What is the importance of literary criticism?

[MikeWaters]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

Here is a terrific review of The Road from the New Republic.

http://www.powells.com/review/2007_05_17.html

Wood reprises the great post-apolcalypse novels and seems to proclaim this one his favorite. He's not been totally sold on McCarthy but in this review he seems to grudgingly acknowledge his brilliance.

I can't believe I read that entire review. Preening moron. When you get to the last paragraph were Wood calls the novel "magnificent", you are somewhat taken back.

Yet the end of the world is more than a personal matter; and what this magnificent novel gains in human interest it loses by being personal at the moment when it should be theological. In this way it evades the demands, the obligations, of its subject. The question of endings in an apocalypse must be philosophical as well as merely emotional, even in a novel. Will it be heaven or hell? Will it last forever, or be over in a flash?

This is the fancy way of saying, just like Oprah's fans surely did, HOW DOES IT END????

Fail.