DC gal

29 de agosto de 2010

perhaps the greatest work of art I've ever encountered

Art is different from entertainment because art changes you, and this book affected me more deeply than any piece of art I've ever encountered. Not that I think it's perfect -- I see many flaws. But they don't matter. It accomplished its mission.Cormac McCarthy has written the definitive literary depiction of the power of love. Although they were cold, dirty, starving, frightened, I was surprised to find myself at one point envying them, for they were nurtured from within by the power of love. Especially the father, as it's the nature of the parent-child relationship that the parent gives and the child receives. CM is saying, that when all hope is gone, love remains.And he's done it so convincingly that during the days I was reading this book, when I had occasion to throw away some food, I found myself thinking "I wish I could give it to them." In some part of my mind, I felt convinced that these people really existed. That was how completely I entered into their world.Caution: spoilers ahead!!I have never cried so hard at any death in a movie or book. It started with the line: "when he lay down he knew that he could go no further and that this was the place where he would die. The boy sat watching him, his eyes welling. Oh Papa, he said."I'm crying for the loss to the man, who showed so much courage, self-denial, sheer grit, and boundless love. We want to see that kind of all-out effort succeed and be rewarded, but life isn't like that. We know the horror the man must feel in leaving his son alone in that world, with nothing but a half a tin of peaches to sustain him. In his final gesture of love, the man declines the peaches and tells his son to save them for him -- for tomorrow, when he knows he'll be gone.I'm crying for the loss to the skinny, starving boy, who has lost his smart, determined, vigilant and tender father -- the only thing standing between him and a horrific future as a catamite or cannibal's dinner.And I'm crying for the loss to myself of the most inspiring character in the fiction world: a man with the strength to keep going, keep walking, keep searching, when almost all others have given up (like his wife) or given in to their basest instincts (the roadagents)."The Road" left me knowing that love is all that matters, and determined to live my life out of that knowledge. I want to give up living from my mind and start living from my heart. Perhaps I will adopt a child. The story is more powerful than a thousand sermons.Cormac McCarthy strips away all the superfluous stuff that has nothing to do with love. We don't know whether the man preferred to go out for sushi or steak, jazz music or country. Was he a lawyer, salesman or mechanic? None of that is essential to who he is. We don't need him to crack jokes or say profound things. All we know of him is what he does, and that's plenty. We see him putting his son's welfare first, over and over again. When they are hiding from the cannibals, he considers running to draw them away from the boy. That he himself will end up in that basement doesn't even figure in his decision not to do it -- only that he doesn't think it will work. His own pain weighs nothing when compared to his motivation to save the boy.As for those who fault the man for not helping strangers -- I don't agree. Any morsel of food given to strangers is taken from the mouth of his son, or lessens his own chance to stay alive long enough to get his son south. He had to choose and he chose his son.So the story had a deep emotional impact on me. But in addition, it is a story of ideas. How low can man go? What darkness beats in the heart of men, only thinly veiled by our (currently) abundant society? At what point is life no longer worth living? At what point should the strong drive for self-preservation be ignored, if it means committing atrocities on others? And lastly, to what extent am I taking life's current luxuries and comforts for granted?I'm sure many a reader of "The Road" has collapsed into bed after a night of reading and felt immense gratitude for their cozy bedroom, their clean sheets, their fridge and a tasty midnight snack.Things that troubled me about the story: I wanted them to stay longer at the bunker. At least to make full use of those provisions and take the time to fatten up and rest before heading on. They could've hauled a load of groceries off a mile or two and pigged out for a few weeks before coming back for more. The more weight they put on, the less crucial it would be to find fresh provisions when they finally did leave.I wanted to see him make a major effort to find a way to disguise the trap-door to the bunker. It had gone undiscovered for almost ten years, if it was well hidden perhaps it could go undiscovered for at least a few more months.Setting off the flare gun was irresponsible. They wasted a flare and announced their position, perhaps drawing the thief.But those are minor quibbles. After finishing "The Road," I felt profoundly blessed, and cleansed from within from the tears shed. I knew I was in the presence of greatness. Cormac McCarthy has given mankind an immense gift, for which I paid only $7.99. Thank for Cormac McCarthy.Ver más

65 personas la encontraron útil

Jerry E Gruber

6 de septiembre de 2026

The Road

Good book it's the first pulitzer winning book I've read in a while. Writing style not my favorite as it was very vague in that the characters had no names and exact illnesses not really named. Glad I read it but won't read more from this author

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Christopher Prentiss

4 de diciembre de 2007

An American Literary Masterpiece

This is the first Cormac McCarthy book I have read. I had heard from so many people that I would love him as a writer and this book was a good indication that they were correct.The book, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature last year, is a bleak narrative of a father and son's journey through the post-apocalyptic South. A non-specific, but apparently human-caused catastrophe has destroyed most of the earth and killed almost all human life. People survive on leftover non-perishable food (the cataclysm happened a number of years earlier so these items are almost non-existent) and cannibalism. It is a desolate and dangerous world for a father and young son to walk through and walking seems to be the one universal activity in this world. And it's a dangerous activity because both "the good guys" and "the bad guys" are on the move, scavenging for scraps of food and instruments of survival. Houses have been vacated and left to rot, everyone is the road, on the move. The few houses which are still inhabited are places of unimaginable horror, which McCarthy uses to illustrate the animalistic evil which thrives in this dismal environment. This flourishing of evil is one of the main themes McCarthy wrestles with throughout the book: what will men do once there is nothing left to live for and little to live on? (In this way, the book is similar to another apocalyptic book I have reviewed here, Children of Men and revisits themes of William Golding's The Lord of the Flies.)There is not much in the way of plot or denouement. There are few clues as to what event has destroyed life and hope. There are no chapter divisions, mirroring it would seem, the endless march of the unnamed characters. And there are only a handful of geographic markers (though the one I liked was the barn that read, "See Rock City"). Yet, even devoid of these traditional literary markers, the narrative is utterly gripping. I had a difficult time stopping reading and was I not in the middle of visiting family with my four children I probably would have simply sat and read to the end without pausing. The book is simply a narrative of events, observations, and pain. But the writing is so beautifully descriptive, both of the landscape and the human condition, that the spare plot line is absolutely spell-binding.At the end of "the road", you will have gotten to know the two main characters with a familiarity that lesser writers usually need 600 pages to convey (this book is less than 300.) You will feel like their aspirations and their despair are somehow yours to bear as well. And, even though you don't know their names, you will likely care very deeply about them, as I did. The fact that McCarthy invites the reader to care so deeply about the main characters, and because the father and son are just like many fathers and sons we all know, he is able to make this grotesque world seem less outlandish and implausible. As I read, I began to visualize myself in the circumstances of the book and ask, "what would I do?" or "how would I fare?" And, though his characters primary concern is their immediate survival, they ask those questions that arise in any human situation, prosperous or desperate: "Am I a good person?", "Are we some of the good guys?" (Those that are left.) At one point in the book, the father suggests to one of the travelers that they meet that his young son is a "god", and in this apparently god-forsaken world, it is a poignant image. Though the boy is a dependent on the father and not the other way around, he is also the father's only source of joy and comfort, and is his moral compass, reminding him that as one of the "good guys", they should help others, even if it puts them in greater danger.This book is beautiful and gut-wrenching, it's a serious work of literature and a page-turner. I highly recommend it and I look forward to reading more of McCarthy's work. (I also recommend keeping a dictionary handy while you're reading it.)

sjb

24 de agosto de 2015

Bleak -- Depressing -- Excellent

Let’s walk along "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, which my oldest daughter read at her lit teacher’s suggestion. It looked intriguing, there on the “return” pile by the back door, yet when I picked it up she said, “It’s just so depressing!”That it is. “The Road” tells about “the man” and his son, “the boy.” No names, but that’s the least of their problems. They live in America after some huge disaster. We’re not talking your standard terrorist attack or anything. No, in this world the daylight is gray. Corpses litter the landscape. The few trees you might see are burning. There are no animals, except for the stray mutant creature. By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.We’re never told exactly what happened, but we do know that the man did live most of his life when things were “normal.” The boy was born, and the mother apparently couldn’t handle things to come and did away with herself. So it’s just the man and the boy, walking along the road in an attempt to get to the coast. Why, it isn’t exactly clear — once they reach the coast, things don’t seem much rosier. And along the way, they are in fear of “bad guys” who sometimes appear in truly terrifying ways, but mostly they don’t run into anyone at all. When they do, the man wants to get away from them as quickly as possible. The boy, who truly seems too good for the world he’s landed in, always does want to help the others.The writing in this book is usually spare, but there are a whole slew of “big words” scattered throughout too (like catamite, which I looked up and then wished I hadn’t). Punctuation is scattered — no quotation marks, and most contractions dont have apostrophes. However, almost immediately this seemed okay: in a world where pretty much everything has fallen apart, who cares if you’re using the proper writing conventions?So, although the setting is pretty much pure desolation, I thought this was an excellent book and I’m glad I read it. The writing is really good; good in a way that makes me want to give up writing anything: He thought that in the history of the world it might even be that there was more punishment than crime but he took small comfort from it.Or this exchange between the man and the boy:Do you wish you would die?No. But I might wish I had died. When you’re alive you’ve always got that ahead of you.Or you might wish you’d never been born.Well. Beggars cant be choosers.You think that would be asking too much.What’s done is done. Anyway, it’s foolish to ask for luxuries in times like these.I guess so.Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave.And I loved this description: Still there was something perverse in his searching. Like exhausting the least likely places first when looking for something lost. See, McCarthy described a feeling so well. I can totally relate to that. Love when an author does that.The Road: bleak. Depressing. Excellent.

Rafael

5 de septiembre de 2026

Great writing.

Five stars for craft. It’s remarkable writing in terms of style and technique.But it’s boring. And I thought the ending was a bit too convenient.

Sara Silvestri

27 de agosto de 2026

Better than expected

Beyond perfect. Everything came as expected and much earlier than the delivery estimate. Mr. Brown was kind enough to wrap my book in tissue paper and tie it with a ribbon. They even included a bookmark and a lovely note. Thank you for a truly lovely experience.Ver más