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Thursday, August 21, 2008

~ the road

I haven’t often cried finishing a novel. It has happened, but I can’t recall the particular titles… Love in The Time of Cholera, possibly. Perhaps after One Hundred Years of Solitude [Gabriel G Marquez] … J G Ballard’s The Kindness of Women

But last night I finished off The Road by Cormac McCarthy. For brute emotional force it trumps everything - at least everything I can bring to mind. It’s the long nightmare from which you are unable to wake, a frozen, pared-down hell in which nothing remains - save for a few desperate humans and their various brands of humanity. The crumbling black bones of Nature. Some scavenged goods. A few improvised tools and a world of wet ash. What these survivors do, in order to persist, ahead of the inevitable void, becomes a flat expressionless judgment of humankind.

I’m sure a tremendous amount has been written about The Road. I won’t go on. I’ll just say that I think, for this time, for the current version of the human race , it’s the best book I’ve read - and that the final couple of paragraphs come down on you with the weight of every single word prior.

(I wonder if the movie will hold true? It’s in post-production, directed by John Hillcoat, [The Proposition, Ghosts of The Civil Dead and, incidentally, the clip for The Finer Things by Beargarden]. Viggo Mortensen plays The Father, of which I’m glad.)

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6 comments:

Jade said...

Hi Sam, I love your writing. Cormac is a big fave of mine too.
Jade.

lily was here said...

Im still getting over Ghosts of the Civil Dead! xxx

ps Sam, nice threads in the videoclip

Anonymous said...

I dread reading this book. Even the idea of it terrifies me, the bleak power of it. But I guess I will...

Unknown said...

Thanks Jade.

LWH,tell me, when is eighties fashion coming back. I have some excellent stuff gathering dust in my closet, but will I be too old to wear it?

Rochelle, don't dread The Road. It's beautiful. It's an epiphany.

Ann ODyne said...

dear Sam - re Return Of 80's Styles:
just put it all on and spearhead the revival.

I usually like chirpy reading, but have just finished in one sitting 'The Bolter' by Frances Osborne - no redeeming characters.

lily was here said...

Egads, could the 80's ever make a comeback like the 60's and 70's? Would love to see your garb though, Im sure you could make anything look fabulously stylish. Rock me amadeus LOL xxx