Literary News

[xylokopos]

I was at the Dead Sea when I received a message with the news of McCarthy's passing last week.

Never before in my 47 years of life have I experienced anything like it: it seemed uncanny and providential and borderline deranged that such news would reach me as I was drying off after swimming in that most dead, most ancient, most biblical of places - that the death of the writer I mostly associate with the words I have just used would touch me in that godless place in the god-haunted land.

Reading McCarthy's books is a humbling and unique experience. He was, arguably, the best writer of his time.

I am reminded of Sheriff Bell's dream from No County For Old Men, the dream of him and his father crossing the frozen dark on horseback at night, his father moving ahead and the certainty that he would wait ahead, tending a fire in the blizzard - death is certain but tending to the fire is the only response we can mount.