My trip to Worldcon in Glasgow and Eurocon in Rotterdam was great! I may write a little about that later, but I came home to immediately start teaching for the fall semester (literally the next day), and the last month has been a whirlwind.
I'm finally ready to get back to my regular blogging with one of my most regular types of posts: a book review!
I imagine Cormac McCarthy asked himself, "What if I wrote a book filled with beautiful sentences about horrific things, set in a bleak post-apocalyptic wasteland? And what if I only occasionally used apostrophes?" And that's pretty much what he succeeded in doing with The Road.
Toward the end of every summer I try to read one work of Capital-L Literature just to broaden my horizons and see what I may have missed by not becoming an English professor and instead reading mostly science fiction, horror, and fantasy. The Road, published in 2006, is the newest such book I've read on this quest (the next newest might be Toni Morrison's Beloved, which I see as another genre-adjacent work of Capital-L Literature).
With Cormac McCarthy's death last year, I remembered that I've wanted to check out his work. And The Road seemed the most science fiction-adjacent place to start. I also missed the film adaptation back when it came out, but I may check it out now.
Let's start with a note for science fiction fans who love post-apocalyptic SF: you won't find much new here in terms of expanding that sub-genre. Most science fiction also tends to be a lot more "plot forward" than this novel, which is, like a lot of Capital-L Literature, mostly vibes. Not all that much happens.
And you get almost none of the intricate world building of most science fiction utopias (I call it "world building by vibes"). If you're looking for world building, check out something like A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller, Jr., The Postman by David Brin, Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, or even The Stand by Stephen King (King is also a fan of McCarthy).
The Road isn't really a work of world building, which is why I think this is a good stop on my Capital-L Literature quest in terms of expanding my horizons. It is science fiction, but the kind that snooty Literature types might actually read, along with a few other contemporary authors like Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, or David Mitchell.
But what's so great about The Road? The language really is simultaneously beautiful and bleak, sublime and sickening. I found a sentence on just about every page that made me stop just to appreciate it.
There's also something hypnotic about the often-repetitive language, especially with the dialogue between the nameless man and boy, who are, like many characters before them, traveling through a post-apocalyptic America. It's not clear exactly where, but early on a sign for one of my local Chattanooga, TN tourist attractions is mentioned, so I imagined they're traveling through the US Southeast toward the sea.
As far as the plot, again, there's not much to say really. But that's just the kind of book this is. Things do happen, and then other things, and then some more things. Kind of like life.
When it comes to deeper themes, if you read carefully enough, you'll find a dialogue between two different frameworks on dystopia: self-preservation through selfishness versus self-preservation through altruism.
Okay, maybe I'm not that clever, because the man and the boy have this debate constantly. But still, to the extent that The Road is related to the SF dystopia genre, it might be something like Mad Max or Lord of the Flies versus something more like Butler's Parable of the Sower or Brin's The Postman: even when civilization collapses, we really do get by with a little help from our friends. None of us are actually in this alone.
Another way to read The Road, of course, is as a meditation on death. We try not to think about it, but human existence even in less dystopian times is a journey down the road of time with death as our destination. And maybe we can only really make any meaning out of this limited life by finding connections to others, difficult as this can be, even if we're not dealing with cannibals on a regular basis. If Cormac McCarthy can find beauty in a world as bleak and horrific as this, what's our excuse for not finding beauty in our (at least for now) less dystopian world?
I'm sure there's a lot more I missed. I'll probably read this again someday. I may think of something else and write more later. But I'll end this journey for now by saying The Road doesn't add many ideas to the post-apocalyptic genre, but it's nonetheless one of the most memorable and unique books I've read recently, one that will haunt me for a long time.
See also my Goodreads review.
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