Last year it was Wicked.
Someone says, "Oh, you have to read The Bridges of Madison County, it's the best book!" (That line, by the way, was a Janeane Garofalo bit from back when she was amusing.) Plus, I have a mother who likes to buy the books she's heard of versus the more obscure stuff on my reading list.
And so it came to pass that I began reading The Road. How could it go wrong? I mean, post-apocalyptic! That's the home field right there! It's also a pretty sparse book, couple hundred pages with a fair amount of white space. How bad could it be?
As it turns out... Well, let's just say I "misplaced" this book several times.
Look, maybe it's just a matter of taste. You might like a book that's 200+ pages of a father and son walking and starving. 'cause that's what this: Walking and starving. Much like Wicked, I kept wondering when the book was, you know, gonna start.
I'm not a general enemy of walking and starving. There was a lot of walking and starving in, for example, Lord of the Rings. And maybe this is, like, avant-garde, having an entire book about walking and starving. I dunno.
The ending wasn't as bleak as it might have been. You know from the get-go that at least one of the characters is giong to die. The tension, I guess, comes from wondering whether the other one is going to die, too.
I wasn't entirely sold on the writing. The dialogue is presented without quotes and also apostrophes. That seems sorta gimmicky. But Cormac McCarthy is, I guess, an artist, so here we have a post-apocalyptic story with no mutants, no women, almost no one except for the two main characters, no hope, and precious little action.
OK, some technical books next.
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I had read what this book was about and "bleak" was exactly how it was described. Powerful, but bleak. Not usually my taste, but I'm trying to read outside of my comfort zone so this was interesting to me.
ReplyDeleteI read The Road last month and really enjoyed it, but I can totally understand someone thinking it sort of drags.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, last I heard, the movie release is delayed indefinitely. So there's obviously big problems there. I would think unless you mix it up and really bump up the action, it would be a pretty hard movie to make. Sort of like if Lord of the Rings was all Frodo and Sam in Mordor with no relief. (I do think Vigo Mortgensen was great casting for the dad.)
Oh yeah, and I couldn't get into Wicked either. I tried a couple times because everyone I worked with at the time loved it. *shrug*
ReplyDeleteI dunno. It seems like in order to be popular or to be considered "literature", you have to wallow in degradation.
ReplyDeleteApocalyptic stories are not really interesting because they show that an apocalypse would be bad, which is what this book is basically about.
At least not to me, which is why I said it was a taste thing.
Is this powerful because it has cannibalism? Or because a father's trying to keep his son alive?
Am I mistaken, or do the last few pages basically invalidate the father's whole tactic of using the titular road in the first place?
Meh. Back to the pulps.
The pulps are the only way to go. I paticularly endorse SM Stirlings work. It is actually written on a level that I bet the Boy would also enjoy. It is post-apocalyptic fiction where electcity stops and gunpowder doesn't work and little societies form. Oh it's the "Dies the Fire" series. You can google his website and get some free chapters to get a feel for what it is about. It's like a good movie like Braveheart mixed with Mad Max mixed with Ivanhoe mixed with the Last of the Mohegan's. Wow that's some mix.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like in order to be popular or to be considered "literature", you have to wallow in degradation.
ReplyDeleteNo disagreement here. Downers are de rigeur and have been for a while now.
Is this powerful because it has cannibalism? Or because a father's trying to keep his son alive?
For me, it was the latter. I'm sure my entire experience reading it would have been different if I didn't have kids.
Am I mistaken, or do the last few pages basically invalidate the father's whole tactic of using the titular road in the first place?
Well, what I got out of it was that the father just kept going. His decision to go out on "the road" was really an arbitrary choice, just an excuse to keep going. I don't think he really had any hope that they would find something better. Despite what his wife said (and did), despite his knowledge that they might indeed be better off dead... he just kept going. His son being "rescued" at the last was a vindication of that. That's how I saw it, anyway.
I don't know if that answers your question.
No, I think that's about right. For whatever reason, it just didn't speak to me.
ReplyDeleteIn the end, the Dad got lucky.
could I have said "keep going" more times?
ReplyDeleteWell, that's the book in a nutshell, yes?
ReplyDelete