Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Child of God (1973) by Cormac McCarthy
#1
A review is forthcoming.  For now,

How to Steal a Book from the Library

1) Find the book you want to steal.  Make certain there is one and only one copy in the library.  I chose Child of God.

2) Misfile the book at another location in the stacks; remember where you put it (that's kind of important).

3) Go online and put a Hold request on the book.

4) Wait a few days (they'll be trying to find the book in the stacks and check it as missing)

5) Go to the libary and retrieve the book from where you placed it; you won't be able to auto-check it out, because your own Hold blocks it.

6) Take it to the front desk and explain that you can't check the book out because of your own Hold; the librarian will note that it was flagged missing and will clear it and give you the book.  You walk out all fine and dandy.

7) At home, you'll see an email from the library telling you that Child of God is now available for Pickup, with a warning that you'll be fined if you don't pick it up by a certain date.

8) Log into the library site and go to your status page.  You'll see your one Hold with a status of Ready for Pickup.  Cancel the Hold.

9) Your status page now shows that you have 0 books checked out and 0 holds.

P.S. No, I did not hide Child of God in the stacks.  Someone else misfiled McCarthy at MacCarthy.  I had a sudden epiphany that this might have happened and looked there.  All other events are true.

I suppose I should return the book someday.
I'm nobody's pony.
Reply
#2
Let's do crimes!!!
In the Tudor Period, Fencing Masters were classified in the Vagrancy Laws along with Actors, Gypsys, Vagabonds, Sturdy Rogues, and the owners of performing bears.
Reply
#3
After finishing Child of God, I decided to donate it to the library I stole it from -- the Mountain View Library.

Alarms went off when I entered.  I gave some vague explanation at the front desk.  Anyway, the book is now in their custody and I am not.

Child of God is a short book with big type and two-page chapters.  It would appeal to most kids and young adults.  But I'd recommend that you instead lock it in a safe inside a bigger safe inside a still bigger safe, using quantum encryption all the way down.

This is McCarthy at his nastiest, right up there with Blood Meridian.  It deals with a reprehensible character doing reprehensible things.  Subsistence living is again the name of the game.  A young guy doesn't quite make the bottom rung of the social ladder and becomes a hermit with unusual tastes.  Not for the faint of heart.

McCarthy has said if a story doesn't deal with life and death, it isn't literature.  So he loads all his books with living things dying.  But here's what I don't get.  Why does he always write about the dregs of society and subsistence living?  Isn't there life and death among intelligent and socially successful people?  People who are thoughtful and complex and clever and funny and constructive?  I just question whether writing about lowly souls of marginal intelligence represents a deep exploration of the human condition.

Though I do think his work can help prepare us for the hypothetical of a civilization in collapse.  But really, that would require some crazy ass dude seizing control of a powerful nation, and that just ain't going to happen.
I'm nobody's pony.
Reply


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)