SOURCE: "Silurian Southern," in National Review, Vol. 31, No. 11, March 16, 1979, pp. 368-69.

In the following review Davenport discusses the Southern influences in McCarthy's novels, and praises the novelist's originality and skill in rendering the "outrageous and the macabre."

In his fourth novel, Cormac McCarthy deepens his sounding of the Silurian depths of human nature. We are creatures designed and damned by the past. In an alley in Knoxville, all the animistic conjurations of West Africa thrive in their millionth year; the visionary mind of Wales and the stubborn will of Scotland, fueled by whisky and enraged by adversity, plunge the conduct of life in Tennessee into dark triumphs of irreality.

The people he writes about do not think, especially before they leap. He has subtracted from narrative tradition that running account, by author or character, of rationalization, opinion, and intent which reached an ultimate in Joyce's stream of consciousness...