Kevin Neilson is an unabashed lover of prose fiction. He approaches literature as believers approach the Old Testament. He has read Winesburg, 
Ohio 11 times and will read it again soon. When Kevin isn’t avidly turning pages, he’s spending time with his family or backpacking in the High Sierras. He has a black belt in Cormac McCarthy. You can reach him at jkneilsonATyahooDOTcom.
Interpolations
Thoughts on books and stuff
Interpolations 
Kevin, I am glad you put some of the fruits of your thoughts here. Your world and the authors and books tht live in it are strangers to me. I am struggling to open a window in the wall surrounding me and take a glimpse. It is so sweet to see these books and stuff through such a long awaited window, my friend. Thank you.
Ali, thank you!
Do you think Cormac McCarthy also has a black belt in Cormac McCarthy? Is this like asking who dreams the dreamer?
Ha! I don’t think he does. One, he has a fairly mean opinion of novelists. He rarely reads their stuff, and he’d much prefer to hang out with theoretical physicists. BUT, he also openly acknowledges that great novelists beg, borrow, and steal their themes, techniques, and methods from other novelists. So if he has a black belt, it isn’t in C. McC but rather in Blake, Melville, Joyce, and Faulkner. I keep waiting for your definitive return to the blogosphere, which in your absence is cold and desolate. Cheers.
Just read your analysis of Wise Blood. The “cringe” factor in her images is mitigated by the humor, don’t you think. (In full diclosure: I was brought up in Macon, 30 miles from Milledgeville so I may be biased.) And if the humor doesn’t grab you, her claim that we in the south still recognize freaks should. By that elusive statement I’ve always thought she meant that what the world calls a freak probably isn’t. What God calls a freak (yes, I know, he made the freak to begin with) is probably what you and I call a well-adjusted man. Again, that pesky Christ-centered view of reality gets in the way here and seems to flip everything on its head–which is pretty much what Jesus did.
Lance Levens
Hi Lance, how came you to Interpolations? I’m glad you found my bit on O’Connor. I labored over my series on her and hoped someone would read it, someone who cares about O’Connor as I do, despite my ideological differences from her. I know what you’re saying about the humor, because there are times when her fiction makes me laugh, brief moments. Instead of mitigating the cringe factor, however, it heightens it in my case, like the laughter that follows a scary near miss or the inadvertent laughter that results when you look at your finger in dismay after accidentally slicing it with a dull kitchen knife. For me O’Connor’s humor makes her world all the more lurid. K