Cormac McCarthy has to be one of the best names I’ve heard in a while. It just sounds cool. This book sold bundles earlier this year after Oprah selected it to be part of her book club. Well-chosen, in my view.
Here’s the situation: a man and his son walk a road south after an unnamed apocalypse. That’s it. Like José Saramago’s book Blindness, not a whole lot is ever named. The country, though we can assume it’s the former United States; at some point they get far south enough to find items written in Spanish and the father refers to states in a couple of places. The man is not named. Neither is his mate in the couple of flashbacks. The son is never named either. He’s called the boy
throughout. In fact, the only name mentioned throughout the book that I can recall is another refugee they chance upon for a few paragraphs. He claims his name is Ely, but he also claims to be lying about that too. And once the boy calls the man, Papa.
The setting is desolate enough. Nothing grows anymore. In keeping with the theme of not naming things, McCarthy doesn’t ever name the calamity that’s befallen humanity. It isn’t even clear that the few flashbacks occur before the calamity, though they do occur in better times. But at some point the times got worse, and the man and the boy set out on the road south. They scavenge for food and clothing, and push what they can find in a broken shopping cart. Ash blows everywhere. It’s getting colder, and snow falls frequently. The pair occasionally trod through untouched areas once flowering with grasses or shrubbery. Dry and dessicated, what’s left of the plants crumble to ash at their touch.
Although this follows a lot of post-apocalyptic novels in setting, the point here is used for a somewhat different effect. Yes, without civilization mankind turns on itself like a scene from Lord of the Flies. But the point here is not mankind. It’s not hope or futility, though those are used as well. The focus throughout is on a father and his son. Strip away everything else and get at the love and tenderness. Compare and contrast it with what the rest of humanity has become.
As another blogger wrote, science fiction fandom did itself a disservice by ignoring this book for it’s major awards. It’s almost as if they’ve said The literary types don’t want us, so we don’t want them.
This is easily one of the top ten science fiction stories of the decade, even if neither McCarthy nor the various con-goers want to claim it as science fiction.
Title: The road
Award: 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Author: Cormac McCarthy
Imprint / publisher: Vintage International / Random House
Format: Paperback
Length: 287 p.
Publication date: 2007
ISBN-13: 978-0-307-38789-9
Subject: Fathers and sons — Fiction
Subject: Voyages and trave;s &mdash United States — Fiction
Subject: Regression (Civilization) — Fiction
Subject: Survival skills — Fiction
LC classification: PS3563.C337R63 2006
