Comment by cellsstudio
8 hours ago
Side question: how grim is the the Road? I've been meaning to pick it up because I love No Country but I've heard that the Road is just bleaker than bleak.
8 hours ago
Side question: how grim is the the Road? I've been meaning to pick it up because I love No Country but I've heard that the Road is just bleaker than bleak.
It's a very grim book, but it's also fundamentally about the goodness of people. The setting and the plot are bleak, but its outlook is, in a way, hopeful.
At least that's my takeaway. If someone else found it purely depressing I would understand, but I feel differently.
> how grim is the the Road?
Not all that grim, at least compared to some of his others. Grimmer than No Country for Old Men, less so than Blood Meridian or Outer Dark. There is at least one very grim scene, though, and maybe some others I'm not thinking of at the moment. Been a pretty long time since I read it.
Grimness aside, I'd rank it simpler, at the level of reading difficulty, than some of his others.
It's a good book but personally, I don't think it's among his best.
I read it when it came out in a day or two.
Then I tried to read it again a few years later but my boy was about that age and I could not put myself through what reading it was taking out of me.
Our son was about 3yo when I read it, and I couldn't put it down. To me, it is a story of the father standing by his son no matter what. A really immersive reading experience. A father-son exchange that touched me:
I do think McCarthy's own family life felt, well, "controversial" in the light of all this. But, at least he didn't seem to justify himself about it. IIRC, on not paying child support after divorce, he has said "with what?" in one of his rare interviews.
I'm not a native English speaker, and I've had writerly ambitions myself, and his style feels like magic to me (hey, an accidental cormac-y polysyndeton here!). But... yeah. Thinking about the way many poets "manage" to put art before family life (obviously, they can't help it) is a good reflection of me myself being just a layperson.
But he is a true master, obviously. Could be that I liked "All The Pretty Horses" even more than "The Road". Unfortunately "Suttree" isn't translated to my language yet.
> Could be that I liked "All The Pretty Horses" even more than "The Road".
Have you read the others in the Border Trilogy, The Crossing and Cities of the Plain? If you liked Pretty Horses, you'll probably like them, too. Pretty sure I've read all three twice.
Very bleak, but nonetheless a must read. Wouldn't recommend reading it during a depressive episode or existential crisis though.
Personally, the opposite: suddenly my own world looks bright and inviting by comparison.
It is bleaker than bleak but incredibly rewarding. Unlike, say, Child of God where you are wallowing in filth, in The Road there is humanity and warmth and love it’s just the environment that is hostile.
I didn't like No Country for old men. It started off great but lost me toward the middle.
The Road, however, is a classic.
Not that grim. As a dad it brought me to tears. It’s so good.
Bleaker than bleak is an accurate description but it actually ends on what I would consider to be a hopeful note, a moment of true kindness. Worth the read.
It’s been a decade but from what I remember, it is very dark. It was my first McCarthy book and have been hooked since.
As grim as it gets, with rare glimpses of light.