Word: sonly
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...American Pastoral,” Cormac McCarthy’s novel “The Road” has room for love, purpose, and human heroism despite being set in a post-apocalyptic world. “The Road” centers on a father and son who try to survive while traveling through a ravaged American landscape that has been destroyed by some unspecified disaster. Both the inner and outer lives of the father and son are essential to the novel’s message. The external scenes where the pair hide from a band of roaming cannibals...
While I suspect that the commercial success of McCarthy’s work may be due to the tropes of science fiction and action rather than its literary merits, that does not diminish the power of McCarthy’s intensely human portrait of a father and son. Where Roth and many other contemporary novelists write about an ironic and dehumanizing world that leaves characters externally disconnected and spiritually enervated, McCarthy embraces humanity in all of its weakness, madness, and strength. Some people may find detailed digressions on spiritual exhaustion profound, but this reader found it merely exhausting...
Layers of despair call for both depth and nuance, and luckily the production is graced with a skilled cast. Smolinsky, in particular, moves from rowdy son to introspective poet with invigorating ease. His monologues come across both poignant and casual; he is the production’s most likeable character inhabited by the show’s most capable actor...
...What does your son eat for lunch?" the woman asked after I ran in breathless. I had no idea what to say. When my son started nursery school last September at the age of 3, I had registered him for the school lunch program. But when he failed to appear in the lunchroom after that, city officials quickly took notice. My explanation - that I thought he should take a break and eat lunch at home in the middle of the day - was apparently not sufficient. This was personal. (See 10 things to do in Paris...
...well as English-language books and movies. Libyan children have long been taught that the U.S. is their enemy. "Only 10 years ago, we were in outright confrontation with the West," says Youssef Sawani, executive director of the Gaddafi Development Foundation, a hugely powerful body headed by Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam. "It will take some time to change...