At the end of the film version of Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses , the principal character, Cole, asks whether God exists. Cole has been through a infernal trip to Mexico – his lover is taken away from him by her family, he watches a companion get shot, endures a brief stay in a Mexican jail where he is beaten and knifed. Does God exist? Cole says something like “I guess he must. Otherwise we wouldn’t survive a day.” In the face of human cruelty, folly, and pain, the sheer fact of human survival counts as a theistic proof.
Notes on Anosmia
One morning several years ago, as my wife, Wendy, and I were having breakfast together, I had…
Empire of Unreality
Shiva Naipaul (1945–1985) was the author of three novels and two books of mordant dispatches from places…
The Dreadful Christ of Pär Lagerkvist
It’s dangerous to meet a god,” says the disgraced Pythia in Pär Lagerkvist’s The Sibyl. Her observation…