Because You Want to Book Club #6: "The Road"

Over a year ago, I took Cormac McCarthy's book "The Road" out of the library literally one day before Oprah announced it as her most recent book club selection. I despised Oprah at the time, but it didn't dampen my desire to read the book in any way. Sadly, life got in the way and "The Road" remained untraveled until I had to return the book without having read a word of it. Being too poor to pay for late fees or to buy it, I should have just renewed the book since I didn't have the chance to take the book out of the library until last week.

I like McCarthy mostly because I find his books a challenge to read. McCarthy does not adhere to the rules of grammar, sentence structure, and punctuation. His style can take some getting used to, but his reasons for defying convention become clear with time: McCarthy seems to want his prose to act like a narration inside the mind of the reader. While earlier McCarthy novels such as "All the Pretty Horses" and "The Crossing" are slightly obtuse and at times overly complicated, "The Road" is a simple story showing McCarthy stepping outside his comfort zone with tremendous ease to create a book just as deep as his earlier material while maintaining a break neck pace and a sense of urgency previously missing from his work. It is easily his most accessible work to date.

The story of "The Road" is simple. A cataclysmic event destroyed the world several years prior to the start of the book. A nameless man and his son have to make it to the South from the North on foot to escape the onset of a winter that gets worse and worse every year. The man is dying and this barren wasteland of a world is all the boy has ever known since he was born into it. That is the almost all the reader gets to know; specifics are sparse. You just know from the lack of vegetation, constantly gray skies, and ashy wind gusts that this is a world only slightly removed from our own. People have survived, but most have resorted to creating roaming packs of cannibals and those who haven't hide out of mistrust towards all of humanity. The titular road the pari trek is a bleak one devoid of love, compassion, food, and scenery; their journey punctuated by startling moments of violence and unspeakable horror. But deep down the story is about love and finding the courage to carry on no matter how much it hurts or what you have to do.

The book raises numerous philosophical issues ranging from the existence of God to the nature of charity and what it means to be good in a lawless society that if there is any justice in the world scholars will debate for years to come. The absence of chapters fits the book's pacing and almost demands the reader devour it in a full sitting.

Recently on Facebook I had a discussion amongst friends about literature that focuses on a dystopian future. I vaguely argued that most such novels tend to get bogged down needlessly in specifics and effectively breaking down the reader to the point of depression just to get the reader to see things from the author's perspective. "The Road" leaves the details mostly to the reader's imagination, making it not only the best post apocalyptic yarn ever written, but one of the finest books I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Not even the Oprah seal of approval taints this one.

Grade: A+