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Online book club #1: “The Road”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Welcome to our first online book club. This is an experiment to see whether and how this might work in a blog format. I’m just going to throw it out there, and y’all tell me what works and what doesn’t.
Our first book is “The Road,” by Cormac McCarthy. It’s a selection of Oprah’s Book Club and made the top books lists of many publications in 2006.
We will be discussing the ending, so if you are averse to spoilers, bail out now.
“The Road” is set in a post-apocalyptic America. The landscape is burned, ashen, with almost none of the natural abundance we take for granted. We never are told what has happened, but it’s reasonable to assume a horrendous nuclear war.
Our characters are two, mainly — a nameless father and his nameless son — and the people they meet on the road. They are traveling, moving toward an ocean, trying to stay alive. The father is also trying to pass along a pre-war moral code to the boy in a world where morality is playing second fiddle to survival in most cases.
In many ways, the book is enormously simple, almost fable-like. But as we move along and feel the intensity of the father’s love and the fierce bond between the two males, “The Road” grows in its power.
In the end, the father dies, possibly of radiation poisoning, although it doesn’t really matter. The boy, whose age we don’t know, is rescued by another family, and goes on without his father.
Normally we’d do one question at a time, but I want to jump-start things, so here are five questions. Hit whichever one you feel like and we’ll see where it goes.
Did “The Road” leave you feeling sad or uplifted?
What is McCarthy saying about humanity?
There are few females in “The Road.” How would the book have been different if it was about a mother and her daughter?
McCarthy’s language is very intense. What does this style add to the story? Did the strangeness detract for you?
Where do you think the book takes place geographically? When they end up on the beach, where are they?
Comments
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By Phil Kloer
October 8, 2007 8:07 AM | Link to this
Kate, one of the regulars on The Book Page, emailed me over the weekend that she couldn’t make the club today, but wanted to share some thoughts. So thanks, Kate, and you have the floor:
I am out of town tomorrow, so I cannot participate in the book club for “The Road.” Yet I feel sorta responsible for saddling the blog with this daunting, soul-crushing book. Good ol’ Cormac McCarthy!!!
A coupla thoughts:
This book is what what’s left when nothing’s left at all. It is both devastating and numbing at the same time. Does the simple ending, with just a glimmer of light and hope, make up for the soul-crushing darkness of this novel? To me, it was too little, too late. Yet, it didn’t seem contrived. It was just so damn depressing to think that everything comes down to self-preservation and isolation. I NEEDED there to be a shard of light at the end, a nod to the redeeming power of love and community.
But, the overriding question is ……what would you pack for the apocalypse???? My lesson from this novel is: SHOES!! Don’t throw out those sturdy Birkenstocks!! Those Manolos are meh when it comes to the end of civilization as we know it.
And something roll-y to carry your stuff.
Things to stockpile: alcohol, vitamins, meatinacan, moisturizer (just because), tampons, BIC lighters (not the cheap store brand), something to purify water, antibiotics….
And, oh yeah, knife skills are important. And mercenaries would be useful.
What books to pack for the apocalypse? Maybe that’s another blog.
Good luck with the blog! Sorry I can’t be there.
By Jeff
October 8, 2007 8:28 AM | Link to this
sad or uplifted? How about paranoid? When I read a book, I get compeltely lost in the world the author has created. With this book, that world was so dark and dangerous that every bump and creak of my house seemed to be a marauding cannibal intent on killing me.
I think McCarthy is telling a simple truth: In the end, people will do what it takes to survive, and if that means cannibalism - among other atrocities - they will do it in a heartbeat. Eevn if that means eating their own babies.
If it was mother and daughter, the book would have ended about 200 pages before it did with their rape and enslavement and/ or murder.
The intensity of the book was amazing. I can honestly say that this one affected me in BAD ways just as powerfully as a Sparks story generally does in GOOD ways - high praise, considering how much I enjoy Sparks! The thing that really made the book strange for me was the flashback sequences and how there really was no protracted scene. All glimpses. And the way the story is written, it could take place in nearly any amount of time with a minimum of a few months and a maximum of a decade or so. While it is assumed that it takes a year or two, there really is no way of knowing.
I was reading East Coast, due to the way the mountains are described and the fact that at one point they pass a barn with “See Rock City”. That generally ties it to somewhere in the TN/GA/NC region, particularly with the mountains as portrayed. With the sailboat scene, I’m thinking that they wound up somewhere along the NC coast.
Overall, this was probably not a book I would read again. When I voted for it initially, I was thinking it would turn out to be something more like The Postman (the movie with Kevin Costner), where the cause of the Apocalypse is given in the story (as Phil mentioned, in The Road it is not) and there is a ray of hope at the end. As Kate mentioned, the hope was just BARELY there, and that came in the last 3 pages - literally.
I WILL give it this though: McCarthy manages to keep you reading and keep it in your hands the entire time. When you put it down, you WANT to pick it back up. Until you finish. Then, it becomes just fuel for the fire. (If I remember correctly, didn’t they actually burn a few books to keep warm?)
Also note that the book has its more gruesome moments: The house where people are locked in the cellar and the one man has his legs chopped off. McCarthy makes it clear that these people in the cellar are destined to become someone’s food. The baby on the fire spit. After the man uses one of his two bullets to kill a man who stumbles across them, the man is found the next morning eviscerated with his bones looking as if they’d been boiled. Humans cooked into the asphalt near the coast. (An indication of validation of Phil’s nuclear war theory.)
Definetly a book I would put a “mature” label on! (Due only to the gruesomeness of several scenes!)
By Phil Kloer
October 8, 2007 9:11 AM | Link to this
Two great comments so far. Thanks!
What I identified with the most in “The Road” was the father’s unbelievably powerful love for his boy, and his desire to not just protect him but pass along some semblance of morality. As a parent myself (of a daughter, not a son), I felt myself walking along with the father. And even when I knew from the foreshadowing (cough, cough) that he was a goner, he kept going, not for himself, but for the boy. That’s parental love, and there is no other force like it on earth.
By Anna Burke
October 8, 2007 2:57 PM | Link to this
I was glad I got this book from the library instead of buying it. I didn’t last 30 pages. It was too too dark for me. Sorry guys. I look forward to your next choice.
By Jeff
October 8, 2007 3:13 PM | Link to this
Anna:
I admit, I’ve read some pretty dark tomes in my life - went through both an Anne Rice phase as well as a Stephen King phase, the Preston/Child books can be intense, and Without Remorse isn’t exactly peachy either.
That said, COMPLETELY agree with you that this was quite possibly the DARKEST book I’ve ever read.
The main thing that kept me in it was the hope that eventually McCarthy would tell us exactly what had happened to create this world and that POSSIBLY there would be a ray of hope at the end. (Honestly was hoping they’d find some kind of civilization at the coast, even if it turned out to be nothing that we would recognize as “civilization” in the real world.)
By Todd Smith
October 8, 2007 3:36 PM | Link to this
Dear Mr. Kloer,
This is one book you CAN judge by its cover!
My novel, “A World Away,” the beginning of a Christian adventure trilogy for readers 13-99, was published in August 2007 by Tate Publishing & Enterprises.
Any consideration you would extend to featuring the book on your online book club would be greatly appreciated. If you would like to receive a copy, please let me know and I will send a copy ASAP. Many thanks for your consideration.
S currently resides Rocky Mountain A World Away: The Quest of Dan Clay: Book One
By T.J. Smith
Synopsis:
Nine hundred years ago, fifty men committed such unspeakable acts that even hell proved insufficient punishment for them. To avert a potential underworld mutiny of horrific proportions, these fifty insurrectionists were relocated through a portal from the pit of hell to the dark Eldritch Forest of another world, parallel to our own. Upon their banishment, the condemned were transformed into half-man and half-serpent creatures.
Thirteen years ago, William Clay—then a mere child—disappeared from a nearby forest, never to be seen again. Only recently, his younger brother, Dan, acquired information on the forest fables from a questionable source. After analyzing fact and legend, Dan suspects that his brother may have fallen through the portal into the parallel world and is being held captive by the fifty fiends.
Join Dan and three friends as they embark on an out-of-this world journey where they are hunted by savage beasts along the footpath to a demonic castle.
Smith’s pages within are your passport to A World Away, where the unimaginable becomes reality, the unnatural becomes the norm, and the uninvited become fitting prey.
Paperback: 5 7/8 x 8 7/8 331 Pages $23.99 Release Date: 08/14/07 Special Features: ISBN #: 978-1-6024732-5-6 Product Category: Fiction: Fantasy: Action: Folklore
Distributor: Ingram Spring Arbor
An unsolicited reviewer posted the following on Amazon:
By Alfred J. Hicks - See all my reviews
Smith has written a unique story with exceptional imagination and creativity. Visiting a world away, creapy creatures, ghoulish characters and fright fill the record of the four characters who face frequent frightening experiences seemingly without end. Not recommended for young readers, I continued to recall C. S. Lewis’s style mixed with a slightly milder Tolkien imagination. A great read, I recommend forcing the author to produce books two and three as soon as possible. Buy this for teens and adults.
By Mary Jo
October 10, 2007 6:45 PM | Link to this
Mr. Kloer,
Like Kate, I was unavailable Monday. I had thought I would be late in the day, but the flight crew did not show up for my connecting flight in Detroit … well you get the picture.
This book was so dark that for once I wished I did not have this annoying habit of always finishing a book once I start it. I must admit, however, that even though I found McCarthy’s tone dark, way dark, I found his style/syntax spot on. The man can write. On that level, I did enjoy what I was reading. It was the storyline that was upsetting and depressing.
Like you, Mr. Kloer, I found myself relating to this work as a parent. I was rooting for him and praying for his son to internalize what his father was offering, another, better way to live. I have decided, or rather for my own sanity, I have to believe that the son has internalized the morality that his father espoused. It may be dormant now, but all growing things go through a period of dormancy.
I come from the Readers’ Response Theory point of view. The dormancy idea I’ve created is part and parcel of the meaning I created while reading the end of the novel.
By margaret
October 11, 2007 12:49 AM | Link to this
Did “The Road” leave you feeling sad or uplifted?
Both. I found the language, the beautiful, sparse description of such a hopeless, burned out landscape to be incredibly powerful. I’ve tried to read McCarthy before and this was the first one I could get through… I think because of the broken narrative, the snippets of scenes.
As far as the plot goes… In a way it was uplifting because the few left have no idea why they are still living, don’t know where they’re going or why they’re struggling to get somewhere and yet they haven’t committed suicide. that intensity of effort is inspiring.
What is McCarthy saying about humanity?
We have a lot in common with the rats… and yet, there will always be a few that are capable of building something beautiful out of the rubble. not many but a few.
There are few females in “The Road.” How would the book have been different if it was about a mother and her daughter?
it would have been a different book. In this world, it’s all about the men. It’s a hard world and it seems to be me that McCarthy is saying that women play a larger role in civlilzed society… but in this nighmarish world, it’s all about brawn… and that whole Mr. Fix-it thing.
McCarthy’s language is very intense. What does this style add to the story? Did the strangeness detract for you?
I found it beautiful. The sparseness of it described the horror in a way that two talky characters never could. Also he had some Shakespearean syntax going and that gave the father some elegance and it defamilarized the culture and the poetry of it was a beautiful contrast to the plot. Plus it was like reading an anti-haiku of sorts.
Where do you think the book takes place geographically? When they end up on the beach, where are they?
it seemed to be cold so it couldn’t have been past North Carolina. they were going south so it had to be around there.
I’m so glad for the opportunity to read this. My friends revere McCarthy and now I can hold my head up in civilized society. yes! I finished one!
By zlujg
October 21, 2007 3:17 PM | Link to this
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By dora sumner
October 21, 2007 3:32 PM | Link to this
The scariest book I read is “Helter Skelter” about the Charles Manson-Sharon Tate murders. I read it alone and at night in the winter and the wind was blowing and it was all creepy. It made me scared but was so interested I couldn’t put it down, even though the wind blowing against the house made me think of ghosts trying to get in.