Letter to Cormac McCarthy

Yo Cormac-

One of the interesting things about the past decade is the rise of apocalyptic fiction. The culture of my classmates often displays undercurrents of a persistent belief in some kind of end. Zombie apocalypses are everywhere from the massive popularity of the Left for Dead video games to the new AMC show The Walking Dead, based on a popular graphic novel. And that's the mainstream culture; the underground has become the dark and nihilistic internet sites like 4chan.org who laugh at horrifying images of people with their legs cut off or the disembodied heads of soldiers with their own penises shoved in their mouths.

The Road is a very modern book. It captures much of the sickness of the modern world by displaying what we will do after we destroy ourselves. I'm pretty certian that the apocalypse you describe is a nuclear winter, although it's definitely meant to simply be a deflating of everything that was holding life up, a dissolution of what holds the world together, not necessarily needing context. But no matter what the cause, cannibal rapists are not far fetched.

It feels good, in a way, to think of people raping and slaughtering other humans for food and broiling their own babies alive. It's a rebellion against every ounce of censorship and protection, against our culture. Once you've read the road you feel like you can say anything. That no horror is unspeakable. And that's a strangely good feeling.