Not a single review of this dreadful novel has addressed a key point. You can understand why the characters continually refer to "imbeciles", "niggers" and "savages" but throughout the expository passages, McCarthy uses the same exact terms. Perhaps if he had used a word like "kike", people like Harold Bloom might have taken a different attitude. This simply reflects how deep prejudices lie in American society, including the intelligentsia. I should add that I would have given this book no stars, but amazon insists on using at least one.