Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

["Beck, David A" <dabeck AT iupui.edu>]

I agree with Rhonda's interpretation. If you couple this novel with 
McCarthy's previous book, "No Country for Old Men," you see a pretty 
bleak future for America. In his previous book, he let's a mass 
murderer get off, concluding with a retiring sheriff, basically 
throwing up his hands and saying we created this "cancer". It is 
tearing up our social structure, but it is here and we can't defeat it.
 When we read "The Road", we see a decimated America, but love holds 
two people (a father and son) together. The father says (thinks) 
several times, only one thing keeps him traveling down "the road", and 
that is his love for his son.
It's a great book, one that captures intersubjectivity, in the bleakest 
of times.
-David




Quoting RHONDA MCDONNELL <rhonda_mcdonnell AT msn.com>:

> I, too, couldn't help but think of Percy when reading The Road.
> Somewhere, perhaps in the essay Rich mentions, he pictures the end of
> things, and speaks of the solitude of two people together, and the
> profound and triadic bond that will then exist between them. I found
> the language used between the man and boy to have that quality, as
> though even the most mundane words had been stripped free of their
> calcification and been turned into something new.
>
> The ending of the novel also seemed Percyan to me--the redemption and
> hope were so much like the endings of Moviegoer, LITR, and Second
> Coming. At once cryptic and certain, McCarthy confirms the presence
> of God and goodness in the face of a world gone mad.
> --Rhonda "You live in a deranged age, more deranged that usual,
> because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man
> has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing."
>                             Walker Percy
>
> > Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 08:12:41 -0400> From: RGray AT montreat.edu> To:
> > percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org> Subject: RE: [percy-l] non-percy>
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