[Levin]

Mike -- I watched that Oprah interview of McCarthy you mentioned. Did you know McCarthy wrote The Road over the course of a "few weeks"? Amazing. He said he'd been writing the book in his subconcious for four years (since he had his vision of the the post-apocalyptic world in San Antonio with fires burning on the hillside). The Muses do not speak so clearly to the rest of us.

I also agree with Mike on the Wood review. Placing a book in context, and being able to do so, says more about the critic than it does about the book itself. To forsake an analysis of the book on its own terms for "it's like Hardy, look at this Hopkins-like paragraph, blah, blah blah" is cheap and narcisstic.

And Wood's focus on the divine "is there, or isn't there" question shows he missed the mirror McCarthy was holding up for parents who give a damn about what happens in between the ingress and egress of the world.