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Good Old Neon · 11-06-2009, 04:38 PM

I think this passage from Michael Chabon’s review of the The Road pretty much says it all:

What emerges most powerfully as one reads The Road is not a prognosticatory or satirical warning about the future, or a timeless parable of a father's devotion to his son, or yet another McCarthyesque examination of the violent underpinnings of all social intercourse and the indifference of the cosmic jaw to the bloody morsel of humanity. The Road is not a record of fatherly fidelity; it is a testament to the abyss of a parent's greatest fears. The fear of leaving your child alone, of dying before your child has reached adulthood and learned to work the mechanisms and face the dangers of the world, or found a new partner to face them with. The fear of one day being obliged for your child's own good, for his peace and comfort, to do violence to him or even end his life. And, above all, the fear of knowing— as every parent fears—that you have left your children a world more damaged, more poisoned, more base and violent and cheerless and toxic, more doomed, than the one you inherited. It is in the audacity and single-mindedness with which The Road extends the metaphor of a father's guilt and heartbreak over abandoning his son to shift for himself in a ruined, friendless world that The Road finds its great power to move and horrify the reader.

Incidentally, I have the final sentence from DFW’s Infinite Jest tattooed on my right forearm.

“And when he came back to, he was flat on his back in the freezing sand, and it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out.”

A photo of the tattoo, along with its origin story can be found here:

http://www.contrariwise.org/2009/08/15/infinite-jest/

I’m planning a second tattoo on my left forearm, this one will be a quote from Cormac McCarthy’s, All the Pretty Horses:

He thought the world’s heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world’s pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower.

The “single flower” is a reference to my daughter, Lily.

11-06-2009, 04:38 PM	#73
Good Old Neon Zealot Posts: 118 Karma: 114 Join Date: Jan 2009 Device: Amazon Kindle	I think this passage from Michael Chabon’s review of the The Road pretty much says it all: What emerges most powerfully as one reads The Road is not a prognosticatory or satirical warning about the future, or a timeless parable of a father's devotion to his son, or yet another McCarthyesque examination of the violent underpinnings of all social intercourse and the indifference of the cosmic jaw to the bloody morsel of humanity. The Road is not a record of fatherly fidelity; it is a testament to the abyss of a parent's greatest fears. The fear of leaving your child alone, of dying before your child has reached adulthood and learned to work the mechanisms and face the dangers of the world, or found a new partner to face them with. The fear of one day being obliged for your child's own good, for his peace and comfort, to do violence to him or even end his life. And, above all, the fear of knowing— as every parent fears—that you have left your children a world more damaged, more poisoned, more base and violent and cheerless and toxic, more doomed, than the one you inherited. It is in the audacity and single-mindedness with which The Road extends the metaphor of a father's guilt and heartbreak over abandoning his son to shift for himself in a ruined, friendless world that The Road finds its great power to move and horrify the reader. Incidentally, I have the final sentence from DFW’s Infinite Jest tattooed on my right forearm. “And when he came back to, he was flat on his back in the freezing sand, and it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out.” A photo of the tattoo, along with its origin story can be found here: http://www.contrariwise.org/2009/08/15/infinite-jest/ I’m planning a second tattoo on my left forearm, this one will be a quote from Cormac McCarthy’s, All the Pretty Horses: He thought the world’s heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world’s pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower. The “single flower” is a reference to my daughter, Lily. Last edited by Good Old Neon; 11-06-2009 at 04:51 PM.