am not.
Child of God is a short book with big type and two-page chapters. It would appeal to most kids and young adults. But I'd recommend that you instead lock it in a safe inside a bigger safe inside a still bigger safe, using quantum encryption all the way down.
This is McCarthy at his nastiest, right up there with Blood Meridian. It deals with a reprehensible character doing reprehensible things. Subsistence living is again the name of the game. A young guy doesn't quite make the bottom rung of the social ladder and becomes a hermit with unusual tastes. Not for the faint of heart.
McCarthy has said if a story doesn't deal with life and death, it isn't literature. So he loads all his books with living things dying. But here's what I don't get. Why does he always write about the dregs of society and subsistence living? Isn't there life and death among intelligent and socially successful people? People who are thoughtful and complex and clever and funny and constructive? I just question whether writing about lowly souls of marginal intelligence represents a deep exploration of the human condition.
Though I do think his work can help prepare us for the hypothetical of a civilization in collapse. But really, that would require some crazy ass dude seizing control of a powerful nation, and that just ain't going to happen.