All Roads Lead to Cormac McCarthy

A few critical perspectives on "The Road:"

But first, whoops, I found another interview, this one given to Wired. Apparently McCarthy spends a lot of time hanging out with Nobel-prize winning physicists at the Santa Fe Institute.

Janet Maslin, in a representative rave, called "The Road" "an exquisitely bleak incantation -- pure poetic brimstone."

Mark Holcomb concurs in the Village Voice. "It may be the saddest, most haunting book he's ever written, or that you'll ever read."

Writing in the Washington Post Ron Charles compares McCarthy's understanding of women unfavorably to that of "most middle school boys," but succumbs to the brute force of "The Road" anyway.

Alan Warner groups American writers into the Savants and the Tough Guys, with McCarthy in the latter crowd.

In this carefully balanced assessment (pegged to the last book but one, but essential nevertheless), James Wood questions whether a train can ever be "ribald."

In Seattle's "The Stranger," Chris McCann proposes a Cormac McCarthy drinking game: "wherein I took a drink for every occurence of terms like 'blasted landscape' or 'cauterized terrain' or 'a stark black burn" Whatever gets you through the end of the world, Chris.

-- Lev Grossman, NBCC board member