ABSTRACT
To modify a trope and a title from Edwin T. Arnold, the author believes that Cormac McCarthy has assembled a narrative "mosaic" of crime and evil. McCarthy intended some kind of cosmic or supernatural crime, however much a projection they may seem at times. The sense of evil in Suttree, McCarthy's only palpably autobiographical novel, is moral and personal–morally and personally perceived, morally and personally received, and morally and personally related, at once existential and mystical. The critic who reads The Road novel most deeply from my perspective on crime and evil is Steven Shaviro, when he writes in '"The Very Life of Darkness': A Reading of Blood Meridian" that the book suggests that 'a taste for mindless violence' is as ubiquitous–and as banal–as any other form of 'common sense'. The Border Trilogy is clearly a step backward from Blood Meridian in terms of violence, crime, or evil.
