WE DISAGREE ON 'THE ROAD'

My buddy Kem thinks "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy is a "nearly perfect novel" and that it is Cormac's "most hopeful novel," he told me on the phone the other day. I invited him to post something here, but he didn't want to.

I had written him the following e-mail: 

In "The Road," nature is gone, virtually destroyed.

There are no birds in the sky, no fish in the streams and no fruit on the trees.

The world is reduced to ashes and ruins.

Most people are dead.

Of the few that are left, some are killing children to eat them.

How is that hopeful?

On the phone, Kem said that he loved the language of the novel, the sheer brilliance of the writing, and the fact that the father does everything he can to protect his son.

I guess Kem focused on that one ray of hope. I suppose he found that one thing even more hopeful in contrast to other characters in the novel who turn to violence and become like animals to survive.

Also, Kem read it as a parable, not as a realistic story. I guess that means he didn't believe the horrific imagery. I guess that is why he didn't get depressed by the devastation.

OK, so what does this prove? That Kem and I are both nuts? Maybe. But more likely that reasonable people can disagree. That one man's meat is another man's poisson, as my friend Andy used to say in Europe. (Poisson is French for fish.)

As Kem said, some critics think "Moby Dick" is a great novel, and others don't. (I do, BTW.)

I suppose there are always people who disagree about works of art, who have wildly different sensibilities and tastes.

I never understand why everyone doesn't agree with me. Anyway, I think you should check it out for yourself. Get it from the library, so it doesn't cost anything. That's what I usually do.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

'THE ROAD' - THE END FOR ME

I finally gave up on Cormac McCarthy's exercise in grand guignol, "The Road," a horror story cum fairy tale.

I got to Page 86 this time. To me, the book is self-indulgent, with nothing but pain and no reward for the reader. No valid theme that I could find.

Here are my notes:

Page 10 – Manipulative baloney: talking to God, telling the kid you remember what you want to forget and forget what you want to remember. Not true. The mind blanks out trauma.

Inflicting this much pain on the reader is misusing your power as a writer.

The father recalls his lovely bride and that makes him feel better. Nothing like a little co-dependence to gird up your loins. Hurray for neurosis. 

The lake memory with his father is great. Well written. The guy can write. He perverts his talent here, as he did for different purposes in "No Country For Old Men," a poorly plotted potboiler that made him a lot of money.

Page 27 – Sometimes Cormac indulges himself in terrible lines:

“Not all dying words are true and this blessing is no less real for being shorn of its ground.”

What the hell does that mean? It’s true even though it’s not true? 

Hemingway said you have to have a built-in crap detector to be a good writer. This is just the opposite. Cormac is not detecting it, he's shoveling it.

The whole book is self-indulgent. It isn't devoted to an objective truth, like “Suttree” and “Blood Meridian.” By that I mean it doesn't create a world that seems real, and that resembles our world, and it does not provide insights into human nature and into the world at large. In “The Road,” there is no insight. 

Page 60 -- The story is episodic. One melodrama after another. A bad guy grabs the boy and holds a knife to his throat. Why? Because Cormac so wishes.  Because the melodrama jacks us up. Oh, Lordy, reader, there are bad people out there.

We know, Cormac, we know.

This book is part poetry and part “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” And all bullshit, as far as I'm concerned. Obviously, it made me mad.

I think that as a writer you have an obligation to your readers, not to bullshit them, not to lie to them, not to create a meaningless world.

Some of the writing is good, of course. But the story is an elaborate exercise in nightmare. What is the point of all this horror? To torture the reader? 

As I said before, this is a kind of torture porn.

Where did they get the water to drink? Isn’t it all full of ash? How do they filter it? By magic, I guess.

Page 86 - I hate this book. An occasional good scene, and parts remind me of “Blood Meridian,” derivative, borrowing his own stuff. This is like a horror movie. Constant blood and gore. A relentless downer. Not what art should be about, I don’t think. Should be called “The Toad.”

23-May-11

The book has no sense of reward. It’s saying over and over, life is shit, you are shit, we’re all shit, we’re all going to die, and life is pointless.

I don’t see any point in reading this crap.

I wrote to my friend Joy -- I started reading it so we could talk about it -- and asked her if I could beg off. She let me off the hook. Thank God.

(SPOILER ALERT)

I skipped ahead to read the last few pages, where the father dies and the son finds new people to go on with. What bullshit. How convenient. How nice. Oh, goody, Cormac, there is a ray of hope.

At the very end, there is some kind of homage to nature. I guess this is Cormac’s self-indulgent way of warning us that we are destroying the environment. We knew that already, Cormac .

I’d say the purpose of this book is to transfer anxiety and pain from the writer to the reader.

No, thanks, Cormac. You can keep it.

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

BORGES vs. CORMAC McCARTHY

This is truly a clash of titans. It never occurred to me before to compare Jorge Luis Borges and Cormac McCarthy.

They are very different writers, but I think it might be interesting to compare their minds. That is what you engage when you read.

Borges's mind is like an infinite palace of countless rooms. Some rooms are libraries filled with unforeseen books by myriad authors. Other rooms hold chests of jewels, like those you imagine pirates once buried in the Caribbean.

All in all, Borges is a magical and transcendent experience. How did one man contain so many mysteries?

It is impossible to conceive of such a writer, to understand him all at once. Reading him is like living in New York City. You could live there a thousand years and go out every day and every night and still not see everything.

Cormac McCarthy, on the other hand, is different. He is like going on a long voyage by ship. He reminds me most of Herman Melville. Reading him is like living "Moby Dick" over and over again. You become the whale, and you become the harpoon. And you die over and over.

I don't know how to explain what I mean. 

Both writers offer profound experiences of the imagination. At the moment, I prefer Borges. Perhaps that is because I am stuck in Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," an annoying and tedious story that is apocalyptic, episodic and bleak, to say the least.

Both are great writers, and I recommend them both. But not every book by each.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

ON 'THE ROAD' TO HELL

I am still trying to slog through "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy.

Parts of it are well written, but I don't believe any of it, and I think it's self-indulgent and without any clear moral purpose.

I believe that fiction should have a higher moral calling, a reason to exist, a theme, an insight into human nature and an insight into the world.

This doesn't work like that. The theme seems to be, "We're all stupid and we'll die," like that line from "Blade Runner," the great sci-fi movie that's part L.A. noir and part future vision.

I am having a hell of time trying to read this stuff.

So far, I don't see the point.

BTW, I do recommend several other of his books: "Blood Meridian," "Suttree," and "Cities of the Plain" (up to the Epilogue).

"Blood Meridian" is way and away the finest novel by any living American writer, I do believe.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

'THE ROAD' - CORMAC McCARTHY

I started reading "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy again this morning. Oh, God, what a bleak vision, but finely rendered. The language is magical. This writer knows his craft, and his art.

After all, he is America's greatest living novelist. (By America, I mean the English-speaking USA.) His greatest books are "Blood Meridian" and "Suttree." His worst book is of course his most commercially succesful, "No Country For Old Men," a bad book made into a good movie, typical of Hollywood.

I started re-reading "The Road," an horrific nightmare of a story, because my friend Joy said she wanted to discuss it, and I hadn't read the whole thing. I had put it down after 25 pages the first time; it was too depressing.

This is adapted from an e-mail I sent to Joy:

Before, I thought the book was self indulgent. By that, I mean he sits in his plush armchair in Santa Fe, NM, where he hangs out at The Santa Fe Institute, a place where famous scientists, et al, gather, and he creates an unbearably bleak world for us to live in, as we read.

You know, we use our imaginations when we read. We re-create the world of the story in our minds. Reading is a powerful experience. The most powerful of the arts, it seems to me.

Creating such a horrific world is self-indulgent, like a kind of torture porn. He may have enjoyed writing it, and it may have been fulfilling for him, but it is a hellish world to live in. He can get away with it, because he is our greatest living American writer.

But he is not being kind to his readers. I think as a writer you have an obligation to your readers not to put them through hell unless there is a good reason.

I don't know yet what that reason is. I haven't read the whole thing.

We'll see how far I get this time.  

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle