Man, I have got to start reading McCarthy.
From the AP:
TUSCOLA, Texas (AP) — A popular English teacher has been placed on paid leave — and faces possible criminal charges — after a student's parents complained to police that a ninth-grade class reading list contained a book about a murderer who has sex with his victims' bodies.
Wouldn't it have been easier for them to just use the word necrophilia?
Anyway.
Okay. My interest in reading the book aside (Amazon reviews compare it to Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor, hooray!), it does seem like a strange pick for a ninth-grade reading list.
HOWEVER. The guy didn't compile the list -- the list was compiled by "all of the high school English teachers [in Tuscola] for a pre-Advanced Placement class". Also, the article doesn't say whether or not the book was required reading. (It sounds like the students probably just had to pick something off of the list, "the student selected Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Cormac McCarthy's Child of God off the list and read it", but I couldn't find anything else about the situation.)
Regardless, criminal charges?
Sounds like he has a whole lot of support from the community. (Not so much about the book, but in general.) My guess is that it'll all blow over.