Friday 18 April 2008

The Road

By Cormac McCarthy



I watched that stupid horror movie The Ring late at night, in the dark, by myself. I was sitting there in my flanny PJ's going, “Oh this is stupid... that’s not scary!... Oh there’s more plot-holes here than in a cheese-grater” and when it finished I thought, “Well, that was dumb as.”

Then I got into bed. My heart was racing. I was petrified. I turned on all the lights and put on The Young Ones.

I had a similar reaction to The Road. It hit me a day later.

I read it in one sitting. I’d read 10 pages of it the week before, lost it, found it under my car seat and so started again after tea one night and with the help of coffee, cigarettes, bachelordom and the occasional stretch, I was done my midnight.

I slept like a log, worked the next day, then after tea the following night I saw it laying about and suddenly found myself reacting to everything I’d read the night before. I became glum! I was moved by the characters’ plight! I got the shakes for a few minutes (though I did have a cold and those Codrals, man, they rock).

It’s a harrowing book, and if you give yourself time and space to think it all out, it’s fucking nerve-wracking.

It’s a micro-cosmic version of Saramago’s Blindness or Camus’ The Plague, and it’s a novel version of Lord Byron’s terrific poem Darkness which I will link to here.

The Road is set in a post-apocalyptic Earth and it’s about a man and his son, never named, who wander about trying to find food. That’s it. But that’s all McCarthy needs. He doesn’t go into boring explanations as to why the Earth is covered in ash which blocks out the sun and darkens the waterways, or why there are no animals or vegetation left. It just is that way, and the humans that are left wandering about are either cannibals or not cannibals. That’s the human division that remains.

There is the odd ‘flashback’ but he spares us the intricacies and instead serves us all the horror.

“... all stores of food had given out and murder was everywhere upon the land... blackened looters who tunnelled among the ruins and crawled from the rubble white of tooth and eye carrying charred and anonymous tins of food in nylon nets like shoppers in the commissaries of hell.”

The planet is black and the dead are everywhere. It’s so bleak, like an Einsturzende Neubauten album. Everywhere they go is charred, desolate and freezing cold and it never lets up.

They come into a city: “The long concrete sweeps of the interstate exchanges like the ruins of a vast funhouse against the distant murk... The mummied dead everywhere. The fresh cloven along the bones, the ligaments dried to tug and taut as wires. Shriveled and drawn like latterday bogfolk, their faces of boiled sheeting, the yellowed palings of their teeth.”

The man tells the boy that they are ‘carrying the fire’ – of humanity, is the inference. They are not cannibals.

The man’s only motivation is the well-being of his son. “... he tousled his hair before the fire to dry it. All of this like some ancient anointing. So be it. Evoke the forms. Where you’ve nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.”

History, names, art, science... none of it matters any more.

Speaking of Saramago, one of his lines also came to me while reading The Road: “...for in places of damnation we’re almost certain to find men and women with the animals that keep them company until the moment comes to slaughter them in order to live.” McCarthy takes this one step further, and one planet further.

What’s great about the book is that at every turn we find ourselves emotionally investing in the man and his son. We want them to find food. We want them to get away when they’re chased. We want them to be safe at night and to hide their camp-fires so none of those dirty cannibals can find them. Meanwhile, we can smell/see the landscape that McCarthy describes so we’re right in the thick of the action (the landscape itself is as strong a 'character' as the man and the boy are).

The world McCarthy has given us is exactly as Byron says in his poem: "All earth was but one thought--and that was death."

And to quote Saramago again, “...but, when all is said and done, whoever goes, goes, whoever remains, remains.”

It’s such a simple notion, but from it, writers, good writers, can launch tremendous works of art.

My review of No Country For Old Men was just, “Can’t wait for the movie”, and I have the same review to make of The Road. But maybe I cheapened No Country For Old Men. Two books in, maybe I’m just starting to work out this McCarthy fellow. I bought Blood Meridian so I’ll see how that goes.

There’s been a lot written of McCarthy in recent years, and my contribution is just to say that he’s a ‘very entertaining writer’. I'm sure Lord Byron would dig him. I’ll leave it to others more inquisitive and perceptive than I to examine his motivations and his subtexts and his contributions and relevance to literature. I’ll just enjoy his books, I reckon, wallow in his misery and recommend The Road to anyone and everyone.

I give it an A-.

15 comments:

Melba said...

i've got this in my bookshelf, after a friend lent me it, amongst others (no country for old men, and a couple more).

i will start this tonight.

The Book Grocer said...

Is there any danger of an update? Are you ready to branch out into the detritus of life without the books as your crutch?

I'm a blog-healer in my other life. YOU CAN DO THIS!!!!

Melba said...

i have started and i like it so far. there was one sentence that made me worried, something along the lines of "would he be able to do it? if it came to it?" as the conversations go between him and his boy, who is scared and they are so alone so far.

Perseus said...

Melba: Yeah, the reason he didn't get an A or A+ was because of the odd baby line. He's no Orwell. He's not even a Hemingway. He's just much much much much better than, say, Shirley Hazzard. Or is it Buzzard? The one that wrote The Great Fire and won a Miles Franklin. It was THE WORST BOOK EVER!

Grocer: I'm coming! I only posted The Road on the weekend, and I have a day job which is quote often a night job as well. For instance, I have spent the last 48 hours writing a Government Tender, and I dont if you've ever seen one of 'em but they are bigger than War & Peace. EXODUS, by (allegedly) Moses is next up... might be there tomorrow.

Melba said...

it was hazzard. i've got the fire book but haven't read it. and maybe that's the way it shall stay.

squib said...

They sure don't make poems like they used to

I might give The Road a go when my new glasses get here and after I've finished The Mortdecai Trilogy

Anonymous said...

It made me vey sad, and it also made me want to read Blood Meridian again. A sure fire way to get emotional investment is to have kids at risk. . .or eaten. (shudders)

Melba said...

well i've finished it. i liked it and yes, so dark. now am back on no country... am enjoying it more. i just have to forgive the movie for being so exactly like the book. not that i didn't enjoy the movie.

am working up to exodus. haven't been dedicating my life of late to reading all of this here, too busy. talk about big words...

Perseus said...

Melba - I wish I read No Country after The Road as well. I kinda rushed it I think. Though, everyone says Blood Meridian is his best so I'll be giving that a shot in the next few months.

Don't worry about Exodus. Genesis is worth a read, but Exodus to Genesis is like Rocky II to Rocky.

Perseus said...

PG: Is Blood Meridian better?

Melba said...

hey when i said i'd be reading exodus, what i meant to say was "i'll be reading your take on exodus" along with the other reviews you have here.

ooh, blood meridian. will hunt out right away.

squib said...

hmmmm well I got to this quicker than I thought due to The Mortdecai Trilogy being a complete pig in the bag (which you can read ALL about on my blog). I read half of The Road last night with my $20 stand-in glasses from the Chemist. This gave me a headache but I didn't care because I was gripped by it

But it must have got the adrenalin going because it took me two hours to get to sleep

Anonymous said...

I think BM is a purer strand of McCarthy nihlism than The Road. Also, when I read BM, I didn't have kids.

Massacres of tribes of Indians when I read it 15 year ago? graphic and confronting. Protecting a 10yo boy from cannibals 6months ago? I was far more emotionally engaged because I've one child not far off that age.

Melba said...

ok, have blood meridian now, but also bought another ian mc ewan. am reading that first but not sure how i feel about it thus far.

a child in time.

er, is this thread closed?

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.