Post 10 - Davis

The last time I was able to become significantly immersed in a book was over the course of spring break, when I was reading Cormac McCarthy's Child of God. This is probably due to the fact that McCarthy is my favorite author and I had read this book before, but I digress... McCarthy's archaic, deep-south prose, coupled with an extreme, hyper-specific attention to detail results in some of the most beautiful sentences I've ever read in a novel, though McCarthy never distracts readers from the overbearing depravity of its story. It is, after all, the tale of Lester Ballard, a man whose complete estrangement from human interaction causes him to become utterly feral; by the end of the novel transfiguring himself into a cave dwelling, murderous necrophile. It is an incredibly dark novel, and Ballard may very well be the most despicable character I've ever come across in literature, but again, the way McCarthy manages to tell such a story whilst exhibiting such masterfully constructed prose - it makes for very strange and compelling read. "Were there darker provinces of night, he would have found them."