What about specifics? A human newborn baby roasting on a spit at an abandoned campsite? A cellar full of naked human livestock, some with cauterized stumps where limbs have been removed as food for their captors? A solemn promise to murder your small child -- to smash his brain with a stone -- rather than let him be captured by sodomites and cannibals?
These are the essential elements of Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel The Road, without doubt the most terrible, beautiful, miserable, punishing book I have ever read.
Because I care for my readers, I beg you to skip this book. The Road, a Pulitzer winner, has been called the best book of the last twenty-five years and the best book of the decade, but I call the reading of it masochistic. There is no levity. The anemic tendrils of hope are short-lived and emphatically dashed. Even the vast sections of tedium are laced with shivering omen.
Whatever McCarthy's grand intended message, it vanished like so much sugar in a ladleful of ipecac. This is no Diary of a Young Girl; this is exploitative horror from whole cloth masquerading as social commentary -- a literary Marilyn Manson album.
An Amazon Kindle looms large on my Christmas list this year. I know now I'd pay a hefty premium for an "Un-Read This Book" feature.
So you are telling me it's the feel good book of the year? A real uplifting story with heart? Can't wait to distract myself from the daily grind with this one.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to make too much of a straw man, but I get the impression that many of the book's fans viscerally enjoy seeing mankind's beastly comeuppance for its collective sins.
ReplyDeleteEnvironmentalists especially celebrate the book as a stern warning.
I shudder every time I think about that book, but I'd never choose the un-read option. Does that put me in the masochistic camp? Maybe, but I don't generally live there.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything you said, save one: I don't think the book was masquerading as social commentary. I think it was exploring a man through his attempt to protect his son in a truly hopeless situation. The destroyed world wasn't a character, but was just the stage for the question: how do you live in pure survival mode, with no hope, but with your son - the love of your life as well as your primary connection to an alternate existence - watching and learning?
It evoked, powerfully, everything you said; but also love, and also powerfully. So yeah, I read it as the most depressing, oppressive, soul-crushing love story of all time. But I can't wish to un-read a book that made me feel so much, so powerfully.
I shudder every time I think about that book, but I'd never choose the un-read option. Does that put me in the masochistic camp? Maybe, but I don't generally live there.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything you said, save one: I don't think the book was masquerading as social commentary. I think it was exploring a man through his attempt to protect his son in a truly hopeless situation. The destroyed world wasn't a character, but was just the stage for the question: how do you live in pure survival mode, with no hope, but with your son watching and learning?
It evoked, powerfully, everything you said; but also love, and also powerfully. So yeah, I read it as the most depressing, oppressive, soul-crushing love story of all time.
Dammit!
ReplyDeleteBut I can't wish to un-read a book that made me feel so much, so powerfully.
ReplyDeleteGetting punched in the gonads makes me feel something pretty powerful too.
No, but seriously; just about every other page, I flipped between your interpretation and mine. I think it was just McCarthy's poor fortune the book ended on an even-numbered page.
Man, I'm so happy I put that down and ended up with, "The Life and Times of Macho-Man Randy Savage". Although, it could also be interpreted as soul-crushing/depressing considered you will never be Macho-Man Randy Savage.
ReplyDelete"The Life and Times of Macho-Man Randy Savage", Chapter 37:
ReplyDeleteMiss Elizabeth gingerly touched my bruised deltoid. "Does that hurt?" she asked. "Not as much as it would if you stopped," I replied. Our kiss was immediate and storybook-perfect. Still somehow, I could only think of my meeting the next day with the Slim Jim execs...