We end with a vision of rapture straight out of the Book of Ezekiel. If it sounds as if the book has no dramatic center, well, you're right. Eternal recurrence, too, plays a role, as people either meet up with their lookalikes or unknowingly share mystical bonds. Williams defiantly refuses to give us anything to cling to. There is, too, the idea that the world is simply too violent and chaotic at its core to permit good intentions, that everything is permitted, whether because you believe in eternal forgiveness or because you know you'll die anyway.
Characters crave hopelessness.
Believe in nothing, in other words, for the sake of nothing. It takes that same remarkable forcefulness of vision to create a book as unrelievedly grim, and compelling, as this one. The Quick and the Dead is a sustained jolt of electroshock nihilism, a brutal comedy where all the laughs hang in the throat.