I finished listening to Cormac McCarthy’s, The Road. I listened to the first half at work on Thursday and was shaken up all day. My initial reaction was that it was the Great American Novel. It isn’t. It’s a stunning piece of literature, but it’s not what I almost feared it was going to be. The book has such incredible atmosphere and is able to create such a not-cheap-like-a-Chuck-Palahniuk visceral reaction that I couldn’t imagine it being anything less than mega-extraordinary. Instead it’s just extraordinary, which is nothing to shake a stick at.
McCarthy is quite possibly the most powerful writer I’ve ever experienced. It took me weeks to read Blood Meridian because I couldn’t read more than twenty pages a day. I would re-read passages over and over and then slam the book closed (difficult to do properly with a paperback) in overpowering anxiety and horror and awe. Listening to The Road rather than reading it might have had something to do with my getting through it in two sittings. Perhaps not having to look at the words allowed me to think of it more as an experience than an assult. Or maybe it was the kind of experience I had reading Coetze’s, Disgrace, which I plowed through in a few hours because I just needed to get it over with (though it’s another book that easily makes it into my top ten novels). Either way, I couldn’t turn away. The two characters were so real and engaging that I needed to continue to share in their absolutely horrific experience. The book is covered in the ever falling soot that his characters breath in in their nuclear winter, but the love between father and son is honest and sincere without ever being sappy or sentimental. You want to read just to experience their love and connection.
I’ve read that McCarthy wrote this book for his son and I can’t imagine it coming from anywhere else. You hear talk of “books for men, by men” and they usually are filled with ridiculous stereotypes (even when their great books, such as Moby Dick (the book I read over and over)), but The Road is a book for men for reasons that have nothing to do with violence and power and bravery; it could only be written by a man who either has a son or who has a father. In fact, it could probably only be written by a father. Women have every right and good reason to read this book (it’s a great story, filled with incredible writing, that offers a great deal of gender neutral insight into being human and being animal), but it’s really meant for boys with fathers and fathers with boys.
I know I promised less writing about books and movies and music, but I had to say something about this book. I’ll do my best to take this experience and craft something closer to an interesting essay.
My days at work have been spent reconciling a general ledger account for all of January and February. This means that I get to listen to a lot of radio and audio books. I'm currently listening to Ann Patchett's Bel Canto. I like the book, but the first twenty pages (I'm guessing since I'm listening not reading) are sublime. It's hypnotizing. The narration travels from person to person, but not in Mrs. Dalloway way. The description of a short series of events flows unlike anything else I've read. Next time you're in a library or bookstore pick it up and read the first dozen pages.
Much of the book is about music, and it's some of the finest writing about music I've come across. Here we're dealing with the sublimity of the world's finest soprano. Music plays unifier and pacifier for a group of terrorists and their hostages. I'm always excited to come across great music writing. I guess it's because I'm so affected by music and it plays such an important part of my life. Having some one else describe their experience of art is endlessly fascinating. I often find it difficult to express the impact of music on myself and others. I'm not always sure how worth it it is to describe art (I'm all about the experience, but I'll save you my theories about art for now), but when some one like Patchett does it, I'm all for it.
I'm going to see Pan's Labyrinth tonight. Wish me luck.
