Posted
by Joel Mathis
November 2, 2006 at 5:28 p.m.
"The Road"
![][1]After a crazy year of job changes and getting married, I've somehow found my way back into a regular reading schedule. It's not the same one I had before: During my bachelor years, I'd grab a quick dinner out, then sit in a coffee shop and read every night; now I go home, take my turn making dinner and washing dishes -- though I love sharing those chores with my lovely wife, it does tend to eat into what was once my free reading time.I've reclaimed some of that time, though, on the weekends. A few weeks ago, I read the last 340 pages of [Joe's book][2] in a single Saturday afternoon. Last week, I read all of Cormac McCarthy's newest book, ["The Road,"][3] in another afternoon.(Thanks, incidentally, to Shelby for sparking the effort.)Granted, it was kinda large type. But still, it was 240 pages long.Short plotline: A father and son wander through postapocalyptic America. This isn't a sci-fi geek piece -- McCarthy also wrote "All the Pretty Horses." I'm not sure I can recommend it, as I don't know what your stomachs are for postapocalptic ickiness - there is a scene, after all, where a baby is being roasted on a fire; all I can say is that it makes sense within the relentless logic of the book. Desipite that, "The Road" is, paradoxically, the most beautifully written novel about ugly things that I've ever personally read. There is, though, a brief moment of uplift at the end of the book that is out of character with everything that came before it; I'm still not sure what I think about that.The musical equivalent, I suppose, is the song ["John Wayne Gacy Jr."][4] by Sufjan Stevens - which is, and probably always will be, the only song about a serial killer that has ever brought tears to my eyes. [John B at BlogMeridian, who is way smarter than I,][5] writes with wonderful clarity about that.What I'm reading now: ["The Hours" by Michael Cunningham.][6]What I'm listening to now: John Legend radio at [Pandora][7]. [1]: http://web.utk.edu/~mklein/cormac.jpg [2]: http://www.crossxbyjoemiller.com/ [3]: http://www.powells.com/biblio/18-0307265439-0 [4]: http://www.lyricsmania.com/lyrics/sufjan_stevens_lyrics_4540/illinois_lyrics_14683/john_wayne_gacy,_jr_lyrics_170385.html [5]: http://www.inblogs.net/blogmeridian/2006/09/charmingly-militant-sufjan-stevens.html [6]: http://www.amazon.com/Hours-Michael-Cunningham/dp/0312305060 [7]: http://www.pandora.com/
Comments
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morganalefay (anonymous) says…
You are a very fast reader, Joel! I definitely am not.
The only time I get to read anything "fun" that is strictly for pleasure is for about a half an hour before I go to sleep at night or at the airport. I have a long list of books I should read (when I retire maybe?) and from what you say about "The Road", I may have to add that one to the list.
Meatwad (anonymous) says…
Stop reading so fast! I haven't read Cross X yet!
Joel (Joel Mathis) says…
Sorry, Meatwad. I always feel like I should be reading *faster.* There's a lot of books out there, you know.
But do please read Cross-X!
leslie (Leslie vonHolten) says…
What did you think of his style? I read an essay years ago criticizing McCarthy's spare style but lack of economical word choice (nitpicky and tough for me to get my head around, but I think I see what the critic was saying. He was comparing McCarthy to Hemingway, of course.)
Anyway, I then read All the Pretty Horses and liked it quite a bit. It's not Hemingway, of course, but it's not Annie Proulx, either.
leslie (Leslie vonHolten) says…
But also, Joel, I have to wonder: Can you really *feel* it if you read a book in an afternoon?
I'm a slow reader, so the experience is completely foreign to me. If a book soaks in, I attribute it to my savoring it, but maybe my synapses just fire slower than yours.
Joel (Joel Mathis) says…
Leslie: It's better for me, actually, to read a book fairly quickly. Otherwise I get impatient, and then the "feel" of a book gets lost in my own frustration. Attribute it to mild ADD or something.
I'm not a Hemingway fan, but I see the stylistic similarities. I was actually reminded, stylewise, of a book I remember you not being terribly fond of: "Lying Awake" by Mark Salzman. Vary spare, but moving, that one. I know, by reputation, that McCarthy can be a bit of a showoff in his word choice -- but, here anyway, it's not that glaringly apparent.
leslie (Leslie vonHolten) says…
Um, I liked Lying Awake quite a bit. (Just defending myself here!)
cvillehawk (anonymous) says…
Ha, dishes, ha ha ha. Wait until you have a kid. You'll consider "Green Eggs and Ham" a good afternoon's reading.
Joel (Joel Mathis) says…
civllehawk: That's why I'm trying to read fast now!
leslie: Pardon any impugnment. For some reason, I remembered you not being so impressed.
ladylaw (Terry Bush) says…
I love reading for pleasure, and have always been a fast reader. The comprehension level changes depending upon the genre and my interest in the book/matter. Right now, my current book for pleasure is a KU text book on archeology (I kid you not). I read the same chapters over and over again, hoping a lot of it will eventually stick! LOL.
In highschool they were giving out "Evelynn Woods" speed reading scholarships. I wanted to take the course, so they tested me. They told me I already did what they'd teach me, so no scholarship for me. Sigh.
Now that I'm old and my eyesight is so bad (20-2000 is no laughing matter) I read less for pleasure; work reading takes up 8 hours + per day. But I have learned to love book tapes as an alternative. I can do chores at home etc. and "listen" to a story at the same time. And my propensity to multi-task makes books on tape a real good alternative. So I am making my way, steadily, through the book tape collections in the libraries of several cities!
Still, nothing beats a rainy (or snowy) day spent inside with a great book, a big roaring fire in the fireplace, and some nice stew simmering on the stove.
JohnB (anonymous) says…
Joel, thank you for the plug and the flattering comment.
I am a huge McCarthy fan, as I think you know. Finances have of late kept me from buying The Road, but I have read about 40 pages of it at Barnes & Noble, and I have to say that his voice is much more powerful and committed-sounding here than in the last novel, No Country for Old Men. It's easily on a par with what are in my opinion his best two novels, Outer Dark and Blood Meridian. Neither of them is for the physically or philosophically-squeamish, either, but each of them, as you say of The Road, renders the most horrific stuff in such beautifully-crafted language that they end up revitalizing that older meaning of "awful"--"full of awe." We cannot help but look, no matter how much we might want to turn away.
McCarthy finds difficult but vital truths in such moments and does not glibly gloss over them. He is fearless that way, and he makes us braver about getting on with the business of living for having dared read him.
I read a couple of years ago, when No Country came out, that he was working on about half a dozen manuscripts, of which that one and the new one were two of them. He's 73 now. I wish him a long life AND continued good health.
Sorry for prattling on so.
cutny (anonymous) says…
Loved "The Hours," such a nice quick read. Currently and continuously digging through David McCullough's story of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, titled...uh...The Great Bridge. But...back to you Joel. I'm curious about you switching jobs. I thought you wrote for the LJW? Do you have a different job now? Sorry to be nosy, but I'm curious. Thanks for your blog. I enjoy reading it.
Shelby (anonymous) says…
I'm a slow reader too... I bought The Road last week and am on something like page 55.
I like it, but I'm certainly not sure where he's going with it, which is definitely part of the appeal. Reminds me a bit of Faulkner but maybe a little more pretentious or proud of itself....but not necessarily in a bad way.
Shelby (anonymous) says…
So far the most affecting segment of the book has been the retrospective yet still post-nuclear war conversation with the wife, when he's pleading with her......I think that's such a hopeless and bleak four sentences or so. I may never be the same!
Joel (Joel Mathis) says…
cutny: No worries about nosiness. I'm an editor, now, and thus have lost all my street cred.
shelby: That conversation with the wife reminded me of when I was a kid, post "The Day After." A lot of people said that if nuclear war came, they'd head toward the explosion -- and the radiation -- to try to get all the nuclear winter suffering over with as soon as possible.
This is grim. Think happy thoughts...
... who wants a hot-fudge sundae?
Shelby (anonymous) says…
joel: yeah man.....my parents wouldn't let me watch that in 83 (i was all of 6 years old) but I saw it in 88 when it was rebroadcast. It freaked my already-freaked-out-about-nuclear-war ass out.
THEN....I saw the UK nuclear war movie, called "Threads".
far, far, far more disturbing than The Day After...and a lot better as a film. That is not to say I don't like TDA, I really do.
I just ordered Threads via amazon.com...I hope it doesn't give me horrible thoughts like it did back in 89 or so. Of course, it's in PAL, so I may only be able to watch it on my pc.
Shelby (anonymous) says…
And, re: people talking about "heading toward the blast" and what not, a full-scale exchange would probably leave them little choice in that regard. I remember at the end credits of The Day After, it said something to the effect of "The events depicted here are far less catastrophic than they would be if it really happened."
freaky
Shelby (anonymous) says…
Sorry for the 3-in-a-row...but, back on topic, I get the feeling that where this novel is headed is less in the direction of exploring the what-ifs of nuclear annhiliation and more in-line with the what-ifs of having everything that stimulates human experience being stripped away from existance...
sorry for the rambling nature of thispost
palavestric (anonymous) says…
Everyone! Read Sheila Heti's "Ticknor"!
manofleisure (anonymous) says…
One thing I think folks are missing here on the McCarthy's The Road. It's less about nuclear annihilation and more about what we've become - selfish cannibalizing bastards. When you look at basically everything since All the Pretty Horses, he has systematically shown the absolute destruction we have brought about on the landscape. Never underestimate McCarthy's pessimism. I love him, but the dude's a crank.
JohnB (anonymous) says…
manofleisure,
Yes, but: I admit not to having finished the novel yet, but I was at the bookstore reading in it yesterday, and what struck me very powerfully was that, in the face of all you mention above, the father's extraordinary tenderness for his son transcends the desperateness of their situation. Indeed, it is what keeps him from just giving up.
I don't argue at all against the bleakness of McCarthy's vision. In this novel, he's literalized the end that he sees us heading for, no question. But whereas in a novel like Blood Meridian it's hard to see anything other than a despairing nihilism in the human condition, in The Road--whose setting makes Blood Meridian's look like the Garden of Eden--McCarthy (so far as I've read, at any rate) seems to be making the case that, despite that end, so long as, somewhere out there, someone sees embodied in his children a better future than the present in which they find themselves, there is hope--or at least a source of strength to keep going, to keep trying. McCarthy being McCarthy, he doesn't make seeing this or believing this at all easy. But it's there, as it has never been present before in his work. It's no mistake that he's dedicated this novel to his very-young son.
As Joel says, The Road is not exactly a butterflies-and-moonbeams kind of novel. But there IS more than despair here.
manofleisure (anonymous) says…
John,
I hear what you are saying, and I think for McCarthy, ultimately, that hope is akin to a belief in God, or in The Road, the father and son's reference to themselves as "Good Guys." I think he argues there is a chance for small, individualized hope. That said, in the modern world (see APHorses, Crossing, Cities of Plain, No Country, Road) it's the landscape - literally - that we have destroyed. He is a Western writer.
I see the hope/redemption, but when I read those last 50-60 pages of No Country For Old Men, even those in the right, who have hope, have little room to maneuver in a world gone wrong. They feel incredibly powerless in the face of the Revelations type death/killin/harpooning/general hate.
The Road is such a strange read. While I kept getting increasingly bummed out, I also couldn't put it down. So much dust. As a dad, it also makes you ask that question - would you do this for your son? Which is worse - living through it or giving up? A great question and one, unfortunately, that's yields no easy answer.
Joel (Joel Mathis) says…
Possible spoiler below.
JohnB, MOL, I want to thank you for classing up the joint.
The theme that sticks with me from the book is not so much the "what would you do if the apocalypse came?" stuff. Rather it's this:
Father and son are on a journey to what, plainly, is Paradise. Only, once they arrive, there is no Paradise. There is only more journeying. And while that can seem bleak, there's still an imperative to go on -- to train the next generation in how to make the journey safely, even though the destination might prove illusory.
Yes, there's talk of God in the last page or two, but that's mostly a distraction. I suspect that McCarthy is addressing the question of how to live, as JohnB notes, in a nihilistic world. The answer, in this case, is that there is no real answer -- you just keep doing it because. It's a slender, slender reed of hope if you think that life is mostly absurd, meaningless and cruel -- again, speaking from McCarthy's POV -- but sometimes it might be all you've got.
I've got some thoughts about the whole "Good Guys" motif, but I'm not sure I can articulate them yet.
manofleisure (anonymous) says…
Joel,
You are right, I think. That said, there is talk of God throughout the book. Whether he's there, whether he's gone. The whole thing is quite Dante-esque, really. Taking the boy through the Inferno, only instead of Virgil, it's his dad.
Image wise, it's the sextant and the flare that I find the most interesting. The sextant - to navigate the old truths - the flares, a not so subtle way to light the path.
I think the reason to keep going - for the boy - is hope and because he believes what his dad tells him. The kid learns some hard truths - seeing babies on spits, bloated dead bodies all over, all kinds of nasty horrible terrible things - and those truths seep into his hollowed out bones.
In the immortal words of our OKC prophet Wayne Coyne, "It's getting heavy."
fletch (anonymous) says…
Speaking of books, are you doing Nanowrimo again?