The Road

This is surprisingly non-violent for a Cormac McCarthy apocalyptic opus. The violence is there, of course. It is the man’s literary mainstay, after all. But it’s suggested, implied, seen from a distance except on one or two occasions that more or less frame the story. The tale itself is harrowing, yet touching, even, to a degree, inspiring.

I’d told Scott of The Fat Guy, who is a McCarthy fan, that I was going to skip this one. Then, between books, I let myself be sucked in by the semi-lurid movie cover at the local H.E.B. Now I’m glad I read it. It is a good book, but it raises several objections worth considering.

It seems to be about the theory of nuclear winter and its consequences. Taken to the nth degree, which is not entirely convincing. Its corollary, that many survivors of a nuclear holocaust would prey on each other, turning cannibalistic, in fact, is a common Hollywood and literary motif. Think Stephen King. Our mainstream film and fiction makers are a cynical lot who apparently have little sense of religion or community themselves and so tend to see the worst in others. McCarthy, being above all a good salesman, knows how to milk this attitude. The book won the Pullet-Surprise.

And yet the book is life-affirming, throughout and at the end. I can think of ways I would prefer to see life affirmed than by such silly (if commonplace) prods as, on page 28, "The frailty of everything [was] revealed at last." The frailty of little Los Angeles and New York minds, rather. Not the people who actually produce the world that only seems, to these cultural leeches,to be frail.

The story is remarkable for its complete lack of racialism. A white reader can assume the characters are white, a black reader that they are black, an Asian reader, etc. There is nothing to contradict either view. The movie, I have read, is otherwise. Has to be, obviously. Which would alter the tale. All in all, a good if flawed (for the aforementioned reasons) story. But I wouldn’t recommend it.