The End Is Very Fucking Nigh*

Thanks to Cormac McCarthy (the greatest living American writer) I’ve been on a bit of a post-apocalyptic bender lately.

I’m reading The Road for the third time in the last two months. I’ve never read a novel more than once, though I’ve re-read parts of books, namely Walden. I’ve re-read short stories and poems, I’ve watched a handful of movies multiple times, but the time investment for a novel is so massive and there are so many books I’ve never read that the impulse to go back to a novel I’ve read simply isn’t that strong compared to the impulse to read one of the thousands of great books I haven’t gotten to yet.

28 Days Later (which I loved) was recently on television in anticipation of the release of the sequel, 28 Weeks Later (which I can’t wait to see).

Though I’m a (relatively) firm believer that there’s an impending global catastrophe on the way, I can’t say that I’ve been doing much planning for it. I’m not hording water, I haven’t collected a cache of weapons, I don’t even own one of those batteryless, hand-cranked flashlights.

The impending apocalypse has not dimmed my enthusiasm for the future, as evidenced by the fact that we recently got a puppy and we’re having a baby. Babies and puppies have a way of softening the blows of harsh reality.

What would I do if hordes of marauding cannibals or troops of zombies began shambling through the streets of the world?

Frankly, I have no fucking clue.

But I have some great fiction to offer me some suggestion.

*Graffiti on a church wall from 28 Days Later