In this episode, I take a short detour from All the Pretty Horses into Cormac McCarthy’s The Sunset Limited, the HBO film adaptation starring Samuel L. Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones. I reflect on Professor White and Mr. Black, despair and faith, nihilism and sacred obligation, and why I find myself living somewhere between them as “Mr. Gray” — drawn to the dark clarity of pessimistic philosophy, but still unable to escape the sacred call to be there for another human being.