Close To Home

I was browsing over at Maud Newton's place last night and came across a sidebar note related to Cormac McCarthy's The Road. The note linked to a few places that are currently talking about the book (about which I wrote a rather silly review back in November) and one of the links was to an article that promised scholarly speculation about the novel. It was late last night, and I was ready for bed, and what better to lull me to sleep than some scholarly speculation about a novel that utterly fascinated me (and, apparently, Oprah, too)?

I was expecting the link to send me to a fairly high-brow publication. I mean, doesn't most scholarly speculation take place in high-brow settings?

So, I clicked on the link, expecting to be transported to one of the more enlightening areas of the interweb, and where did I end up going? The Peoria Journal Star, a local paper. It's not that the PJ Star isn't a fine publication or anything. It's just not the kind of place I'd expect Maud Newton to link to--or, for that matter, the kind of place I'd expect to see an interview with a scholar. Still, I thought it was a pretty cool bedtime discovery.