Read it in: one day

There was a period almost this time last year where I read one book a day.  It was a fantastic, relaxing time.  There are some situations in which I wish I hadn’t tried to finish one whole book in such a short time period, and some where I am glad that I did.  ‘The Road’ was one book that I was glad to finish in one day.  Not because it was bad, of course – this is Cormac McCarthy, how could I find it bad?

However, I once read somewhere that this book was meant to be read without stopping, and this is easy to see.  We have no chapters, as such.  There are just scenes, one after the other, some vividly frightening, some incredibly sad, some happier than others.

For a brief synopsis, it’s about a father and son in a post-apocalyptic American setting, walking constantly to get to the sea, though they are not sure what they are going to do when they get there.  They are looking for civilisation, though the brief encounters they have with other humans are never very close to any definition of ‘civilisation’.

I haven’t seen the film of ‘The Road’, the most I’ve seen is the trailer.  But I think the book is probably better, simply because I don’t know how a film can trump this masterpiece.  Watching the trailer, I thought perhaps the film emphasised more of the horror aspects of the novel – there are some scary scenes – and not the overall feel of it.  But I’m probably wrong, having not seen the film, only the trailer.  What I want to say is that I don’t think this novel is horror in the way we classify horror to usually be.  It’s frightening and it’s one of those ones you can’t stop thinking about for hours/days/months after you’ve finished it.

It was frightening for me not only because there were parts in which they were trapped with no way of getting out, but because there was the overall intense feeling of loneliness, solitude and vanished hope.  It was incredible.  After each situation in which they were in danger, there wasn’t a feeling that, now that they had gotten themselves out, they were safe.  They were never safe and they never would be because there is nowhere to go.  It feels as if there is no one left except themselves; the other people they meet are only shadows of what humanity was like long ago.

We are able to sense this loneliness in a deeper sense because of the occasional moments of relief we are given – memories from the father of the time before the disaster, and also this wonderful scene in which they find a bunker full of things with which they can live their life comfortably – that are followed by the sheer inevitability that these cannot last, that life back in reality, walking the desolate road, will always have to resume.

This was my first Cormac McCarthy, picked up for all of five dollars at a book sale, and I was simply astounded by the prose.  I had never read anything like it in my life.  I felt that no book could compare to it, and it seemed for a long time that all other books simply paled in comparison.  Here is a little snippet of prose for you (this was the first time I found myself having to stop to write prose passages down, they were too good to forget):

‘The soft black talc blew through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea floor and the cold crept down and the dark came early and the scavengers passing down the steep canyons with their torches trod silky holes in the drifted ash that closed behind them silently as eyes.  Out on the roads the pilgrims sank down and fell over and died and the bleak and shrouded earth went trundling past the sun and returned again as trackless and unremarked as the path of any nameless sisterworld in the ancient dark beyond.’ (page 192-3)

I love the way this passage gives us such a sense that the experiences of the characters are a part of something so much bigger than themselves, but at the same time we experience a sense of complete hopelessness and we know that there is no civilisation out there, that the entire earth is like this and that, no matter how long the pair travel along the road, they will never find what they are looking for.

I also love McCarthy’s use of long, long sentences endlessly connected by ‘and’.  Read my ‘All The Pretty Horses‘ review for some more samples and discussion of this.

At the end is a twist, however, that did indeed almost (or perhaps it did…) make me cry.

Read it if you: would like to experience something completely alien to what you’ve ever felt, want to be astounded by prose, want to be depressed, feel like you’re taking your world for granted, want to read a simply beautiful modern masterpiece, feel as if you have no faith in modern literature (this will restore your faith).

While reading, listen to: Facades Philip Glass, The Road Soundtrack Oleg Ivanov (inspired by the novel), Valtari Sigur Ros, Roslyn Bon Iver