Book Review: The Road (Cormac McCarthy)
The Road
I read this just a few years after high school, after the birth of my second child, and what now feels like forever ago (but was really just 15 years ago). I remember absolutely loving it. A bleak, dystopic novel of just… going forward. Always moving forward. Always going. One foot in front of the other.
And I do find myself like Cormac McCarthy. I loved No Country for Old Men, and All the Pretty Horses. But, on re-reading this just before going to Atlantic City for the AC Beer and Music Fest, I found myself…. having conflicting thoughts on it. At first, it felt like I was re-reading a favorite old book, but further I went through it (and its a super quick read), I found myself… not caring. Not loving it anymore. Some of it is the style, I know a lot of people are put off by the writing style of the book, the bleak isolated speech, the poor punctuation, grammar, the screenplay like dialogue but without directions, etc. And on my first read, it worked, I liked it, and at the start of re-reading it – I too liked it, but then it grew tiresome on me. And I think, all the more because it all just feels ‘pointless’.
When I looked up my GoodReads initial rating of it, I gave it ***** (5 out of 5). Crazy. But that was definitely in my phase of “Everything is either 5 stars or 1 star” mindset of looking at things. Not so much due to naïvety of thinking everything was either a classic or not, but just for simplicity sake when using the app. I tended to be the same with Untappd and other similar rating apps. Also in the fifteen years since, I think I got a bit more nuanced in my own thoughts, appreciation, and love for reading. I’ve been a voracious reader ever since middle school, and I typically for the last half dozen years have been reading about a hundred books per year. So I’ve certainly grown some since my initial reading of this.
I think some of my biggest take-aways is also a thing of growth in myself as a person, because the entirety of the book feels like a “why bother” now. With how absolutely bleak it is, it feels just pointless. Existentially pointless. For all intents and purposes humanity is done for. And thats ultimately the point of the novel, to drive home just how bleak it is, but that the Man keeps pushing onward, even when his wife couldn’t, even when his Son doesn’t think he can, you ‘have to’. But I even question the point of thinking ‘you have to’ in a world like this. What do you live for? Its not really tackled in the book outside of the “because you have to’ omnipresence behind each page. Its not even directly stated. Characters don’t state things like that in the book. The Man just has the vague sense of ‘you must always keep moving no matter how bleak and horrible and terrible it is’, but its never explicitly said – not that it HAS to be explicitly said, I can draw inferences, but, a discussion, some character, some growth, some introspection, something would be interesting or nice or at least add substance to this. I can draw the inference of ‘you must always keep moving’ by page 10, so the remaining 276 pages are like a footnote to the initial thought.
I feel like my review will come off as extremely harsh, and probably far harsher than I even intend it to be. There is still a part of me that enjoys this work – but I think its for the overarch of it, not for the actual writing, prose, or the book itself. Its my interest and intrigue in the genre, its the way the story gets my mind to drift and think of how I would write a similar dystopic novel; so my interest and enjoyment of this (on the re-read) is more based on how I vaguely feel as a ‘whole’ to the entire process, to what I feel deep down, and not so much to the writing itself. I want to still really enjoy it, I want to dive deep into the book, but I’m afraid its not deep, its a shallow dive into a pond that looks deep from up high. Maybe thats where my frustration grows, and why I give a scathing review here. I genuinely think I’m being a bit too harsh on Cormac McCarthy here, and for his fans and lovers, I apologize for that. Maybe its just in re-reading this and what I remembered and feeling let down as an older man. Maybe its reading too many other book reviews and my critique level is so much higher than it was before. Maybe I’ve grown away from him. I still have No Country for Old Men on my “to re-read” list for the year. So who knows when we get to that, and if my opinions will change.
Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy (born Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr.; July 20, 1933 – June 13, 2023) was an American writer who authored twelve novels, two plays, five screenplays, and three short stories, spanning the Western and postapocalyptic genres. His works often include graphic depictions of violence, and his writing style is characterised by a sparse use of punctuation and attribution. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American novelists.[1][2][3]
McCarthy was born in Providence, Rhode Island, although he was raised primarily in Tennessee. In 1951, he enrolled in the University of Tennessee, but dropped out to join the U.S. Air Force. His debut novel, The Orchard Keeper, was published in 1965. Awarded literary grants, McCarthy was able to travel to southern Europe, where he wrote his second novel, Outer Dark (1968). Suttree (1979), like his other early novels, received generally positive reviews, but was not a commercial success. A MacArthur Fellowship enabled him to travel to the American Southwest, where he researched and wrote his fifth novel, Blood Meridian (1985). Although it initially garnered a lukewarm critical and commercial reception, it has since been regarded as his magnum opus, with some labeling it the Great American Novel.
McCarthy first experienced widespread success with All the Pretty Horses (1992), for which he received both the National Book Award[4] and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was followed by The Crossing (1994) and Cities of the Plain (1998), completing The Border Trilogy. His 2005 novel No Country for Old Men received mixed reviews. His 2006 novel The Road won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction.
Many of McCarthy’s works have been adapted into film. The 2007 film adaptation of No Country for Old Men was a critical and commercial success, winning four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The films All the Pretty Horses, The Road, and Child of God were also adapted from his works of the same names, and Outer Dark was turned into a 15-minute short. McCarthy had a play adapted into a 2011 film, The Sunset Limited.
McCarthy worked with the Santa Fe Institute, a multidisciplinary research center, where he published the essay “The Kekulé Problem” (2017), which explores the human unconscious and the origin of language. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2012.[5] His final novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris, were published on October 25, 2022, and December 6, 2022, respectively.[6]
Book Review: The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Back of cover blurb, as per GoodReads:
A searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece.
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.
The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,” are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.