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

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  • From: "Beck, David A" <dabeck AT iupui.edu>
  • To: percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [percy-l] non-percy
  • Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 23:14:57 -0400

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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