Really good. Made me want to re-watch the Tommy Lee Jones/Samuel L. Jackson movie. Basically Cormac McCarthy walks into a bar and has a conversation with Cormac McCarthy, but instead of a bar it's a dreary apartment room.

Whether you're an atheist or a believer, it is hard to disagree with Black's reasoning, and his reasons are deeply life affirming. His reasons aren't sappy (in fact, this play avoids sap entirely by giving no explanations as to why these men are the way they are; both White and Black keep the most defining moments of their lives close to the vest), but straightforward and lived in. He's insulted at one point when White thinks all he's trying to do for him is get him to change his life. That's not the objective: Black's trying to get White to continue living, period. For me, this makes Black one of the most interesting and likable Man of God characters I've read.

This isn't a heavily emotional discussion but more like a philosophical chat between the epitomes of wanting to live and wanting to die. For a guy who is often criticized for not writing realistic dialogue (i.e., things regular people might say, to which I yawn), McCarthy steams an excellent conversation.

I can't go into 5-star territory because I object to the constant use of the n-word, and McCarthy trying to write this inherently good-natured and non-critical character, Black, into someone who believes some people just act like n-words hits my "stay in your lane" cord. I once interviewed a youth-gang Interrupter from the South Side of Chicago, and they told me that they see too many Black people acting like n-words, and not being in their daily shoes (and their being Black and me being Hispanic) I am in no position to say this person can't believe what they believe, what I mean is that it just makes me really sad that people use that painful word as a definition of somebody's character. This hurts McCarthy's attempt at making these two men diametrically opposed. White believes Black lives in a leper colony (his words), but Black presumably doesn't judge his environment, believing in helping those who need good in their lives... Yet he still says some people are just n-words. I felt like McCarthy's whiteness was embarrassingly apparent because of this.

I don't think McCarthy is a terminally unhappy person whose loyalties lie with White, but there's enough pessimism swimming in him (as evidenced by his body of work) to suggest that he's as convinced as White is that humanity is on its own; that God may be our creator (as Black says), but his job isn't to keep us company (some of White's argument being that God is not in that apartment with them, whereas Black feels for a fact that He is).

There's either one or many truly disturbing moments in the McCarthy books I've read (I think this marks my 11th trip with the guy), and I'm used to those parts being violent or (like with his screenplay for The Counselor) suggestive of violence beyond our comprehension. The soul-shaking part of this has nothing to do with violence but nothingness itself. Not just nihilism, but this universe of catastrophe that those resigned to die by their own hands face; face without comfort, without hope, with only the desire for the nothingness that can't be any worse than what existing has become. Basically, White presents us with Extinction as Satisfaction, and his concluding monologues read even more coldly on paper than translated by Tommy Lee Jones in the adaptation. That word is one of the few, if only, adverbs McCarthy uses in this play: coldly .