Such an incredible read, always as intense as it was to read the first time around. There is a thin veil of hope that runs this which sets it apart from many other McCarthy books. There are scenes and passages here that regularly haunt me.

Check out my review for this fantastic book on Booknest at: Booknest

There is something addictive with Cormac McCarthy’s writing, his unequal prose, the sheer brutality and bleakness of it, The Road is one of the greatest works of art, one I will continue to read and re-read for the rest of my life.

“Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave.”

A note about the author. He is in my eyes, a literary genius. His writing feels so natural but powerful, and he is consistently great (from what I have read). The stories he tells are so different, once again proving what a sublime writer he is.

“If you break little promises, you'll break big ones.”

The Road, from the outset, is a tale of a journey from one place to another, traversing the bleak landscapes of an apocalypse ridded America. The Road, at its heart, is the relationship between a man and his son, the determination and last rays of hope for a father trying his best to protect the one thing in the world precious to him, his young son.

“You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.”

This is not a book of characters defying all odds, battling hordes of cannibal marauders (there are in it though, and yes, they were terrifying). It is a book of a father painfully aware of his frail ability to keep his son protected.

“What would you do if I died?
If you died I would want to die too.
So you could be with me?
Yes. So I could be with you.
Okay.”

With a gun and only two bullets, no other ways of fending off the sparse living, the snow creeping in, a distinct lack of food and shelter, the man and the boy decide to travel the road, towards the sea.

“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”

The dialogue is another element of what makes this book fantastic. It is so bare, but so direct and effective, it makes you think what life would actually be like if there was an apocalypse. The relationship between the man and the boy is beautifully written, stripped of everything but the bones of the love between a father a son, they are all the other has.

“What's the bravest thing you ever did?
He spat in the road a bloody phlegm. Getting up this morning, he said.”

5/5 - At 241 pages, The Road has within it some of the greatest writing ever written. I felt the growing dread seeping from the pages, the frustrations of the lack of food, the terrifying encounters with cannibals and other life on the road. Give The Road a go.

I wrestled with a final rating for this. "The Road" definitely has merit. The style is purposefully minimalist. As others have noted there are very few apostrophe's, no commas, no quotation marks. The font is dull. The paragraphs carry extra spacing. The words are clipped. This all works very well for setting the atmosphere.

As others have offered it is also not the job of the author to explain away all questions. Leaving a sense of mystery can be very good for a story. We should expect that in the end there should be some questions left unanswered. We should expect this all the more when the story is written in a third person form that has a nearly claustrophobic attachment to the characters perspective.

However, we should always expect the story to make sense based on what we know of how the world works. The setting is not just furniture. This is true in all settings, even fantasy and science fiction. In Tolkien's world dragons may breath fire but apples still fall down. As the setting becomes grittier we should expect the rules to be tighter and more menacing.

Unfortunately, rules don't apply in "The Road". We are presented with an apocalyptic world where every meal counts and where people have turned to cannibalism to survive. And here we are presented with our first problem. Cannibalism as a survival technique isn't very efficient. Eating people that are emaciated by hunger doesn't result in a good transfer of calories. Yet the book strongly implies that the cannibalistic cults have been active for years.

Also odd is that they have avoided the bodies. The father and son are constantly coming across corpses. Some of them still smell. More than a few are mummified. Why not boil those down, since they seem to be plentiful, before having to chase and hunt humans "on the hoof"? It isn't that this makes the cults suicidal and stupid, the problem is that there is no reason for them still existing.

There are other logical inconstancies. The father and son eat dried apples from a field in a world were clouds, rain, and snow seem to be constant. How exactly are they dry? The sun can't dry them out and neither can the heat. All of that is gone.

Nothing grows except one instance of fungus. If everything is dead, except the humans, where did the fungus come from? If fungus survived, why not moss? After all of this time why isn't life coming back? Even Chernobyl is virtual a parkland now. There appears to be no radiation in this world yet nothing lives, why? There are fires being set by the cults yet houses, and the author spends some time describing what is wooden frame construction sitting next to the burnt out houses, still stand. Fires are also being set to what, charcoal? The author doesn't have to explain all of these things, but he does have to be consistent.

Since humans, lumbering giants at the tip of the food pyramid, survived he has to show what happened to the mice. And no, canned food doesn't count. Even a survivalist will only pack enough for his family for six months to a few years. The book implies that the son was born at the time of the disaster and he's old enough now to hold a conversation and be useful which implies that he's at least four years old. Why isn't the food all gone? Given that nothing lives, why not avoid the calorie expenditure and sit on any store of food you find rather than tromping through freezing weather to find the shore. Most critical of all, if there is a reason, why not impart this reason to your son?

Since the book never answers these questions it has to rely on style, which is done well, and a questionable emotional appeal. It is, in many ways, the worst of modern decadence. It expects us to not ask any important questions about the setting and instead feel for the horrors that the characters face. It is a very subtle and powerful form of emotional blackmail. It teaches us to be less than human, to fear and not to think about what we fear.

I have nightmares similar to what Cormac McCarthy depicted in his book.

I’m with my family. Sometimes, it’s just my son and I. The dystopia might not be the nuclear winter portrayed here, but it has the same type of vibe. Rampant fear and chaos, breakdown of society, everyone pitted against everyone else and my only thought is to somehow hold my family together and protect them.

Or we’re traveling or holed up somewhere and everything is quiet and we’re suddenly overrun.

Fear is the core. Fear is the motivator. Fear is the wind; the element that upsets the precarious balance on the tightrope of our existence. We straddle the thin rope that encompasses our hope and will. It’s a long way down into the abyss, but the dark looks comforting – inviting.

In light of this, the specific situations depicted in the book raise some questions for me:

I love my family but could I be as resourceful as “the man”?

Under the dreadful circumstances, would I have the same patience as “the man”?

If faced with the dilemma of no food, would I give up?

Would I consider myself one of the “good guys”?

Would I carry "the fire"?

This was a buddy read with Kelly and Ashley *Hufflepuff Kitten*.

As a writer I'm a harsh critic (and participate in critique groups where the intention is to make a book better by pointing out its flaws) so I don't leave many reviews as they will tend to have a negative slant.

When I see a negative review of my own books they sometimes start out with a comment such as... "I don't normally write a bad review but this book is just so horrific that I had to balance all the good reviews.

I fully realize that I'm in the VAST minority about my opinons on The Road...and as a writer I probably shouldn't speak out so strongly on something that others love. But I am moved so strongly by the Road that I will indeed make an exception for this one book.

Now while I'm often critical, I generally don't hate a book and I'm fully aware of the differences in subjective tastes and that what really apeals to one person is exactly what another person hates. I get that. But I'd like to take a moment to share my experience with "The Road."

I came across it when I was joining a face2face club. As part of signing up they asked which book I disliked the most - and I had no answer. But that soon changed. The monthly read for that particular club was indeed the Road and as I was going to the first meeting I didn't have a chance to read the book. Someone there offered me their copy and I thanked Sue and told her I would return it the next week. "No," she said. "I don't want this book in my house. You can keep it or burn it...your choice." I thought that was a strange comment...until I read the book.

Having heard the buzz about this book and having seen the plethora of positive reviews, I felt compelled to write my own if only to be that voice of reason in a wilderness of pretentious insanity.

Cormac’s McCarthy’s The Road, I can honestly say, is the worst book I have ever read. I am stunned to find such a critical following for a novel that is so clearly bad that I have yet to meet a flesh and blood person who does not hate it, or cannot, even after the most mild inquires, explain its appeal beyond the latent thought that they “ought” to like it. To do otherwise would mark them as uncultured and ignorant. Modern art had Duchamp's toilet, and now literature has its own case of the emperor’s new clothes in, The Road.

What sets this novel apart from all others in its genre of ill-conception, is the totality of its failure. There is nothing good that can be said of it. Some virtue can be found in every book, as in the old adage—“…but she has a nice personality.” The Road breaks this rule, and soundly. From the plot and characters to the writing style and even the cover design, the book is abysmally uninspired and a black hole of skill.

Much has been made of the writing quality. Alan Cheuse, of the Chicago Tribune, and book commentator for NPR calls it “…his huge gift for language.” Let’s look at that for a moment. It is universally accepted that the first few sentences of any novel are the most crucial—the words which a writer labors over the most to get them just right. Here are the first two sentences of The Road:

“When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before.”

I once presented these two sentences to an amateur writer’s forum and asked their opinion. Several members politely replied that the sentences were badly in need of work. Not only were they not grammatically correct, but they were awkward, confusing, used several unnecessary words and had all the rhythm and pacing of a dog with four broken legs. Nights dark beyond darkness, has got to rank up there with, it was a dark and stormy night. This is not at all an isolated example. It is merely the beginning—literally. Other laudable narrative sentences include: “The Hour.” “Of a sudden he seemed to wilt even further.” “A lake down there.”

Lest you think I am selectively picking the worst, here is the passage Mr. Cheuse used in his own review as an example of genius: “tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings. An old chronicle. To seek out the upright. No fall but preceded by a declination. He took great marching steps into the nothingness, counting them against his return.” What McCormac is describing here is that it is dark and the man can’t see where he is going. The author is clearly a master of communication.

Let’s also pause to consider his brilliance of dialog, and his mastery of the monosyllable conversation that make the screenplay dialog of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger on par with Shakespeare. Nearly every conversation has the word “Okay,” which appears so often I began to think it was a pun, like a ventriloquist routine. One might conclude McCarthy is attempting to reflect a realistic vernacular into his work, except that the conversations are so stilted and robotic, as to lack even the faintest aroma of realism. There is no slang, no halted speech, no rambling. It is Dragnet.

First dialog in the book:

Can I ask you something?

Yes. Of course.

Are we going to die?

Sometime. Not now.

And we’re still going south.

Yes.

So we’ll be warm.

Yes.

Okay.

Okay what?

Nothing. Just okay.

Go to sleep.

Okay.

You’ll note that I did not use quotes in the above excerpt. That is because neither does McCarthy. There are no quotes anywhere in the book, nor are there any tags designating the speaker, which manages to successfully make determining who is speaking quite a dilemma at times. Moreover, McCarthy never provides names to his characters this forces him to use the pronoun “he” frequently which very often leaves the reader bewildered as to whether he is referring to the father or the boy.

McCarthy doesn’t stop with quotes. He rarely uses commas or apostrophes. It doesn’t appear as if he is against contractions as he uses the non-word, “dont” quite frequently. Nor is he making the statement that he can write a whole book without punctuation as he does, on rare occasions, use a comma or an apostrophe, (as you can see from the dialog segment I listed above,) as if he is going senile and merely forgot. As the lack of most of the necessary punctuation’s only result is to make it harder to read, I can only conclude that McCarthy, or his editor are the most lazy people I’ve ever heard of—although I am certain no credible editor ever saw this book. If they had I am certain we would have heard about the suicide in the papers.

One might overlook the shortcomings of writing skill if the novel’s foundation was an excellent story. Sadly, this is not the case. Not that it lacks an excellent plot—it lacks a plot. Often times writers anguish over distilling the plot of a novel into a few sentences that might fit on the back of a book cover. It is often impossible to clearly convey all that a book is in such a short span. The Road does not suffer this. Instead I would imagine that if it were possible to put this book in a microwave and evaporate all the extraneous words all you would have left is one sentence: A boy and his father travel south in a post-apocalyptic United States, then the father dies. I wonder if the blurb writer for the, The Road, realized he was also providing a spoiler for the novel so comprehensive, no one need read the book.

What the book lacks in plot it clearly makes up for in even less characterization. The father and the boy—that is about as much characterization as you will get. McCarthy doesn’t even provide names from which readers might glean some associative characteristics. We know the boy is afraid, because he says so approximately every four pages, always with the same robotic level of emotional intensity, backing it up with his many reasons, regrets and concerns as in the passage: I am scared. Likewise, the father is equally a pot bubbling over with emotional angst and frustration so vividly expressed in his response: I know. I’m sorry.

We might as well burn all our copies of Grapes of Wrath now that we have this tour de force.

As amazing as it is, with only an eggshell of plot, McCarthy manages to run afoul of logic. The boy and his father come across shelters packed with food and water, and yet the father insists they move on. Why? Because they must keep moving so as to avoid encountering others. Clearly staying in one place is the best plan to avoid meeting others, hermit do it all the time. Yes, other people might wander into you, but you double that equation if you too are roaming. The only argument for pressing on with the journey is to find others.

I am certain I am being too kind here, but given that this is a Pulitzer Prize winning, Oprah Pick, National Bestseller, I don’t want to ruffle too many feathers. Of course, Duchamp's toilet (Fountain) was once voted "the most influential modern artwork of all time".

The writing is simplistic, as are the descriptions and the dialog. The scenes are short. There's hardly any character depth. There are only two nameless characters in the book (the man and the boy). There is no back story. You don't get to know what happened to the world or why.

The simplistic writing works in this book things are short and sweet and to the point. The scenes might be short but they are filled with emotion. The character depth might be lacking but that's the point. The Road is a glimpse into the man and boy's life at a time years after the horrific event that destroyed the earth. We come into the book on just another day in the life of a traveler along The Road. Press forward. Find food. Avoid other people. Survive. Repeat. It would have been cool to know what happened to the world but is unimportant to the book.

The Road truly is a disturbing book. It gives us a look at our potential given the right set of circumstances. People like to say "oh I would never do this or that"  but no one really knows what they would do until the time comes. Then our true colors show. The man and the boy chose to carry the fire and be good guys in a world filled with bad guys.

The writing might not have been the greatest. The editing might have needed a little more work. Or maybe that's the way they intended it. I don't know. I do know that I couldn't put it down. I was tied into the lives of these two characters. Not many books hit me as hard as this one. And for me, that's what makes it a great book and as of right now my new favorite book.

I highly recommend it. Amazing book. I wish I could rate it higher than 5 stars. At 33 years old my quest for the GREATEST book ever is finally over.

Read this years ago before my son died. I knew it was a good book but didn’t recognize it as more than that.

Reread it over the past couple days, eight years after my son died. Now it is a treasure to me.

I seem to be the last one on the planet to have read this "Dystopian Masterpiece" destined to go down in history as blah blah blah. :) Yeah, it's good. Simple tale told extremely simply. Poetic in places, very realistic in almost all ways, and it was true to human nature, both in the good and in the bad.

People are scared. It's how we deal with the fear that makes us good people or average or just plain bad.

This is true at all times, of course, not just when the rubber tires on the highway have melted into the pavement. If we deal with the terror with optimism and decency, such as the kid deals with it, we see it as how we would like to be, but how the man deals with it is a lot more realistic, full of self-deception and compromise and desperation.

The best part of the novel is in the descriptions, the heavily oppressive setting. I personally thought these two characters were a bit too everyman for extended consumption. Fortunately, this classic is also rather short, so it didn't really bother me that much.

Well! Now I can say I've read the classic, even though it's pretty much like all the bookcases of dystopian literature I've already read. :) Nothing groundbreaking, just solid writing and a universal feel.

I suppose this is what makes classics, classics.

The Road is a literary mash up composed of equal parts William Faulkner, Raymond Carver, Samuel Beckett, and pulp sci-fi. This sounds great on paper but works only about 50% of the time.

For the first 25-30 pages of The Road my BS detector rang like a fire alarm. It soon quieted down, but ultimately the things I disliked about the book—it’s egregiously overwritten in places and some of McCarthy’s more “experimental” techniques seem arbitrary --kept me from fully appreciating its virtues. It took James Woods’ definitive review in The New Republic to help me see what there is to like about it. Wood praises The Road for: the way the McCarthy taps into a post 9/11 fear of apocalypse; his combination of an ornate lyricism a’la William Faulkner with the deadpan minimalism of Raymond Carver; and for McCarthy's rigorous attempt to imagine what a post-apocalyptic world would look and feel like. The Road doesn't extrapolate a dystopian future from some present fear or potential calamity. Rather it plops its characters down in a world engulfed by some kind of nuclear winter (the cause of the catastrophe is never specified) and obsessively imagines what that world would look and feel like.

Despite these virtues, there’s just something about the way The Road is executed that puts me off. Critics praise McCarthy for his linguistic inventiveness, and there are some beautiful passages in The Road, but the writing often struck me as showy rather than inventive. I mean, what’s so “inventive” about the arbitrary splicing together of two words? How much linguistic creativity does it take to call a cash register a cashregister, or a pump organ a pumporgan. Such devices occur frequently enough to annoy but not often enough to add much to the musicality of the prose. Then there’s the frequent use of antiquated words: gryke, discalced, scribing, laved, etc. There’s nothing wrong with this in principle—writers should make maximum use of the linguistic resources available to them. A generous interpretation of this tic would be that it adds to the sense of inhabiting a time that’s spiritually detached from the present, or makes the point that the future involves regression rather than progress. But it struck me as showy and gratuitous--a kind of screw you to 21st century sub-literates.

The other thing that bugged me was the frequent dropping of profundity bombs—brief portentous statements tacked onto the end of a paragraph that hint at philosophical or religious themes. Two problems with these: First, they are almost always duds; they are never developed and rarely explode into meaning. Second, they often come wrapped in convoluted syntax that I suspect obscures their banality. So, in this case, is McCarthy tweaking the language to make the banal sound profound?

Despite these misgivings I liked the book and found it hard to put down. When McCarthy stays in his minimalist register the writing is quite good. He definitely creates a mood, and many of the word-pictures he paints, especially when describing landscapes or the objects necessary to the two main characters’ survival, are quite beautiful. And I do have to give him props, as Wood notes, for advancing the post-apocalypse sub-genre by creating a remorselessly unedifying world in which our present concerns have almost completely faded from memory. Most of the dialogue in The Road is banal in the extreme, and the characters are almost completely without inner lives. But give McCarthy credit for credibly representing the psychological reality of a world in which the things that support inner lives—history, culture, community, an unacknowledged but ever present sense that humanity will extend into the indefinite future—have all but disappeared. McCarthy doesn’t tell us how to avoid the apocalypse, but he gives us a pretty good sense of how we’ll be spending our days when it comes.

The Road is a truly disturbing book; it is absorbing, mystifying and completely harrowing. Simply because it shows us how man could act given the right circumstances; it’s a terrifying concept because it could also be a true one.

It isn’t a book that gives you any answers, you have to put the pieces together and presume. For whatever reason, be it nuclear war or environmental collapse, the world has gone to hell. It is a wasteland of perpetual greyness and ash. Very little grows anymore, and the air itself is toxic. The survivors are made ill by their surroundings, physically, mentally and spiritually. They cough and splutter, they struggle to carry on and lack the will to live. Civilisation has completely collapsed, but its remnants remain: the roads remain.

“On this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world.”

Thus, the man and the boy (that’s the only names we are ever given for them) walk down them. They communicate rarely, when they do it is bare and in seemingly inane phrases. At times, especially at the start of the book, when no sense of history orr time were relayed, the conversation was highly reminiscent of that in Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot. The exchanges had little to no point and were totally lacking in any substance, as the two central characters longed for something that seemed out of reach.

It’s a brave narrative device, one that seems to have put off many readers. But it also articulates much about the psychological states of the man and the boy. There’s just not that much to talk about when you live in a world where you’re under constant threat from roaming gangs of cannibals catching you, dying of starvation and perhaps even exposure along with the knowledge that you will have to kill your son should the said cannibals finally catch up with you. Not to mention the sheer level of trauma and stress both characters are operating under. Staying alive is all that matters, wasting energy on words in such a situation is fruitless where you barely have the strength to walk down the road for another day.

“What's the bravest thing you ever did?
He spat in the road a bloody phlegm. Getting up this morning, he said.”



A dark and seemingly hopeless story unfolds. The farther and son are travelling to the beach, a distance of several hundred miles. With them they push all their worldly possessions, and resources, in a shopping cart. Such a journey seems like a fool’s errand. But what other choice do they have? The two cling onto something, a fire, a hope, that life can somehow get better. And then it continued to burn even after the mother has killed herself. This, for me, captures a large part of the human psyche: an indomitable will to survive.

The Road is suffocating; it is claustrophobic and it is entrapping. What McCarthy shows us, is that no matter how shit human society may become (has already become?) it will always have the possibility of rejuvenation. There is light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. The entire novel is an allegory, one that is not revealed until the final few pages.

n  n    “Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.”n  n

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(A-) 84% | Very Good
Notes: Stark and pale, a father's tale, through bitter, bleak upheaval, retreat denied, it's move or die, in everything primeval.

*Check out progress updates for detailed commentary:

Progress updates:

11/06/2023 - Preamble

(1) No reason why I'm reading this now other than it's available at my library.
- I've had it on hold forever.
- As with all my audiobooks, this is a reread.
(2) The thing I most remember about this is there's no chapter breaks.
- Being fairly short, I know it's implied I should finish it in one sitting but that's not going to happen, especially as it's an audiobook.

11/07/2023 - 11%

(1) At least to me, this has somewhat Victorian sensibilities.
- Being essentially a narrative poem, it's reminiscent of long-form poetry of that era, albeit free verse.
(2) "He withdrew his hand slowly and sat looking at a Coca Cola."
"What is it, Papa?"
"It's a treat. For you."
- It's interesting how, with all the stark prose, "Coca Cola" sounds foreign and exotic.

11/08/2023 - 20%

(1) To me, this book doesn't seem to have a plot. A father and son journey south, and things happen along the way. To go into more detail would mean recounting individual (unconnected) incidents.
- Really, it's the prose describing these incidents that make the book.
(2) The father and son have no names.
- In essence, they're emblematic of every father and every son.

11/14/2023 - 34%

(1) I'm torn on Tom Stechschulte. I think he's a very good narrator, I just don't think he's a good fit here.
- His little boy voice isn't great, and really takes me out of the story.
- Plus he sounds too polished for this post-apocalypse.
(2) "Query: How does the never to be differ from what never was?"
- I suppose "never to be" has precedent as previously existing.

11/15/2023 - 48%

(1) There's a real timeless quality to this. If you took away all mentions of modern items and asked me to identify an era, I would classify this as distinctly medieval.
- There's a very "Lone Wolf and Cub" or knight and squire feel to it.
(2) All the cannibalism is, of course, rooted in reality but has a very zombie/vampire aura, so this feels like a horror fantasy.

11/17/2023 - 67%

(1) "When your dreams are of some world that never was or of some world that never will be and you are happy again then you will have given up."
- Of all lines to get a callback, it's one I just mentioned!
- I suppose memories and fantasies are like opium in this post-apocalypse. By implication, opening your eyes to cold, oppressive reality is living clean and sober.

11/18/2023 - 90%

(1) In very much the same way Shakespeare is better when performed/read aloud, this book's particular narrative poetry is better when read on the page.
- Listening to the audiobook, it just doesn't have the same punch as my first time around when I read the physical book.
- There's a lot of simple, stark and repetitive dialogue that, frankly, sounds dull read aloud.

11/19/2023 - 99%

(1) "It's okay, Papa. You don't have to talk. It's okay."
- Probably the most repetitive piece of dialogue, in a book full of repetition, is the word "okay," back-and-forth between father and son. Searching the text, it comes up 195 times.
- It all builds to this one line though, the book's climax, when roles reverse and the son becomes his father's protector.

“Just beyond the high gap in the mountains they stood and looked out over the great gulf to the south where the country as far as they could see was burned away, the blackened shapes of rock standing out of the shoals of ash and billows of ash rising up and blowing downcountry through the waste. The track of the dull sun moving unseen beyond the murk.”

Written with such sublime prose, The Road is completely different from anything I have read before. It is tragic yet somehow simple and lovely. Through the bleak and desolate landscape of a post-apocalyptic world, a father and son make a treacherous journey of survival towards an unnamed coast. Not knowing whether life there too has been snuffed out, the two persist together with an enduring bond of love for one another and a glimmer of hope for the existence of light beyond the darkness of their surroundings.

“The cold and the silence. The ashes of the late world carried on the bleak and temporal winds to and fro in the void. Carried forth and scattered and carried forth again. Everything uncoupled from its shoring. Unsupported in the ashen air. Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief. If only my heart were stone.”

I felt completely drawn into this journey. I had to reach whatever destination it was that father and son trudged towards; I had to know what would happen to them. Despite the fact that I felt the result could be nothing short of ominous, I still had a fragile sense of hope that there was something better ahead for them. McCarthy did not divide this book into chapters; whether this was his intention or not it seemed like a clever way of making the reader carry on one grim page after another much like the pair were forced to take one harsh step after another. But, how does one carry on through such hopelessness? Does good always overpower evil?

“… he would raise his weeping eyes and see him standing there in the road looking back at him from some unimaginable future, glowing in that waste like a tabernacle.”

I may not recommend this book if you are in a dismal mood. However, if you are feeling relatively poised and enjoy exquisite language then certainly pick this one up. This was my first Cormac McCarthy novel and I fully intend to read another.

Probabil, cel mai bun dintre romanele lui McCarthy. Celelalte nu prea mi-au plăcut.

Într-o lume aproape pustie, acoperită de cenușile unui incediu (atomic ?) devastator, două personaje fără nume (tatăl și băiatul lui) merg spre sud. Tatăl e convins că acolo, departe, lîngă ocean, se află „cei buni”. Nimic din ceea ce se întîmplă nu-i justifică această credință. Și, totuși, bărbatul și copilul își urmează neabătut drumul. Uneori, întîlnesc tîlhari, oameni care și-au pierdut mințile, sălbăticiți de foame. Se ascund de ei cum pot, în păduri calcinate. Clădirile sînt goale, magazinele au fost jefuite de mult. De puține ori au noroc să găsească ceva de mîncare și de băut. Au pornit prin octombrie, merg fără încetare; e din ce în ce mai frig. Văzduhul e opac. Plouă cu stropi întunecați, murdari, pînă și ninsoarea e neagră.

Bărbatul se întreabă adesea dacă mai există un Dumnezeu; e cuprins de îndoieli, deznădejdea îl aduce în pragul blasfemiei: „Cînd va veni timpul? Cînd va veni timpul, nu va mai fi timp. Acum e timpul. Blesteamă-l pe Dumnezeu şi mori”. Pe bărbat îl ține în viață doar gîndul că undeva, în sudul țării, va întîlni un grup de „aleși”, de oameni care au rămas oameni. Cititorul se întreabă, firește, ce-l susține în această credință oarbă. Greu de spus. Poate gîndul că nimic nu e absolut, nici măcar Răul (deși, în Drumul, răul pare a domni pretutindeni); poate gîndul că s-a păstrat totuși ceva opus Răului, ceva care să semene întru cîtva cu Binele; poate gîndul că acolo unde există măcar un inocent (băiatul său), există și o posibilitate de salvare.

Cînd ajung la ocean, bărbatul mai are puterea să înoate pînă la o epavă și să aducă mîncare și haine. Dar boala i s-a agravat. Nu mai are mult de trăit. Într-o dimineață, copilul îl găsește rece, fără suflare. După trei zile, un străin se apropie de băiat și-l ia cu el. Bănuim că face parte din grupul celor buni. Dar nimic nu e sigur...

Stilul lui Cormac McCarthy e substantival, cu puține verbe; dialogul e laconic, repetitiv. Copilul vrea să înțeleagă ce se întîmplă, tatăl lui nu are răspunsuri. Imaginile ținutului acoperit de cenușă sînt puternice, greu de uitat.

Două pasaje din acest roman ambiguu și fără soluție la care ar merita, poate, să medităm:

„În sinea lui, îşi spuse că, în istoria lumii, pedepsele au întrecut la număr crimele, dar gîndul acesta nu avea darul să-l mîngîie”.

„Ieşi în lumina cenuşie, se opri, văzu preţ de-o clipă adevărul absolut al lumii. Rotirea rece, de neoprit a pămîntului infestat. Întuneric implacabil. Cîinii negri ai soarelui, care alergau. Vidul negru, zdrobitor al universului. Şi, undeva, două animale hăituite, tremurînd ca nişte vulpi în bîrlogul lor. Timp împrumutat şi lume împrumutată, şi ochi împrumutaţi cu care să o plîngă”.