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Cormac McCarthy: The Road

Jughead said:
it's vitriolic assesment of current western culture and its parallels to the architecture of western religion. Like all of McCarthy's works, I am finding more than was revealed on first blush.
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Curious about your thoughts on western culture related to the novel. I found it to be almost hands off in how deftly he reveals the story without indicting any partiular element of cause. What element/s of culture do you feel he treated with vitriol?

I will read it again, definitely, but not with a foot of snow on the ground and darkness falling at 4pm. Next spring or summer, maybe.

Also,
I just never thought for one minute that he would kill the boy. I was afraid someone else would kill both of them, but I trusted the father entirely
 
SFG75 said:
There appears to be an authenticity of sorts that just can't be taught in an MFA program or through sheer talent in many individuals who are "the best." It also explains why some people succeed when they lack every other advantage they could possibly have, that others do, such as wealth, education, and connections. I will definitely pick this one first to read when my book crate arrives.:D I will be on the lookout for this trait when reading.
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I think you'll find that authenticity, SFG. I know what you mean about a certain genuine quality that some writers have. And all the MFA in the world can't buy it. Do you think it always springs from a deficit of one thing or another? I'm just not convinced that there necessarily has to be one in order for an artist to become authentic. I think it comes more from patience in living and observing. I think good writers are very deliberate individuals, their pecadillos notwithstanding.

Curious about your opinion of Cather, though I haven't checked to see if she has her own thread. I see where you're reading her. I'm thinking she was at least 40 when she began to write in earnest. Should living come first, then writing?

My mental photo of your book crate is of one so large that it must be lowered by a gantry crane onto your lawn or street! And the truck has to roll out a ramp and use backing beepers to indicate the dangerous nature of the delivery.
 
Flor said:
Curious about your thoughts on western culture related to the novel. I found it to be almost hands off in how deftly he reveals the story without indicting any partiular element of cause. What element/s of culture do you feel he treated with vitriol?

I will read it again, definitely, but not with a foot of snow on the ground and darkness falling at 4pm. Next spring or summer, maybe.

Also,
I just never thought for one minute that he would kill the boy. I was afraid someone else would kill both of them, but I trusted the father entirely
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For me the overall theme was a comment on the excess of Western culture, in particular America, and the idea of what America is; coupled with an affirmation that what will lead the son out of the wasteland is the salvation granted in the acceptance of Christ. The religious symbolism carries throughout, set up from the get-go as a tale about the need to accept Christ. It is made clear that all the clocks stopped at 1:17, a nod to the book of revelations John 1:17 - For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.

Like most of McCarthy’s works, the symbolism is there but rarely glaring nor reinforced multiple times. I think the excess of America was summed up a few times with the notion of the empty gas stations and abandoned cars, the fully stocked and pristine bomb-shelter that the occupants never made it to, the untouched items in the stores and finally concluded when the father finds the can of Coke (as an American an Icon as you can find) and gives it to his son to drink. It tastes great, is a short term joy, but both realized it will not last.

The destination of their walk is also relevant to the reading of the novel. It is not just to the warmer coast but to the Atlantic coast. McCarthy could have easily chosen the Pacific coast or the Southern US states if it was merely a case of trying to move the father and son to a warmer climate. I do think it is relevant for them to have made the journey to the same coast that the first Anglo-Americans arrived on and further for them to consider if there was possibly another child across the ocean in the same circumstance.

I know of a few critics and readers who felt the ending was too convenient but for me it spoke to faith and the belief that salvation lies in the willingness to take that leap of faith.
 
Jughead said:
For me the overall theme was a comment on the excess of Western culture, in particular America, and the idea of what America is;
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Yes, I can see a theme, though very subtle, that takes a bit of a swipe at Western cultures of plenty, not just American. As for the idea of what America is....well, that's where I think parts of the world get it wrong. Yes, we'll sell anything, etc etc, but at the core America is still a place where people can live freely and make choices that can't be found anywhere else. Maximize their existence, imho.


Jughead said:
coupled with an affirmation that what will lead the son out of the wasteland is the salvation granted in the acceptance of Christ. The religious symbolism carries throughout, set up from the get-go as a tale about the need to accept Christ. It is made clear that all the clocks stopped at 1:17, a nod to the book of revelations John 1:17 - For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.
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Got me there, Jughead. I dont' know the Bible very well but the symbolism, and McCarthy's use of it, is a fascinating aspect.

Jughead said:
Like most of McCarthy’s works, the symbolism is there but rarely glaring nor reinforced multiple times. I think the excess of America was summed up a few times with the notion of the empty gas stations and abandoned cars, the fully stocked and pristine bomb-shelter that the occupants never made it to, the untouched items in the stores and finally concluded when the father finds the can of Coke (as an American an Icon as you can find) and gives it to his son to drink. It tastes great, is a short term joy, but both realized it will not last.
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I think it will last.

Jughead said:
The destination of their walk is also relevant to the reading of the novel. It is not just to the warmer coast but to the Atlantic coast. McCarthy could have easily chosen the Pacific coast or the Southern US states if it was merely a case of trying to move the father and son to a warmer climate. I do think it is relevant for them to have made the journey to the same coast that the first Anglo-Americans arrived on and further for them to consider if there was possibly another child across the ocean in the same circumstance.
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Great point. I'll have to ponder that one. Thanks so much for posing that.

Yes, I think the book is about faith, although I see it as simply faith in human goodness, nothing more or less.
 
I dove into this one tonight after re-reading the reviews on meta-critic. I do so the book as an intense morality play. The primal urge to survive, and perhaps the most basic one of all, to protect one's own children, took center stage early on.

He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.
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(page 4)

I was rather taken aback when McCarthy had the characters enter a home and pry open a lock, only to find other people trapped, pleading for help. The good samaritan moral is clearly cast to the way side in this eventful exchange:

They're going to kill those people, aren't they?

Yes.

Why do they have to do that?

I don't kow.

Are they going to eat them?

I don't know.

They're going to eat them, aren't they?

Yes.

And we couldn't help them because then they'd eat us too.

Yes.

And that's why we couldn't help them.

Yes.

Okay.
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The child is quickly versed in the harsher ways of the world.

I do see how the event occured in America. The mentioning of state highways bore that out. I don't see the argument against materialism in any way. The modern trappings of society are mentioned within the context of the level of destruction, as well as it's ability to be used by the boy and his father in order to preserve themselves. The father's moral compass in deciding how to handle events that arise appears to be the main crux of the novel. Dropping the surprise woods walker with a bullet to the head in order to save his son, as well as leaving as soon as possible when the boy spots another young lad are key examples of this.
 
So after all the praise above (and elsewhere), did The Road live up to expectations for me? Yes and no. It's an exceptionally focused and controlled performance by McCarthy, and suffocating in its atmospheric power: each time you break from reading this tale of a post-apocalyptic landscape and look back up into the world, you're surprised to find the sun still shining and the birds still coughing. It's impossible not to root for the man and the boy, even though you know there's nothing to root for, and even though you can't help feeling that the man's partner (disclosed in flashbacks) had the right idea of getting out voluntarily.

It struck me that the book bore comparison with Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go: an analysis of all our lives by use of an extension to the extreme. In this case, if we accept the non-existence of a higher power, then all our lives and quests are ultimately as futile as the man's and the boy's. The difference, of course, is that we have many more things - and people - to distract us from the inevitable.

I missed the Biblical stuff, and what bothered me most about The Road was what has bothered me before about McCarthy: the language. McCarthy does this trick thing where he writes with what seems to be macho spareness, but actually is filled with flowery sentimentality. Pretty much everything the boy says is calculated to tug at the heartstrings. The sentences are terse and the dialogue spare, but then there is nonsense like "The snow fell nor did it cease to fall."

He also has an absolutely maddening lack of policy with regard to the humble apostrophe: sometimes it's there (he'd, they'd, the boy's), sometimes it isn't (didnt, wouldnt, hadnt), and sometimes it's just misplaced (In two day's time - which at first I thought was a typo, but it's used repeatedly). Having said this, the prose is a lot less pretentious than some of McCarthy's earlier work, and the book is mostly an effortless read.

I also felt that the story, fairly slight in plot as it was, could have been a little shorter yet, even a story rather than a novel. Of course it could have lost its extraordinarily immersive qualities that way.

The Road is not so much bleak as utterly nihilistic, and difficult to enjoy but even more difficult to put down.
 
From msnbc.com:
CHICAGO - Don’t expect a lot of sunshine in Oprah Winfrey’s latest book club pick. Publishing’s leading hit-maker has chosen Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” a bleak, apocalyptic novel by an author who rarely talks to the media.

“It is so extraordinary,” Winfrey said Wednesday. “I promise you, you’ll be thinking about it long after you finish the final page.”

McCarthy, 73, is known for novels such as “All the Pretty Horses” and “Blood Meridian,” and has been widely cited as an heir to William Faulkner for his biblical prose and rural settings. Critic Harold Bloom, famous for his discerning taste, has called McCarthy one of the greatest living American writers, along with Don DeLillo, Philip Roth and Thomas Pynchon.
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In coming weeks, the reclusive McCarthy, who did not appear on the show Wednesday and who lives in Santa Fe, N.M., will conduct his “first television interview ever,” Winfrey said.

“Mr. McCarthy respects her work, admires what she has accomplished, has an awareness of her book club, and thought it would be interesting to participate in the conversation with Oprah,” McCarthy’s publicist Paul Bogaards of Alfred A. Knopf, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

“He knew who she was when she called,” Bogaards added.


“The Road,” published last September by Knopf, is a sparely written story of a father and son trying to survive as they wander through a burned and bare landscape. It was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle prize and is considered a leading contender for the Pulitzer Prize.

“It’s unlike anything I’ve ever chosen as a book club selection before because it’s post-apocalyptic. (It is) Very unusual for me to select this book, but it’s fascinating,” Winfrey said.

“The Road” is also one of McCarthy’s most popular books, spending several weeks on numerous best seller lists. According to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 70 percent of industry sales, it has sold 138,000 copies in hardcover. Thanks to Winfrey, that total should increase by hundreds of thousands. A paperback was not planned until September, but Vintage Books, understandably, is publishing one now, with a massive first printing of 950,000 copies.

Winfrey’s previous choice was “The Measure of a Man,” a “spiritual” memoir by one of her personal heroes, Academy Award-winning actor Sidney Poitier. But she has also taken on harsher stories, such as Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust classic, “Night,” and, notoriously, James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces,” a memoir of addiction and recovery that turned out to be largely fabricated.
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:confused: :eek:
 
I just finished it.
Yes, it is unusual and well worth reading.
No, it I don't agree with the unreserved accolades. It was just so monotonic. I want a book to take me through a range of emotions and situations. This was like one long, tortuous scene. Yes, there were a few different settings, several characters that pop up, a moment or two where you feel something other than revulsion and despair - but mostly, just a ghastly and gray scene, bleak and unengaging.
On the Beach, by Nevil Shute
Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart.
Two examples of far better books in this genre.
My opinion.
 
Wow, I do not understand all these brilliant reviews..

This is horrible--horrible. Utter crap.

Cormac's writing style is (yes, I said it) worse than James Frey.

I am in utter disbelief.

Wow, this is worse than a John Grisham's novel. That's saying alot.

Those who hated this crap of a novel, raise their hands.
 
I've been reading a lot about "The Road" so I finally cracked and bought it yesterday - I figured I'd better get it before it gets smothered in "Pulitzer" and "Oprah" stickers. It's going pretty high in my TBR stack, should get to it within a week. (After Palahniuk, I could use some post-apocalyptic stuff to restore some semblance of normalcy...)
 
Can I use "harrowing" as a verb rather than an adjective? "This book harrowed me"?

tr.v. har·rowed, har·row·ing, har·rows 1. To break up and level (soil or land) with a harrow.
2. To inflict great distress or torment on.
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I'm asking for two reasons. One, because, well, it did. The Road the kind of book that really rips you up, not just on the surface. It doesn't actually plant seeds, but it makes it easier for them to take root - post-apocalyptic barrenness and a few small gripes I had with the book notwithstanding.

The other reason is one of the things that strike me about it: the near-extinction not only of mankind, but of humanity. Of language, which dies along with our need for it. The prose is spare - beautiful, but spare - because it needs to be. So many of the words, the concepts, the man remembers make no sense anymore. He can't explain phrases like "in the neighbourhood" or "as the crow flies" to the boy; those very simple concepts are as dead as the more abstract ones - you know, compassion, selflessness, justice, that lot - seem to be. (Though one thing that really chilled me was not just the cruelty of men to each other, but how they keep
finding unlooted stores, spilled money, high-tech wrecks. As if all of mankind has realized that the world isn't coming back. No one bothers looting for anything except food and clothing to postpone the inevitable.

And in a sense, that's part of the tiny problem I have with the book. I'm not going to complain specifically about the religious or socioeconomic references, but the fact that the book is so obviously set up to be a parable and nothing falls outside that. It's sort of what Shade said above: that every line seems designed to tug at your heart strings, everything is tied into the symbolism of the piece. Not ONE person does anything unexpected once their character has been set up, everyone goes out of their way to be a part in the bleak picture McCarthy wants to paint. Which is not really a big problem when he does it this well, it's just... I dunno, I'd think the last thing that dies with humanity would be our irrationality.
It only takes ONE person to loot a store. It only takes ONE cut on a poorly shod foot to give a kid blood poisoning. etc. None of that happens here, because that's not what McCarthy wants to happen.

That's a small gripe, though. The book moves, groans, shudders and shakes like few other post-apocalyptic tales I've read. It's biblical, not in the sense of "I know Jesus loves me" but in the way it feels like it's a story that's engrained, that everyone knows at 3 AM when they can't sleep, that everyone goes through in some way. I'm reminded of Mary Shelley's masterful The Last Man, though obviously McCarthy has done away with her early 19th-century romanticism. And I'm thinking of the last song on Bob Dylan's latest album:
Ain't talkin'
Just walkin'
Up the road, around the bend
Heart burnin'
Still yearnin'
In the last outback at the world's end
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Except that song is 8 1/2 minutes of nothing but talking. The words just keep coming, even if they don't matter anymore, one foot in front of the other, on and on. Just like the man and the boy keep walking long after it's obvious that there is no unspoiled paradise at the end of the road. As if we don't lose until we admit defeat.

The man remakes God in his own image, that of his son, and gives his life to protect it.

Dylan's song kills everything worth hoping for, then ends on a major chord after chugging along in a minor key all the way. The last thing that dies is not hope. And the road goes ever on and on.

4/5, almost 5.
 
So like, I recently put down Heart-Shaped Box to read a little book that's been catching some buzz, one that we all know and love (I use that word hesitantly), as The Road. First of all, a question--why are people praising this guys writing?

He. Fucking. SUCKS!


And...as for the story? I don't know, I don't feel any emotion, any good sense of setting, just some long monologue of "death....death....depression....daddy....death!."

I've yet to finish it, and I should be done within the next day or two provided how much of an eye I keep focused on my schoolwork (summers around the corner, my grades average out to passing...I'm lazy), but so far, I'm not feeling it. And I was really looking forward ot this guy, too. Idea wise, I guess this is going to be a fun read. Writing wise? No. Hell no. This guy is crap.
 
I've never read any of Cormac's work until this book but if his other books are this good then I will have to read the rest. Great book.
 
After reading this dark novel, I must say I am impressed. I give the book 3 out-of 4 stars. I will continue to read McCarthy with the Border Trilogy.
 
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