Reviews Literature / The Road

Just finished it. I am stunned, STUNNED that it won a pulitzer. Apparently the pulitzers are as trite and pretentious and utterly unimaginative as the Oscars. No plot arc, no character development, no ending, nothing. I can't help but think "What the f*** was the point of that?"

Facepalm

I haven't even read the book and it looks like someone missed the point.

I disagree, I thought it was a wonderful book.

The writing style was questionable and it was difficult to tell who was saying what at certain points, but it's far from terrible. People have done worse things with punctuation and more bizarre things with language and still been viewed as good authors. If anything, the writing style reflects the situation in the world - bleak, beige, hopeless. Ever think that the style might be a reflection of the deterioration of language should the world ever end? That's what I thought, anywho.

The book isn't supposed to be an exciting action adventure with gangs and soldiers and explosions - it's SUPPOSED to be about the journey of the man and the boy and how, I think anyway, society would go to hell if an apocalypse ever came to be. It's about the struggle for survival and whatever gets you to keep on surviving, not gang warfare. No plot, no ending, nothing? Again, it's a post-apocalypse novel. If the end of the world ever did happen, that's all there'd be; nothing. That was the point, I imagine.

Using Star Wars as a comparison is a bit of a stretch - Star Wars does what it says on the tin, it's about a sci-fi war. Of course you'd expect it to be about the more interesting characters and action battles and the like (nevermind that the Expanded Universe with all of the 'boring characters' is actually fairly exciting in itself). If that's the kind of thing you wanted when picking up The Road, perhaps you would've been better off reading something else. Someone DID miss the point.

Wait, you wanted to know more about the soldiers off to some battle? The soldiers who, it is strongly implied, are bringing pregnant women with them in order to use their offspring as a convenient source of food? Those soldiers? They're not supposed to be a 'cool thing'. They're a horrible threat, both physically and morally, to the extent that the reader as well as the protagonists wants to avoid them.

It's not a book without its faults, but it is a genuinely good read. If you want a post apocalyptic sci-fi adventure however, then you certainly should look elsewhere.

I agree with you, the book is one of the worst book's I have ever read. Many people believe it is wonderful because of the stance it takes with the relationship between the father and son and their never ending quest for survival. However, after one looks past this layer of the book they find nothing else underneath, the language that is used is elementary, the dialog is poorly written and contains faulty contractions. The book is uneventful and it is fairly easy to guess what happens in the end. I know this book is supposed to be emotional and heart-wrentching and it was for about five minutes, then it just got boring.

I agree that it's a fairly poor book, though not for these reasons.

Basically, Cormac McCarthy writes a run-of-the-mill post-apocalyptic sci-fi book, doesn't call it that, and wins a Pulitzer. The almost poetic writing is the only redeeming factor the book. Honestly, the expertly-written Purple Prose conceals well the fact that the rest of the story sucks. But no matter what, the lack of punctuation is absolutely pretentious. I don't care if Cormac McCarthy considers himself James Joyce, it adds nothing to the story. I was genuinely stirred by some of the writing, but it is still not Pulitzer material. No message, no plot, no ending, ridiculous characters and dialogue, and a general lack of creativity. There is no suspense, and the lack of hope through the whole thing makes the story utterly predictable. Immediately after the encounter with the cannibals, the entire story is basically over. McCarthy would have done well to just end it there and left the book a bit shorter but at least it would feel like it had a purpose and plot. The characters' struggle still wouldn't have been over, but it would have ended at an important point, whereas the story just drops the story at pretty much a random point.

—Note: I am the author of the review writing under a different name—

@82.22.209.106

I went in hoping that the book would have been an interesting post apocalyptic story along the same lines as "A Canticle for Leibowitz" or "The Stand" or "Snowfall". So yes, I was looking for a more adventurous/thoughtful post apocalyptic story. I can understand why people would like the Road. The story of a parent and child keeping together against all odds even during the bleakest of times usually makes for a good — although formulaic — plot, but just not this time.

I used Star Wars as an example because it also contained two characters who, if their adventure was focused on, would have led to a very boring story. The two droids, like the two characters in the Road, are off to the side of far more interesting things. In the Road the leads are never truly part of the action or the events occurring world wide.

@Dookie2

I agree with you. The writing style was absolutely unnecessary and the plot did drag on for far too long before abruptly ending. This book did not deserve the Pulitzer it won.

I thought George Lucas tried to make Star Wars like that, focusing on R2 and 3PO. Like The Hidden Fortress.

... Wow... you totally missed the point of that book. The run on sentances, the lack of names, places and colours, it's all intentional. The author is trying to spell out to you, through using the things people grip on to in other books, what does and doesn't matter in the post-apocalyptic future. If there's no one to call your name, you don't need one. If there's no one in most cities around you then they don't need names either. If there's no one to read your story they styling it properly is pointless. Keen in mind that the few times in book where numbers are mentioned are the number of men they see on the road and the number of bullets. If it can't kill you or save you, it goes unmentioned.

The book starts with both main characters beyond despair and even goes to lengths to show how the father sees his son as something divine, because were he anything less than a god he won't be worth the effort of keeping alive. The books ends with the father completing his role of educating his son and leaving him in the hands of people who can keep him alive, passing on the torch, hence the whole keeping the fire alive motife.

It's ok to read a book and not understand it, its ok to read a book and not like, but don't assume that just cos you can't understand something that it's not good. That book was one of the best things I'v read in recent years and I think it deserves every bit of praise it gets.

Art isn't an excuse for crappy writing, ever.

I put up a review myself. I think it explains exactly why I like the book.

It's not about the apocalypse. It's about the father and the son. The whole book is designed to focus on nothing else. Proper punctuation and less bland dialogue would distract from that.

If you read it for the post-apocalypse, too bad. Mc Carthy is not a sci-fi writer, nor should he be.

Okay, speaking as a fan of the book again, I think I can understand where the haters are coming from, somewhat. I'm presently suffering through the book "Speak" by Laurie Halse Anderson. Like The Road, there are no real chapters in it, and the writing style is very unorthodox. The only difference is that Speak fails miserably (despite predating The Road by a few years). While you can have your qualms about the bland dialogue, at least the man doesn't slip into goddamn NEWSPEAK like the main character of Speak does.

Also, regarding the Star Wars comparison, I think that would actually make for a pretty funny book. Think about it for a while.

What is it with this website and Completely Missing The Point about The Road? You think it would have deserved the Pulitzer if it was more like Star Wars??? It doesn't have a plot??? There are lots of different kinds of plots, and not conforming to a typical and cliche formula makes something uncreative? Of the types of literary conflicts that consist of plot, the book didn't focus on Man vs Man, although it was there in the form of the other people who threaten the man and the boy. But there was also Man vs Nature, Man vs Self, and Man vs God, which held much of the main focus, as the man and the boy struggle for survival in a ruined earth, the man struggles with himself and whether or not he is being a good parent to the boy when he doesn't even know how to deal with what's going on, the man struggles with his faith in God in the face of the horror of their existence, even as he tries to find God in his purpose of keeping his son alive. Um, no message?

I think this is just a basic problem of being in the wrong demographic. Which is not to say you shouldn't read it, just don't complain about it not being something it never aspired to be. It was not supposed to be an action scifi story like Star Wars. It was not supposed to be a work of popular genre fiction like The Stand. That's not the kind of writer Mc Carthy is. That's not the demographic he's trying to appeal to.

Continuing what 82.81.144.52 said: The lack of punctuation, grammar and apostrophes wasn't to annoy the reader, it was to remind the reader that this isn't the world we live in now. Every time the reader saw "cant" instead of "can't," it was jarring, just like how the world seemed to the protagonist. Taking out things we are comfortable with in the novel was McCarty's way of forcing us to feel—at least a shred of—what the protagonist felt.

I personally loved The Road. It wasn't supposed to be an apocalyptic novel—you know, given the fact that the apocalypse wasn't shown—but an analysis of two characters' relationship in a setting that happens to be post-apocalyptic. The setting drives the relationship, but it isn't the story.

I am astonished that anybody can consider this anything less than a masterpiece. It explores the human condition in great depth and the characters are developed brilliantly, as is there relationship. I despise the people who say that 'it has no plot' or 'no punctuation = terrible'. If you want a murder-mystery or something with a crystal clear cliched plot, go and read the likes of Dan Brown or something equally vacuous. This book is about the relationship between father and son and their struggle to survive with their morals intact in a world with no morals. They are struggling to maintain hope in a desolate wasteland that doesnt allow hope. They battle on whilst everybody else has given up. Also, Mc Carthy doesn't use punctuation because he feels it is unnecessary and clutters up the page and I agree. His books are beautiful and are about the prose and not the bloody punctuation. It is not an error, it is an intelligent writing style. The dialogue is not bland, it is perfect and, in my opinion, how two survivors of an apocalypse would talk. This book is just about survival and the characters life stories should not be explained. There shouldnt be details. If you cannot appreciate the staggering, breathtaking beauty of this book then go and read Dan Brown. This book is staggering and I will never forget it. I am currently working through all of his books and they are all outstanding. For people who appreciate truly outstanding literature, read Mc Carthy's books. He deserves every bit of praise he receives and he also deserves to get the Nobel. I'm 14 and I can understand this book and appreciate the prose, dialogue and cope with the lack of punctuation. Please don't be so narrow-minded, it is so frustrating trying to explain why your grumbles are just wrong without just writing that Cormac Mc Carthy is a genius and a master. Deal with it.

I read the book. It can be summed up as "Man and his son have hard life in post apocalyptic America, go to the sea, find it's no better than anywhere else, man dies, stranger promises to take care of boy."

Some call the book 'masterful'. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. It was a decent study in crafting an environment (there's only one setting throughout the entire book, though they are travelling. The sea may as well have been the road) but that was the only merit I found in it.

Of course there's no adventure plot. There's not supposed to be an adventure plot. The whole point of the damn book was to undermine the awesome heroic adventures you see in a typical post-apocalyptic story, which are all about how *cool* it would be to outlive the end of the world and reignite the flame and bring back hope and all that jazz.

The Road is about the complete and total lack of that. There is no adventure. There is no hope. There's just death and despair and emptiness.

It's about embracing the truth that sometimes that's all there is — sometimes everybody dies and there is nothing left for the survivors but the bleak, grueling, painful and, yes, BORING work of continuing to survive — and staring that unflinchingly in the face.

It makes me genuinely sad that so many people's reaction to that is outright rejection, throwing the book against a wall and demanding a GOOD story with ROBOTS and PIRATES and PIRATES SHOOTING ROBOTS and other such zany entertaining distractions from the painful reality of what a nuclear apocalypse would really mean for the world.

Also:

<i>I used Star Wars as an example because it also contained two characters who, if their adventure was focused on, would have led to a very boring story. The two droids, like the two characters in the Road, are off to the side of far more interesting things. In the Road the leads are never truly part of the action or the events occurring world wide. </i>

This is part of the point. Real people who survive tragedies are rarely part of the "action" or aware of or capable of impacting the "events occurring worldwide".

There isn't any action in The Road, anyway — that's part of the point, that whatever collapsed civilization it happened a long time ago and is impossible to reverse, and that all that's happening worldwide now is atrocity piled atop atrocity that, if you were in the man's shoes, you wouldn't want to learn more about or be a greater part of even if you could.

I humbly submit that this is more true to the experience of real people who go through real tragedies and disasters than most post-apocalyptic stories are.

"entertaining distractions"? Like the reasons we read books?

Oh my God, I can't believe there are people who don't appreciate this. It is a book of brilliant proportions. The reason why I loved it is BECAUSE of the many reasons why people on here hate it.

SPOILERS AHOY.

You say it's poorly written? I say it's written simplistically, but with purpose. As the descriptions of the current state of the world demonstrates, there is essentially nothing. There is no society, there is barely any food, the majority of the world has lost their sanity, every now and then nature bursts into flames and the leftover ash falls from the sky like snow. The text mirrors that. That is all there is written BECAUSE that is all that is written in the bleak world of The Road. Now then, read that "elementary" text with the feeling of nothingness and hopelessness that I felt. You say that it uses the father and son's relationship as a vehicle for a message about how important living is? I see it as the only source of joy found in the book that is tragically lost by the end. Despite all of the terrible conditions and the fact that the woman had given up, the man and the boy are still loving and kind-hearted unlike the implied majority of the population who resorted to cannibalism. I say go back and read it. If you don't appreciate it the second time around then pick up Twilight or some other shit you might be into.

I agree, it's absolutely godawful. It deserves none of the praise it's ever gotten.

67.173.179.102 - while I think that's a fine interpretation (and I also rather enjoyed the book myself - not sure it's the near-perfect book everyone proclaimed it as, but it's a damn fine novel), Cormac Mc Carthy has always written in that stark, minimal fashion, so saying it's written the way it is due to the setting or tone isn't quite correct, I feel. It's really the other way around - most of Mc Carthy's stories tend to these adopt bleak, desolate backgrounds, and of his books The Road is just the most extreme and probably the best fit for it.

So yes, I'm in the middle group. While I think it's a great book and would happiily recommend it to others, I can understand people not liking it and don't quite get how a Pulizter came of it.

Stick to your Star Wars Expanded Universe novels if you want Space Opera. It's a book about a relationship and personal struggle.

I can't say I loved this book, but I enjoyed it. I am a self-proclaimed Grammar Nazi, and I didn't find the stylistic choices to be distracting. The writing was designed to be an extension of the world: sparse and utilitarian, the comforts and fussiness of modern life gone. I can understand why a lot of people didn't like it, but I liked seeing the writing style used to tell to the story. The book was understated and thought-provoking, a love story between a father and son. It's not supposed to be Road Warrior, except a book.

And for those of you complaining about the dialogue: Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic.

If this story is supposed to highlight the relationship of a father and son in a desparate setting why was it necessary for Mc Carthy to set this book in a post apocalyptic setting? If "The Road" was only concerned with this theme then it could have been just as suitable having the two characters lost in the woods with a dwindling bag of supplies and the threat of starvation. I'm sorry "The Road" is a classic example of an accomplished writer dipping his toes into a different established genre in order to see how it feels. The deficiencies seen in "The Road" for an established Science Fiction reader is that the story is not very engaging and dull when compared to other work in this genre such as "A Canticle for Lebowitz". If Mc Carthy was not already an established author then, in the opinion of this reader, the book would have been overlooked and ignored. The one thing this book is noteworthy for is that it exposed readers to a post apocalyptic setting that would normally not read a book about a post apocalyptic setting. I think much of the hype that was generated around this work is due to the post apocalyptic setting and the fact the a socially acceptable piece of fiction (Oprah's book club recommended this book) was introduced to the populace containing candid descriptions of cannibalism. I think where the work fails is that it does not inspire a reader to seek out and read more examples of post apocalyptic fiction. The real litmus for the supporters of this work is to ask if they feel the need to read this book a second time. My opinion will always be that there is little reason for a second reading of Mc Carthy's "The Road". What more could you possibly squeeze, what more could you possibly gain from the bleak depressing piece of post apocalyptic fiction?

"If anything, the writing style reflects the situation in the world - bleak, beige, hopeless."

For the record, there are experimental stylists I like (Mc Carthy) and ones I hate (Joyce). It takes all kinds, as the treacly cliché informs us.

However, I've never been one to believe in style violating basic rules of composition, like the mandate that prose be simple and direct. The best prose writers are always, always, always simple and direct. Posturing as if your violation has some sort of aesthetic rationale is just that: rationalization. You can't make your prose confusing because we live in a confusing world. It doesn't work that way, in my opinion. That's not style, it's just bad writing.

That is, if it's bad, as it is in the case of Joyce, in my opinion. Less so in Mc Carthy's case, but that may be because I'm so used to it by now.

"I thought George Lucas tried to make Star Wars like that, focusing on R2 and 3PO. Like The Hidden Fortress."

You are mistaken. They were not the focus of the story, but rather framing devices. Like Nick Callaway in "The Great Gatsby." No one could possibly believe he and not Gatsby was the protagonist.

"Wow... you totally missed the point of that book. The run on sentances, the lack of names, places and colours, it's all intentional"

that's the defense people argue, but I wonder, does it make any difference? Is writing, painting, sculpting, designing, etc. badly on purpose somehow make it less bad? No.

"Proper punctuation and less bland dialogue would distract from that."

What?!?!?!

"Also, Mc Carthy doesn't use punctuation because he feels it is unnecessary and clutters up the page and I agree"

Well, then, it's you, he, stylists like him, and the Pulitzer committee against the world, more or less. I wouldn't have thought punctuation needed defending, but I guess you can convince yourself of anything granting you're pumped full of enough hot pseudo-aesthetic air.

"It wasn't supposed to be an apocalyptic novel—you know, given the fact that the apocalypse wasn't shown"

There's a word for what it did show, namely "post-apocalyptic." It happens to be a massive subgenre. Unlike other entries, which live and die in the sci-fi and related ghettos, "The Road" lifted itself up to respectability by being almost impenetrably (to me, at least) unreadable prose, ignoring stylistic conventions and basic grammar, and displaying bland characters and an even blander plot. In short, by reproducing the defining qualities of every supposedly great work of the boring modern era.

Remember True Art Is Incomprehensible, Angsty, and Boring.

"Cormac Mc Carthy has always written in that stark, minimal fashion"

Its always been stark and minimalist, yes. But I don't think the fashion of "The Road" is comparable to Mc Carthy entries I enjoy, like "Blood Meridian." Maybe I'm nitpicking, but I see a world of difference.

ah, this review is always good for a laugh.

Punctuation and action would have taken away from the tone of the story. The lack of "proper" grammar like punctuation and such impresses the "world without order" feel, and action would have taken away from the suspenseful desperation present so many times. It's not supposed to be a book full of Crowning Moment Of Awesomes or anything.

The book deserved every reward it got; it was incredible. The fact that it wasn't your kind of book doesn't make it terrible.

Shall I just assume that everyone reading this review knows what a load of bullshit it is?

So, in short, if you liked this book you're a fan of a poorly-written, meandering, ostensibly-deep Grim Dark piece of crap, and if you hated it you just can't appreciate ART and should stick with kiddy fair that has cliche things like "narrative" and "punctuation."

Guys, it's a book, and we're edging dangerously close to Hatedom/Fan Hater territory here. Can we please try to be civil?