The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Each breath an act of valour.
The sun's blotted out, the trees are bare and burnt, and everything’s swathed in ashes. This is the setting of Cormac McCarthy's The Road – post-nuclear-war America, or at least what used to be America. What's left is a charnel house. Barren earth, ash-choked rivers, corpse-littered landscape.
The story starts several years after the apocalypse. Already everything’s slumped into horrific, gut-churning violence. Those unlucky enough to survive creep, starving, through a hellish landscape, hiding from the cannibals that stalk the countryside, and battling just to see the next day, and the next. Amid this panoply of horrors, the smallest act of endurance is the rawest act of bravery.
McCarthy’s protagonists are a father and his young son. (They’re never identified by name.) Cold and starving, they travel the road south, heading for the coast. They sleep huddled together beneath a tarpaulin or in derelict houses. They scavenge food wherever they can. The father coughs blood and clutches a pistol. Two bullets left.
As they shuffle through this world-sized mass grave, the father cautions his son: ‘Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever’. But the boy can’t avoid witnessing the carnage. He lives in a state of constant fear. Even so, he shows uncomplicated pity and compassion for other survivors. He insists on sharing food with an old man. When an emaciated dog starts following them, the man calls to it, and the boy starts crying and begs for the dog’s life. Several times he seeks his father’s assurance that they’re ‘still the good guys’.
McCarthy describes the ordeals of the boy and the man in stripped-back prose. By his standards, the vocabulary is plain. The syntax is also straightforward, favouring simple sentences and fragments. When he does connect clauses, McCarthy sticks to coordinating conjunctions ‘and’ and ‘but’. This produces a herky-jerky rhythm. But after a few pages you fall into step with it. Its simplicity captures the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other existence of the boy and his father: they can’t afford to think beyond the next step, the next tiny act of survival.
They’re sustained only by their love for each other. It’s an odd relationship. In some moments they’re father and son; in others there’s an odd equality between child and man. Their dialogue is spare and authentic. Both son and father are achingly real. Sometimes the boy seems wiser than his years – but in the circumstances perhaps that’s not so far-fetched.
Reading The Road reminded me of reading The Sound and the Fury or watching Schindler’s List. Beautiful, profound, and mesmerising. But also joyless, dispiriting, and anvil sad. It’s undoubtedly the work of a genius – perhaps the greatest living American writer – yet with each turned page the knot of dread in my chest tightened.
The Road is a tale of love and endurance in the face of despair and endless night. Everything’s fucked, and everything's ugly. The bravest thing you can do is stay alive.
--Hans Fruck
Thanks. What are the major differences between this book and Blood Meridian? That was one of the most powerful books I've ever read. McCarthy moulds language like clay on one of those pottery wheels. It is mesmerising to read.
What is the feeling when you've finished reading this book?
BM is maximalism, McCarthy style. He throws everything into BM. It's as linguistically rich as practically anything you'll ever read -- and that's partly to do with the Judge, who's so erudite and eloquent and perverse that he gives McCarthy elbow room to throw the kitchen sink at you. BM reads like the King James Bible meets Herman Melville meets Faulkner. The Road is more pared down, less extravagant. There's no Judge Holden-type character to use as a mouthpiece. So it doesn't have anywhere near as much elevated rhetoric. There's the odd poetic touch or elaborate metaphor in narrative or dialogue, but much of it is deliberately unadorned.
I was sad when I finished the book. That's just the kind of story it is. Everything in McCarthy's books comes at a terrible cost to his characters. There's always goodness and hope, but sometimes it feels like a flower in an oil slick, you know?
I should add that I didn't read it in a particularly analytical state of mind. I was so engrossed in the story that I was oblivious to a lot of the technical stuff.
But I only finished The Road a couple of days ago, and don't feel I've reached a critical distance from it. I'm still brimming with the sights, sounds and scents of it.
Recently I watched the first series of this on DVD. Anyone else seen it? I was fucking riveted. Recently I've watched the first series of Deadwood and a shitload of the Sopranos, and I've been blown away by both of them. But I'd have to say that Carnivale topped them both. I watched the whole first series in less than a day. I barely even blinked.
I've been trumpeting this series since it came out. Earthy is the word for it: profane and real and addictive. I am so happy you dig it man! Mutherfucker!
Hey, a beautiful reply. Your passion communicates, man. I will buy this book if I see it.
...as a child of 80's nukanoia, I read 'em all - Swan Song, Domain, even that terrible one set in Taronga Park Zoo.
Just recently leapt back into River Nostalgia with eBay: Trinity and Beyond (jawdropping), Threads (harrowing) and The Day After (guttenberging). But not that one with Kevin Costner's in his first role. Some things we can never forgive.
So post-apocalyptic AND literate? I can feel the hook sliding through my lip.
Are they films, series, or books?
For my own peace of mind, I don't think I could watch that many of them. Jaysus, I'm already paranoid and pessimistic as it is.
This is a glorious review of The Road by Alan Warner. If you're at all interested in reading the novel, read this review. It'll make you a believer.
BOOKS
Swan Song by Robert McCammon: big sprawling 'epic' very much in the style of a Steven King bugsquasher. Highly readable on a teenage level.
Domain by James Herbert: third rate hack destroys London with nuclear missiles (boo) and giant rats (yay).
FILMS
The Day After (US): Early 80's ensemble TV jobbie with surprisingly good effects. Still quite tense and enjoyable, despite presence of Steve Guttenberg.
Threads (UK): The Motorhead to The Day After's Motley Crue: nobody actors, doco stylee, Northern accents and, once the bombs fall, absolutely demoralising. You will remember this one for months after.
Trinity and Beyond (US): Just two hours of nuke test footage. Mesmerising. Except for the bit with the pigs.
The books will be ten-a-penny at any second hander. Good luck with the movies. I got 'em off eBay for about $10 each, but it took some huntin'.
I'm gonna check for them at the videoshop.
I read that guy's review Hans, it was brilliant. I will be trying to find the book although I found McCormack's Blood Meridian a tough slog. Undeniably brilliant and original, an unforgettable read... but Jesus, babies being scalped and shit. Far out.
I'll read it though.
I want to read Tim Flannery's Weather Makers next. This rising sense of urgency about global warming is scary. Today was a high wind in Osaka and we saw some blue sky. Even on fine, cloudless days the sky is slate grey. China and India are scary. I think it's possible we could fuck this planet by slow degrees, and I don't know what would be worse to live through -- a nuclear winter or a planet where you have to wear a face mask outside, drink your own piss ala Dune and the only animals you see are in the fucking zoo.
Depressing.
McCarthy ain't a barrel of laughs, that's for sure. Agree 100% about Blood Meridian. That said, it's one of the three best novels I've read. Funnily enough, although it's the bloodiest novel he's ever written, it's not the grimmest. That would be Outer Dark, I reckon.
Yeah, global warming scares the shit out of me. It's become so undeniable that even the Bush Administration is making half-hearted noises about doing something. In reality, they'll do fuck all before dropping the mess in the lap of the next administration and high-tailing it for the hills.
Even Howard has acknowledged global warming, sort of. Though he still maintains that he doesn't believe the more 'alarmist' predictions.
You know, if it's true that you get the leaders you deserve, then judging by Bush and Howard, America and Australia have populations that ain't worth shit.
I read a Robert McCammon novel when I was a kid. Scared the the holy fuck out of me. I never knew there were such things as 'snuff films' until I read that novel -- whatever it was.
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