Who Cormac McCarthy Was to Me

Who Cormac McCarthy was, for me:

When I was writing The Night Field, I got into a deep funk about how dark the book was turning. How could I EVER expect a reader to stay with me through such misery? Might as well drop the whole thing and—

No. Wait. Cormac McCarthy wrote a book that was nothing but death, damnation, and despair from beginning to end. And yet, when I was reading The Road, I simply could not stop turning pages.

How did he DO that? What light was hidden in that book that made all that darkness bearable, kept me with him to the radiant end?

It was love, I realized, the gleam of undying love of that parent for that child. Love on every page, shining through the blind dark—that was my answer.

And so I dug deep, found more and more ways to light up more and more love on every page of The Night Field.