Laura just sent me the link to The Morning's News's championship Tournament of Books literary smackdown for 2006, pitting The Road by Cormac McCarthy against Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan. Panelist comments like these were just the sort of thing I needed to read today:
If I were the sort to have dinner parties, I’d save [Shteyngart] a chair.... McCarthy would beat him to death with one.There's one enduring mystery here, though: why do Sasha Frere-Jones's comments always make me want to beat him with a rubber hose? My reaction is surely not a fair one.[I]t's unfair, brutal and wrong, but The Road runs over Snack Daddy's khui with a shopping cart. Oprah agrees.
I’ll go for The Road, at least in part because it includes some excellent recipes.
Sending Absurdistan up against The Road for a duel just seems unfair. Shteyngart is armed with a pillow and McCarthy a gun.
What a killer showdown—the funniest book of the year and the best parenting manual in recent memory.... It is by no more than the singed hair on a spit-roasted baby that the winner is The Road.
[full judging results]
