Child of God

"Well, there wasn’t much of one, simply because it didn’t sell a whole lot. There were good reviews which appreciated what McCarthy was after, but most conversation happened in retrospect, because after All the Pretty Horses came out, Vintage republished all of his earlier work, which had largely gone out of print. But about the book generally: I love it. It’s an elegant little novel about decidedly inelegant subject matter. I’ve taught it a number of times and I just love how it opens up for the reader. It’s certainly not pyrotechnic or linguistically excessive in the way that both Blood Meridian and Suttree are, but there’s so much going on with it. The reader really has to negotiate her own reaction to the character as the character changes over the course of the book. When I teach it, I often am very careful about how I break up their reading assignments. When students read the first third of it, they say, ‘You know, I really feel for this guy, he’s just trying to get by, his community is pushing him away, he’s doing the best he can with the resources he has.’ Even up to and including his first act of necrophilia—which is really a kind of spontaneous opportunistic act—they’re still sort of with him: ‘He was just so lonely. Is this a violation?’ You can guess the kind of interesting philosophical discussions they have about it: ‘Well, it’s a taboo, okay, but he’s not hurting anyone . . .’ But right after that, the students read the next section, where he turns to actual violence and murder, and they have to question everything they thought up until that point. Then there are interesting conversations right at the end of the book about how to feel about this character, and some gorgeous imagery all the way through. It’s short. The challenge is not in its length, or in its density of language, or obscure references, or anything like that—all of which could be said about Blood Meridian , certainly. It’s really just about encountering this very finely-drawn character, and having to decide how to deal with him. Which I think is a beautiful reading experience, even as it is about such potentially disturbing material. Here’s where I can make a pitch for another book, and that’s Dianne Luce’s book."