The Sunset Limited | 
 enlarge | Author: Cormac Mccarthy
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $7.88
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Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 21419
Media: Paperback
Pages: 160
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.6
ISBN: 0307278360
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780307278364
Publication Date: October 24, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A startling encounter on a New York subway platform leads two strangers to a run-down tenement where a life or death decision must be made.
In that small apartment, “Black” and “White,” as the two men are known, begin a conversation that leads each back through his own history, mining the origins of two fundamentally opposing world views. White is a professor whose seemingly enviable existence of relative ease has left him nonetheless in despair. Black, an ex-con and ex-addict, is the more hopeful of the men–though he is just as desperate to convince White of the power of faith as White is desperate to deny it.
Their aim is no less than this: to discover the meaning of life.
Deft, spare, and full of artful tension, The Sunset Limited is a beautifully crafted, consistently thought-provoking, and deceptively intimate work by one of the most insightful writers of our time.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
 Think: it's a wonderful life. September 1, 2007
Richard L. Pangburn (Bardstown, KY USA)
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
This first appears to be a lite, spare work, but it is delightfully deep. It presents a koan, the human conundrum. It poses life's most persistant question: the meaning of it all. This one-act play is part MY DINNER WITH ANDRE and part the bridge scene from IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE.
It provokes thought in the reader, and different readers will resolve the debate in different ways, just as reviewers here will see it differently. Perhaps, like the choice ending of Yann Martel's LIFE OF PI, it will depend upon whether you see this life as a gift or as simply suffering, a glass half-full argument. It will grab you where you live.
I see it as positive and life-affirming. I can also see a human face on the cover, and the lights in the darkness. Perhaps you can too.
This is for me one of the finest books I have read, even if it was a play. March 30, 2007
Nancy Stuart (New Jersey)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Although very brief, Mccarthy's play took me twice the time it should have because I had to stop and savor the dialogue. I was loving the comments of "Black." I found them profound, witty, gentle and loving, and often very moving. "White", too, had terrific witty lines.This play reminded me of an Edward Albee type of verbal exchange--one that was so rich and brilliantly composed that I was genually thrilled to be reading it.
However, I felt that the final few pages jumped ship. Suddenly The characters were worn out, not able to keep going. I could imagine Black saying and doing so much more. He, earlier, vowed to go home with White, yet inexplicably he gave up. The character built by McCarthy would not have suddenly folded. That part did not seem to fit. I wish I knew what McCarthy was feeling at that point.
I have read most of McCarthy's works, and found this and The Road to be my favorates. We are blessed to have a writer as fine as McCarthy. The only other living author I treasure as much is Haruki Murakami.
Another trophy for McCarthy December 11, 2006
milo mccowan (KANAB, UTAH)
8 out of 12 found this review helpful
The man never ceases to amaze me. In this short play with two characters [Black and White] and in just one room McCarthy exposes us to a vain attempt by an uneducated black with a love of the bible and a heart as big as Texas to save an educated white professoer full of useless, or wasted, education on his way to death. Ending tragically, as most McCarthy books do, it none-the less shows the power of determination: one in himself and the task at hand and the other in a belief in a higher power and a hope for His ability to intervene.
pseudoprofundity? February 3, 2008
John M. Thurman (ann arbor, mi)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
it's amazing that a person would complain about mccarthy's work written in dramatic form as the sunset limited is. to even say that the mind conjures imagery of a third person who is dawkins, sitting at the table, "...who would mop the floor with these two sorry saps," is completely missing the point as the reviewer who gave this play 2 stars did. two sorry saps? unfortunately the way most of us conduct our lives is based on the way that these two people are represented, i.e. good vs. bad, right-wrong, religious vs. agnostic, black and white, delusion vs. reality, hope vs. despair. we all live with a sense duality. to bring up dawkins book, the god delusion, is like arguing the bible. what's right and what's wrong? what is at the heart of mccarthy's storys and what makes him an artist is that he understands both but doesn't let his characters commit to one or the other. he intertwines good and bad and leaves it gray. his storys are of morality but he never sells bad or good he only presents things as they are. he has nothing to hide and is not selling his ideas politically, religiously, artistically, moralistically or falsely. because of these thing i feel he is always and will continue to be a breath of fresh air in these often sad and confusing times. buy this book.
Starts Your Mental Engine March 13, 2008
zorba (Bala Cynwyd, Pa USA)
This dialogue between two people discussing the meaning of life, in the hands of a master such as McCarthy, is thought-provoking and surprisingly fascinating. The author's incredible use of language makes this spare drama succeed. It's the language which creates and holds the tension. Two diametrically opposed men arguing the meaning of life. I don't know that either changed my views, but for me, it made me do a lot of thinking. I'm fast becoming a McCarthy fanatic. I didn't like his Border Trilogy books much but after reading "The Road" and "No Country..." I have become mesmerized by his ability to grab my attention and hold it ruthlessly until he turns loose of me at the end. McCarthy is a master and this little book is another of his masterpieces.
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