[Penforhire]

I liked how he delved into what makes a man good or evil in terms of behavior. Our world today (most modern countries) is filled with fast food and other conveniences that make sharing or not sharing a very mild moral choice. He stripped the world down to the point where sharing a candy bar is a life-or-death decision.

An angelic approach, what the boy tends toward, would lead to a very short life. A purely pragmatic approach, what the man tends toward, leads to physical survival but at the cost of what makes us human. Neither approach is exactly right and they are presented as stark foils. The world they live in gives no hope that this is a passing phase, like just a rough territory to get through, at least until the end. I remain uncertain what morality Cormac is espousing. He gives us more to ponder and debate than any actual answer.

Do Americans really tend toward anarchy and cannibalism when the chips are well and truly down? I would like to think otherwise but some events do make me wonder (e.g. Hurricane Katrina). Some neighborhoods would hang together better than others. I dunno. Food for thought.

I will agree with some here that Cormac's butchering of punctuation was completely unnecessary. His sparse prose would have been just as poetic to me. As it was, it distracted me far too often. Making up words is fine, a sort of metaphorical spelling. In the end, he is a take-it-or-leave-it author and I do enjoy him.