Cormac McCarthy - Road, The - 2

[Algot Runeman]

Road, The



Some stories need to be told more than once. Survival in the aftermath of worldwide devastation is the theme of this book, and it reminded me a bit of books written during the 50s and 60s. Survival after such devastation would be difficult, of course. Survival, as described in this novel, seems improbable. The retelling this time by McCarthy didn't satisfy me.

The "road" along which a man and boy (apparently father and son) is mainly empty, sparsely occupied only by people. There is snow, rain, falling ash, widespread fire. There are no birds, wild animals, plants, just people. Some are good. Some are bad (evidence: they eat other people to survive).

The man and boy are good. The father assures his son over and over that they "carry the fire." Otherwise, they carry only what they can in a grocery cart and knapsack. Details are sparse, but the catastrophe is a few years past. The man and boy seem to be going south to escape the cold of an implacable winter. The boy's mother is gone, and the boy fears his father will also leave him. They have just a couple of bullets in a hand gun and both know what to do if things get too much to bear. They eat, mostly canned goods, which they scrounge from unburned houses, barns and other buildings. Of course they must avoid being caught by the bad people.

I suppose the story is more an allegory than a tale told. This time, I don't think it worked. I wanted more than the spare detail offered. I wanted a world that seemed more real than surreal. I wanted to enjoy the experience of reading the next paragraph and next page. Unfortunately, though this book may be "important", I didn't like it enough to keep going, word by word. I admit to dipping in and out through the second half of the book, finding more of the same dark prose, and didn't even appreciate the final pages of "conclusion" that end the story.

I will accept the criticism that what I want isn't really important. This book was an Oprah Book Club selection and "notable" on the NYTimes lists. Maybe there has been a gap since the majority of other post-apocalyptic novels were written, and The Road fills a need for a new telling. I think I will go back to read some of the others, though. My memory of them is dim, but I do remember enjoying the reading of them as much as fifty years ago. Maybe I felt hope in them, and maybe I wasn't really supposed to feel hope from this novel. That could be my problem to solve. I will do so, in this case, by going on to another book.

(((Edit Note: I have clearly put my foot in it this time. The Road won the 2007 Pulitzer prize for fiction. For the record, this is the second Pulitzer winner book I have disliked enough to not finish. The other was Ironweed by William Kennedy-1984. Other winners have been worth reading, though. Lonesome Dove is the only book I ever read that had me hooked with the first sentence!)))

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