Yesterday, I completed my world-wind reading of The Road. A book group that I recently joined was set to discuss the book, unfortunately, the tax man interfered and we did not meet. Still, I need to discuss this book. Please forgive, I’ve not written a book report in years.
McCarthy’s story tells of the journey of a father and son, a young boy of unknown age, in a several years post-apocalypse America. A world consumed by cold and dark images with colors mostly limited to shades of gray. Color is added only with literal fire and the fire the pair carry with them: the figurative fire of faith. Other instances of color: red of an aged Coca-cola can, yellow toy truck, butane fire of orange and blue.
The grammar and structure bother me, terribly. The narrative lacks quotation marks and apostrophes, but only in some contractions, not all. The author included no chapter headings. I suppose that I understand that the pair journey to places unknown looking for people (the good guys) unknown and without a specific location or plan. The journey is of necessity bare bones, unadorned by excess. These explain and justify the grammatical and structural omissions.
The book’s narrative is written primarily from the third person omniscient voice. There is one paragraph on page 87 written in first person for the father. Is this one paragraph for the reader to understand that the boy is also the omniscient voice? Or is there some other purpose? I implore someone to explain this.
Aside from the above, the book is well written. Some images disturb and frighten, but it is post-apocalyptic. I was drawn into the story in spite of aesthetic concerns.
5 Comments
April 16, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Reading the book really was a journey of its own wasn’t it? I sometimes wish I was endowed with the sort of confidence and cache that would allow an author to discard grammatical conventions. Here’s a link to my review of the book. I hadn’t picked up on the color theme, but had noted that one first person paragraph. The paragraph is obviously important, but it’s significance escapes me. It was jarring in the midst of the otherwise sterile narrative.
http://stephenpeterson.wordpress.com/
April 16, 2008 at 1:10 pm
A friend emailed me this:
To pick one small topic, I think the physical structure of the book (lack of punctuation, inconsistency of punctuation, fragments, all those things we’re taught in composition NOT to do because they interfere with accurate interpretation of intent) is very, very deliberate–even to the point of putting in some apostrophes and leaving some out. These two are living in a world in which nothing is consistent, nothing can be relied upon, everything is disjointed. The two main characters are struggling to find enough food and water simply to keep their bodies alive, so thoughts would necessarily be shorthanded if they existed at all. The prose also communicates that sense of unease and desperation to ANY reader–whether that reader actually consciously grasps all the ticky grammar/compostion rules or not. The style is disturbing, unsettling, unreliable, slippery–but at the same time, did you realize how quickly you were reading the book?&nb sp; I’ve read reviews or responses from people who read the book in one evening; I did it in one plus another hour or 2 the next day. Despite the unconventionality of McCarthy’s usage, he whips the reader along, and I can’t help admiring the skill it took to construct such breathless, painful speed of consumption of a book that really should have slowed the reader down. I do admit that when I first started reading, I had to take a deep breath and focus in so that I could grasp what he was saying because I so believe in good usage and construction–but I really do see what he did as part of what he was trying to create: it’s all of a piece, and if it were cleanly written, it wouldn’t have the effect it ultimately does.
August 15, 2008 at 11:07 am
I’m a part of an online book discussion group, and we’re discussing this book today:
http://booknookclub.blogspot.com/2008/08/discussion-road-by-cormac-mccarthy.html
November 5, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Thank you for asking the question re: page 87! I have been trying to figure this one out myself. The way I read it after getting to the end was that this wasn’t the boy or the man, but the tracker at the end of the book who adopts the boy. The reason for me thinking this way was (and I’m sorry not to have the passage in front of me while I’m paraphrasing) that the the first person speaks of the boy and the dog in reverse order (from what was presented previously in the book). The boy is fixated on the other child he sees in the street and only asks about the dog in passing as they leave. In that passage, the voice says that the boy doesn’t remember the child, but mentions the dog regularly.
My thought was that this passage marks the point where the man and the boy begin to be followed from a distance by the tracker and his family. Would love to hear another opinion on this one if anyone else stumbles on this thread.
August 26, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Hey there, not sure if you’ll look for an answer almost a year later, but I just finished the book and that’s exactly how I read p.87. As soon as I finished the book I thought that first-person narrative was the other man. Also, there’s a woman in that paragraph, the mother of that other boy.