The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

[Omphalos]

I wrote a review of Cormac McCarthy's the Road two years ago, just after Oprah adopted it into her book club. I loved the book, but I was never very happy with the review. "You missed something the first time around, boy," I kept telling myself. Now that the movie has hit the theaters I thought that I should read it again before seeing the film. The book stood up very well to a second reading, and I think I figured out what it was I missed the first time: The influence of God on the Man and the Boy. I mean, I saw the religious implications of the book, but I railed against the idea that the boy was a Christ figure, as some reviewers at the time were saying. I still think that, but I see different meanings in the religious imagery now. This story shows what it must have been like for those who could not get passage onto Noah's ark. Despite the fact that this book makes use of one of the hippest themes of the day, post apocalypse, the real reason that it is truly loved is because McCarthy's writing is superb. Practically every paragraph folds open further upon deep reflection. The story of the man's relationship with his son is probably what is going to sell a few million tickets to the film, and probably what moved several million copies off of the shelf. But it generally requires a great deal more to change a best-seller into a truly loved book.

 

[Brian G Turner]

A bleak novel about a man and a boy traveling along a road through a post-apocalyptic landscape.
The planet is dying, everything is dead or burned, ash is everywhere. All plants, animals, and most people have already died. The man and boy feel exhausted, starving, cold, take shelter, scavenge. Repeat for 300 pages.

This is an atmospheric book - did I mention it's very bleak? However, I couldn't shake the feeling that rather than being a story this was more an exercise in writing a bleak journey. There are a couple of small encounters, but nothing much really happens and nothing is explained - everything is just about the man trying to care for the boy. They're heading to the coast but it's never made clear why. There's a lack of depth that is superficially engaging but ultimately unfulfilling, as is the end.

Not so much a novel as much as an experience, and one that I didn't really enjoy.

 

[Toby Frost]

I agree. It's okay, but I don't see what's meant to be so very great about it: it feels like another case of "literary author does sci-fi". I found the repetitive dialogue ("We carry the fire") numbing rather than powerful, and the less said of McCarthy's mock-biblical stylistic quirks the better. To be honest, it covers a lot of standard post-apocalyptic ground, but in a more "fancy" style and perhaps with a bit more gore than usual. Call me a pleb, but The Last of Us does much the same, more enjoyably and more affectingly.

And McCarthy commits the ultimate sin of not punctuating dialogue properly. Why does anyone do this? It just makes a book harder to read. There is absolutely no net gain. I assume it's just to signal to readers that this is "literature".

I assumed they were going to the coast because it would be warmer there.

 

[HareBrain]

it covers a lot of standard post-apocalyptic ground, but in a more "fancy" style and perhaps with a bit more gore than usual. Call me a pleb, but The Last of Us does much the same

If only the same were true of The Last of the Summer Wine. A missed opportunity, I feel.

 

[Toby Frost]

A game about four old men scavenging parts to build a wheeled bathtub with which to run over zombies in Yorkshire. I'd watch/play that.

 

[Venusian Broon]

And McCarthy commits the ultimate sin of not punctuating dialogue properly. Why does anyone do this? It just makes a book harder to read. There is absolutely no net gain. I assume it's just to signal to readers that this is "literature".

I haven't read The Road yet - it's on my to read pile in my room - however I have read quite a number of his other books. I can't find the quote, but I don't think Mccarthy thinks of the book as SF - apparently he doesn't read anyone elses novels. Or hasn't in a long time.

But just on your point above, I really enjoy his style and his disurbing, grotesque and very dark tales. Well, enjoy may not be the word, but I think you know what I mean. Anyway, I never really noticed the non-standard puncuation in any of my reads and didn't find it difficult at all, in fact this may have helped slip me faster into the 'encroaching dark' of the stories I was reading.

But different horses for different courses. If the other elements weren't working for you, then the puncuation will likely flare up as well as a problem, which I can totally understand.

 

[HareBrain]

But different horses for different courses

Pretty horses, in this case. And all of them.

 

[Don]

This story shows what it must have been like for those who could not get passage onto Noah's ark.

Indeed. Thank you for sharing your insight.

 

[Toby Frost]

I think one of the things I dislike in writing is obvious "literary-ism", so I think this book was bound to not be my sort of thing. There certainly are good bits, but as a whole it didn't blow me away or, I felt, add anything very new to the subgenre.

 

[Dan Jones]

Who started the whole punctuating dialogue with em-dashes? Was it Joyce? I bet it was Joyce, the naughty goose.

The thing is, All The Pretty Horses could be great, but the dialogue tag really jarred me out of my comfort zone, and not in a good way. It's not even as though all - or even most - literary authors do it. Salman Rushdie doesn't do it, Amis doesn't do it, Bolaño never did it, Eco never did it. It is just a tad silly.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Funnily enough I didn't mind the literary flourishes such as the lack of dialogue tags, and it was a very atmospheric book. What grated on me was the lack of depth explaining anything, especially the character motivations. I was left with the feeling that this was as much a stream-of-consciousness story rather than one that had been carefully and thoughtfully crafted.

 

[Danny McG]

I can't find the quote, but I don't think Mccarthy thinks of the book as SF -

There's a few (Margaret Atwood is one) of the literati who have the same attitude.
They equate sci fi with " talking alien squid things in starships attacking humans"....(I would happily read such a story) and imagine themselves above such pleb amusements.

I remember reading The Road not long after it was first published, my opinion was "this is a bit sh*t"

 

[Dave]

I agree with you all above. I read The Road years ago and I also thought it was nothing special. It treads standard post-apocalyptic ground but it isn't groundbreaking, and I've read most of the apocalyptic science fiction there is to read, (except for that Last of the Summer Wine episode).

It annoys me when I read literati dismissing science fiction as not worthy, while writing it themselves, but instead calling it "speculative fiction, darling!" I also agree that this was a book weighty on scene descriptions, but very short of character motivations, and in a book I like to know how, why and wherefore. That is possibly the difference that makes science fiction; the ideas hidden behind the curtain of the story itself.

Can I recommend The Second Sleep by Robert Harris as book classed as a "Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Historical Fiction" but which is actually just good old science fiction?

 

[Dan Jones]

They equate sci fi with " talking alien squid things in starships attacking humans"....(I would happily read such a story) and imagine themselves above such pleb amusements.

I'd like to think that this snobbish attitude isn't the case, but I fear you're probably right. A couple of years ago I went to a pitching event in London where I and a handful of other authors had one-to-ones with agents. The agents were great, but afterwards over a drink I was chatting with one well-to-do lady and told her I'd pitched a science fiction thriller, and she actually wrinkled her nose and looked away, saying, "Oh I don't read that."

It may be a tad annoying, but we know the truth. As time goes by SF(F) - the best SF (probably not your tentacled space monster Danny ) - acquires as much literary kudos as anything else. Le Guin, Stephenson, Tolkien, Heinlein, Bradbury, Lewis, etc etc.

 

[Vladd67]

There's a few (Margaret Atwood is one) of the literati who have the same attitude.
They equate sci fi with " talking alien squid things in starships attacking humans"....(I would happily read such a story) and imagine themselves above such pleb amusements.

I remember reading The Road not long after it was first published, my opinion was "this is a bit sh*t"

Reminds me of Terry Goodkind who stated he didn’t write fantasy, he wrote books about the human condition.

 

[HareBrain]

I was chatting with one well-to-do lady and told her I'd pitched a science fiction thriller, and she actually wrinkled her nose and looked away, saying, "Oh I don't read that."

I'm planning to tell people that SFF is the only fiction worth reading, because if something could actually happen, it probably already has, and I'd rather read the non-fiction version than LIES.

 

[Venusian Broon]

There's a few (Margaret Atwood is one) of the literati who have the same attitude.
They equate sci fi with " talking alien squid things in starships attacking humans"....(I would happily read such a story) and imagine themselves above such pleb amusements.

I remember reading The Road not long after it was first published, my opinion was "this is a bit sh*t"

I think you're generalising from a stray comment I made.

I understand the Magaret Atwood 'controversy' and totally understand there is a large number of people who wrinkle their noses at genres or books that they don't read, but being fair and from my limited reading of the author I don't think he's the same. Plus after a lot of searching I can't find him saying anything about any genre, never mind SF, so you should probably disregard the initial comment and not extrapolate from it. I might be wrong, and he may have made disparaging comments at sometime, but let's presume innocence, rather than rushing to a judgement.

He is best known for his writing of what would loosely be called Westerns as a genre, I suppose. Just not your black hat - white hat saturday matinee ones. A genre probably even less well regarded by literati.

So to be clear, my current understanding is that he did not intend to write a SF novel. It has been labelled as such by others, presumably because it is described as post-apocalyptic. However when you read some of his other work: Blood Merdian a Western loosely based on historical events - "...a vision of the Old West full of charred human skulls, blood-soaked scalps, a tree hung with the bodies of dead infants.", Outer Dark "brutally nihilistic" (yes, it is!) or Child of God "...themes of the novel are cruelty, isolation and moral degradation of humans and the role of fate and society in it... (other themes include) sexual deviancy specifically necrophilia..." then the world of The Road holds certain similiarities that are the sort of things he tends to explore in his works. At least that's what I take from my reading.

The books roots come, well, this is his own words:

"Four or five years ago, my son (John, then aged three or four) and I went to El Paso, (in Texas) and we checked into the old hotel there. And one night, John was asleep, it was probably about two in the morning, and I went over and just stood and looked out the window at this town. There was nothing moving but I could hear the trains going through, a very lonesome sound. I just had this image of what this town might look like in 50 or 100 years… fires up on the hill and everything being laid to waste, and I thought a lot about my little boy. So I wrote two pages. And then about four years later I realised that it wasn't two pages of a book, it was a book, and it was about that man, and that boy."

The problem here is, I feel, because it's set in the future, its post-apocalyptic and some people need to pigeon hole everything, it's been labelled as SF*. Correct in some manner, but hardcore and not-so hardcore SF readers coming to this are likely to be dissappointed because I believe that's not really what Mccarthy was intending, he was just writing a story his way. Coming from his other works first, this makes much more sense of what The Road is, perhaps.

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* I mean is 1984 SF? I think it is and has a much better claim to being SF. But others will say it isn't....ach, the eternal debate of 'what is SF' continues.

 

[Toby Frost]

I can't see a way in which The Road isn't SF, unless the apocalypse is literally magical or the Wrath Of God, in which case I'd call it fantasy. But I see it as both "literary" and SF, or perhaps SF with literary trappings. Personally, I don't feel it matters much. From what I know of McCarthy's other work, I'd describe him as a "tough miserableist" or something along those lines, with an odd prose style that at times seems to imitate the King James Bible.

Funnily enough I didn't mind the literary flourishes such as the lack of dialogue tags, and it was a very atmospheric book. What grated on me was the lack of depth explaining anything, especially the character motivations. I was left with the feeling that this was as much a stream-of-consciousness story rather than one that had been carefully and thoughtfully crafted.

I see it almost the opposite way around, although the refusal to give the characters actual names strikes me as another annoying affectation. I suspect that they're meant to be representative figures, embodiments of concepts rather than individuals (parental love, innocence etc) or stock figures like those in a Western or Bible story (old man, robber etc). The trouble with that, if it is McCarthy's aim, is that it just makes the book more generic, because those concepts and figures come up very often in apocalyptic novels.

The lack of explanation for the apocalypse didn't bother me that much, as ultimately many apocalypses are really an excuse to get mankind killing one another for tins of beans and to talk about what happens next.

 

[The Crawling Chaos]

Coincidentally I'm reading The Road right now after about 5 years moving it up or down my to-read pile (The Last of Us 2 rekindled my craving for intimate post-apocalyptic fiction) and so far I'm enjoying it.
Yes, it's atmospheric and not a lot happens, but this is precisely what I want from fiction, to be immersed in a world that allows me to wander in it alongside the characters, as opposed to guiding me by the hand at breakneck speed through a nicely wrapped-up plot I don't much care for. Explaining the apocalypse would be as annoying to the reader and as suicidal to the author as a magician revealing their trick.
McCarthy's writing is pretty unique, to my eyes at least. It is alternately stark, raw and pared down or poetic and elaborate. I'm enjoying it so much I've already added a few other of his novels to my reading list.
Definitely not groundbreaking or life-altering, but it's giving me what I hoped to find there.

The one thing I cannot wrap my head around is whyhe chose to suppress all the apostrophes when contracting negations ("cant", "wont", "isnt" etc.) Is that a thing?

 

[svalbard]

A difficult and brilliant read. It is bleak however there is hope there as well. Sometimes I stop and find myself looking at my own son and for a second I wonder.