Competence as Tragedy
The power went out on the first night of the storm. Ninety-mile-an-hour winds off the Pacific, trees cracking in the dark. My wife and I couldn’t sleep. We lay there listening, trying to calculate which trees were close enough to reach the bedroom, whether the angle of fall would matter. Eventually we moved downstairs, as if an extra floor would save us.In the morning the world was felled branches and standing water. I started reading McCarthy.I’d put him off for years. He’s one of those authors everyone insists you have to read, which is usually enough to send me wandering in the opposite direction. I prefer stumbling into authors rather than being assigned them. But my wife had gifted me All the Pretty Horses, and four days without power felt like the right time. I read it in a single…
