Exactly how steamy is this story?
G
There's no sex in The Sunset Limited—unlike other Cormac McCarthy works, such as the movie The Counselor (which has some really weird stuff in it).
However, if we weren't just talking about steaminess, we could give the book an R for violence (or maybe a PG-13, since it's just a character's description of violence after all—though in a book, what's the difference?). When Black talks about fending off an attacker in prison, smashing him in the head with a table leg with a screw sticking out of it, he says, "And that screw'd stick in his head and I'd have to stand on him to pull it out again" (45). Intense, right? Not exactly bedtime story material for the neighbor kids you're babysitting.