Reading this book around that time put me in a mindset that made me particularly vulnerable to the subject matter. I've never felt more protective, or helpless, or scraped out emotionally than I did then. They pricked him full of steroids and put him in an oxygen mask.

He was transported to the hospital by ambulance and was in the ICU for three days. I was especially emotionally vulnerable in that moment because he was having some issues with his breathing: He ended up getting a severe case of croup that closed his throat. I've read The Road several times now, but the first time I read it was soon after my son was born. He's peering into the darkest corners of human existence, using a lamp with blood. And maybe this is the only time this has ever happened to me-but what is revealed is even more terrifying that what I could have imagined.Īs many have pointed out before me, he's unafraid to stare into the abyss. I'm constantly in awe of the language and recognizing how he's putting together his sentences so exquisitely. The ancient cadences of his prose take on an almost otherworldly quality, a quality that transports you. In his voice I hear stone shifting, glaciers cracking open, trees moaning in the wind. I actually set the book aside after I read that passage and felt as though I'd been rewired aesthetically. I remember, at that moment when there's thunder on the horizon and a cloud of dusk and the horde of Apaches dressed in the blood-stained wedding garb as they thunder towards Glanton and his men, being completely overwhelmed by both the language and the horror and the beauty of the situation. He spoke to me by phone.īenjamin Percy: I picked up Blood Meridian as my first introduction to McCarthy. His nonfiction regularly appears in venues like GQ, Outside, and Esquire, where he's a contributing editor.

His story 'Refresh, Refresh' was selected for Best American Short Stories 2006. In addition to Red Moon, Benjamin Percy is author of The Wilding and two acclaimed story collections. It's the only instance Percy can think when what's finally revealed is, in fact, far scarier than anything he could have imagined. When I asked him to choose a favorite passage from literature, he chose a section from Cormac McCarthy's The Road that has haunted him for years. Anthony Marra on Reading New Meaning in Denis Johnson's Jesus' Sonīenjamin Percy, whose new novel Red Moon updates the werewolf mythos for our era, loves the way suspense ratchets up before something terrible is revealed.

Cormac mccarthy the road 2006