Cormac McCarthy may be a Genius: Exhibit B

Today when I was (not) running I saw a broken-off bottle neck and thought (I thought, tiny, passivist, former-hippy me) "with a jab and a twist, that would be the perfect tool for gouging someone's eye out."
Kind of ambivalent about this, but I read Phil Snyder's article on cowboy codes (via Derrida and Levinas) this afternoon and am falling deeply in love with this literature. There is something monumental about it, something black-and-white and sure and massively appealing.
I read a Sarah Vowell essay once (many of you have heard this story) that said that there comes a point in every liberal arts students' life when nothing seems sure anymore and you have to find an external ethic to rely on. Hers was based on the Godfather movies, and the essay ends with her in Italy going every day to buy a ferry ticket to the port city on Sicily and every day being unwilling to be associated in the ticket-lady's mind with the mindless throng of casual tourist-fans.
There was a moment when I found my monument in Ayn Rand and Hemingway. And there's something equally appealing about the sweeping codes of the Border Trilogy. Something solid to cling to amid the uncertainty of everything right now.
Speaking of which: my hair has joined the rest of my life in the awkward transitional stage--I'm pigtailed and bobby-pinned and poking out every which way and it may kill me before the day is through...