Discussion: "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Good Old Neon

[SIZE="3"][FONT="Times New Roman"]I think this passage from Michael Chabon’s review of the The Road pretty much says it all:

.... it is a testament to the abyss of a parent's greatest fears. ..[/COLOR]
...

well certainly that's one interpretation and part of the story, but I certainly would agree that that "says it all"

I also think it's pretty weird to tattoo someone else's words like that on your body. But hey, to each his own.

[GizmoPlanet]

Originally Posted by montsnmags

Could it be that this is not only a good point, but the point behind any ambiguity? That he did not want it to become a specifically nuclear-disarmament tract? Perhaps wanted to, if at all, look beyond what type of weapon was used, and more to that they were used at all (and that it continued)?

Cheers,
Marc ([quoting Family Guy] "You can't hug your children with nuclear arms!")

Exactly. The indirect references to an apparent nuclear attack are rather peripheral to the main story, anyway and intended to establish setting rather than operate as a plot device. In that sense, the reader is reassured that The Road is not just another work of post-apocalyptic survival fiction, with scary mutants roaming the land and all that other lurid hoo-ha.

The way I see it, The Road is not really about the mechanics of surviving catastrophic situations. What it does express, and express well, is the lengths parents sometimes will take to help their children. It's also an exploration of the meaning of the father-son relationship and how deep it can be. All that the two main characters literally had left in the world was each other, and each was each other's world. It's a beautiful, if ultimately heartbreaking thread in the story.

Some argue that McCarthy was being pretentious by taking a page out of e.e. cummings' playbook and refusing to use proper punctuation. I disagree with that assessment.

What I think he was trying to do was develop a stripped-down kind of diction, something that would help buttress the unremittingly stark and grey imagery he uses throughout the book. After all, survivors of an apocalyptic event are not going to be worried about niceties like proper punctuation, if they even have time to write to begin with!

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by GizmoPlanet

...

Some argue that McCarthy was being pretentious by taking a page out of e.e. cummings' playbook and refusing to use proper punctuation. I disagree with that assessment.

What I think he was trying to do was develop a stripped-down kind of diction, ....

You could say that, but it would be wrong. While I agree the style enhances the story, this style was not something he made up just for this novel, it is in fact his style style of writing that he's used most of his career, certainly in his novels I've read and the ones I have yet to get to. Given this comment I wonder if you've read any of his other works.

[Ea]

Originally Posted by Good Old Neon

The writer, David Foster Wallace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Foster_Wallace

Thanks! I'm afraid I hadn't heard of him before. Now I can see where you got your avatar image form.

[kennyc]

Just ran across this interview with McCarthy by the Wall Street Journal:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...leTabs=article

about the disaster he says:

WSJ: When you discussed making "The Road" into a movie with John, did he press you on what had caused the disaster in the story?

CM: A lot of people ask me. I don't have an opinion. At the Santa Fe Institute I'm with scientists of all disciplines, and some of them in geology said it looked like a meteor to them. But it could be anything—volcanic activity or it could be nuclear war. It is not really important. The whole thing now is, what do you do? The last time the caldera in Yellowstone blew, the entire North American continent was under about a foot of ash. People who've gone diving in Yellowstone Lake say that there is a bulge in the floor that is now about 100 feet high and the whole thing is just sort of pulsing. From different people you get different answers, but it could go in another three to four thousand years or it could go on Thursday. No one knows.

[kennyc]

I think I'm obsessed with this book.

It was mentioned in the "What are we reading" thread and I had to go grab and re-read the ending and then went back and read the first few pages.....poetry....it's poetry and this is National Poetry Month.

That opening dream image (just past the start) of the pond and creature and the closing with the pond and trout and references to God and father ......



I truly believe this book is/will be a classic.

[Laz116]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I think I'm obsessed with this book.

It was mentioned in the "What are we reading" thread and I had to go grab and re-read the ending and then went back and read the first few pages.....poetry....it's poetry and this is National Poetry Month.

That opening dream image (just past the start) of the pond and creature and the closing with the pond and trout and references to God and father ......



I truly believe this book is/will be a classic.

I think so too.

And as I've said earlier (in this thread I believe) the poetry is the life juxtaposing the dreariness of the content.

It's a book about love and the poetic word. Both can invoke beauty in death. And that is what this book does.

In a world as dead and desolate as can be there is still love. There is still man's imagination. Breathing life into those gray mornings and hopeless forecasts.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Laz116

I think so too.

And as I've said earlier (in this thread I believe) the poetry is the life juxtaposing the dreariness of the content.

It's a book about love and the poetic word. Both can invoke beauty in death. And that is what this book does.

In a world as dead and desolate as can be there is still love. There is still man's imagination. Breathing life into those gray mornings and hopeless forecasts.

Well said. That is my feel as well. Hope! There is always hope. And goodness even in worst of situations.

[Penforhire]

I liked how he delved into what makes a man good or evil in terms of behavior. Our world today (most modern countries) is filled with fast food and other conveniences that make sharing or not sharing a very mild moral choice. He stripped the world down to the point where sharing a candy bar is a life-or-death decision.

An angelic approach, what the boy tends toward, would lead to a very short life. A purely pragmatic approach, what the man tends toward, leads to physical survival but at the cost of what makes us human. Neither approach is exactly right and they are presented as stark foils. The world they live in gives no hope that this is a passing phase, like just a rough territory to get through, at least until the end. I remain uncertain what morality Cormac is espousing. He gives us more to ponder and debate than any actual answer.

Do Americans really tend toward anarchy and cannibalism when the chips are well and truly down? I would like to think otherwise but some events do make me wonder (e.g. Hurricane Katrina). Some neighborhoods would hang together better than others. I dunno. Food for thought.

I will agree with some here that Cormac's butchering of punctuation was completely unnecessary. His sparse prose would have been just as poetic to me. As it was, it distracted me far too often. Making up words is fine, a sort of metaphorical spelling. In the end, he is a take-it-or-leave-it author and I do enjoy him.

[DArenson]

What caused the devastation is not mentioned on purpose. The point is that it does not matter. The novel is not about what caused the disaster, but about survival. If McCarthy had described the cause of the apocalypse, the novel would become a statement about the cause, which is not what the author wanted. Say, if the devastation were caused by a nuclear war, the novel would make a statement about nuclear weapons. If it were caused by environmental reasons, it would become an environmental book. McCarthy did not want to make a political statement; he wanted to tell a story about survival and hope against all odds.

I thought the novel was beautifully written. I loved it.

[catherine123]

Originally Posted by GizmoPlanet

McCarthy was probably taking a bit of poetic licence with the aftereffects of nuclear war so he could give the reader a sense of just how unremittingly bleak everything was. Even in the heaviest areas of fallout, the radiation levels would be pretty low two weeks after the attack. Low enough not to pose any serious danger, anyway. You'd still want to stay well away from the actual ground zero areas, of course, as they would be quite radioactive for a very long time to come.
No question that some animals would survive, simply because they would have been in areas that got little or no fallout. However, in large parts of the US eastern seaboard, where the story appears to be set, there'd be a lot of dead animals -and people too. Fish would survive anywhere because fallout only contaminates the top layer of a body of water and any radioactivity would be neutralized by the water itself at sub-surface levels.
However, nuclear winter (as an outcome of a global nuclear war) is a phenomenon that was debunked a long time ago. Sure, you would have some obscuration of the lower atmosphere for a couple of weeks in zones where lots of ground bursts took place. In such areas the temperature would drop a bit, but not permanently.
Having said all that, I also realize that The Road was not meant to be a realistic appraisal of the effects of general nuclear war.

I agree that it's not suppose to be about the effect of a nuclear war, but only because the novel isn't about the event that caused the disaster. The novel is about a father and son trying to survive in a world that gives them no hope for survival. The hope that they carry is unrelated to the world; it's the hope for the survival of humanity. As for the nuclear war being the cause for the emptiness of the world, I completely disagree. Although the setting is in North America, it is easily assumed that the entire world has been affected from the event. McCarthy deliberately doesn't explain the event so that even more of the novel can be focussed on the father and the boy. We arn't suppose to know what happened and we arn't suppose to dwell on what caused it. Also, if other continents were not affected, then that would bring a sense of hope to the reader. We would want someone to come and rescue them from what North America became, but the point is, McCarthy chose for the novel not to end that way. The reason is because the only hope that is left in this post-apocalyptic is the hope that the father and son carry within them. They are "carrying the fire".

[doreenjoy]

Originally Posted by kennyc

While I agree the style enhances the story, this style was not something he made up just for this novel, it is in fact his style style of writing that he's used most of his career, certainly in his novels I've read and the ones I have yet to get to.

Yeah, he's been doing this for decades.

Personally I find the lack of quotation marks a little gimmicky, and it gets in the way of my enjoyment of his works.

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by doreenjoy

Yeah, he's been doing this for decades.

Personally I find the lack of quotation marks a little gimmicky, and it gets in the way of my enjoyment of his works.

Yeah, someone should point out to him that it is basic written grammar.

--
Bill

[tm3]

i really enjoyed this book, and i liked "no country for old men" even better.

are all of his novels this good?

[kennyc]

I'm part-way into "The Border Trilogy" and while great, I think the two you read are the tops of his work.

Others of course may feel differently and I've far from read everything of his.