A Bleak Persistence , or Hope Amidst Futility

Don't worry, this isn't about my life. Although I am still somewhat saddened by the FHS fiasco, and worried about the state of our bank account, my spirits are on the rise. Today the wife and I went to Gulley Park to lie in the sun and read for awhile. This weekend, we'll be headed to Tulsa with Dad and Dorris to see Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion. Also, I have an interview this Thursday to begin subbing for Fayettevile public schools, which ought to pad our income some.

It turns out that life is still okay.

Unless you're Pulitzer-Prize-winning Cormac McCarthy, in which case it would appear that everything is not okay. I just finished reading The Road, which chronicles the life of a father and son who are trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic United States. The Event is never explained, but there was some sort of massive fire bombing, or perhaps a global nuclear war. Regardless, the present landscape is barren and lifeless. All animals are dead, ash rains down from the sky, and the sun is never fully seen. Most people have died, and the ones who remain must subsist off of the leftover canned food and scraps left in abandoned houses. Roaming the countryside are bands of men who will steal from you, kill you, and most likely eat you. The only way to survive is to keep moving and scavenging, like some dystopic echo of Kerouac's Beat classic.

Stylistically, McCarthy's writing is Hemingwayesque, sparse and economic. He doesn't use proper nouns, only pronouns (which at time is confusing), and often uses fragments. Also, between each paragraph is a larger than usual space, which seems like an insignificant detail, but it isn't. It creates a disjointed feeling, as if the story is told only in sporadic bursts of prose, which ultimately accents the bleakness or barrenness of the story.

Here is an example of his writing:
He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground foxes in their cover [A reference to him and his son]. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.

This example is telling of his tone and of his writing style, but not of his subject. This was one of the very few times that the writing strayed from relating simply the sparse details of their daily existence.

Ultimately, I'm unsure of what to think about this book. Certainly it was memorable and interesting, but it's not clear that it was good. It was interesting much in the way that 28 Days Later is interesting. The post-apocalyptic world is intriguing, as is the murderous environment that they protagonists must survive in, and I found myself agreeing, "Yes, that would be what would happen." The story is gripping, and I turned pages quickly, wanting to know what would happen next. But was it Good? Will it last within the canon of remarkable Literature?

Here my issue lies with the plot. There was none. The novel and its characters meandered from day to day, without any real purpose except to live another day: they wake, they walk a few miles, then sleep; they starve for a while, then find food; they are in danger, then they escape. The story drones on much as the lives of the people within this blighted land. All there is is the road: no meaning, just movement. And perhaps in that sense the plot, or lack thereof, does tie in with the effect that the novel creates as a whole, and so is pardonable.

Despite the bleakness of the novel's outlook, though, there are faint hints of something that resembles hope. It is so overwhelmed by the dominant presence of gloom and doom that it is almost non-existant, but it is there. I just wanted to mention that to explain the second half of this entry's title.

In the end, I think that McCarthy does have the abilities of a great writer, but those abilities did not all coalesce in this novel into something great, or something lasting. The seeds are there, but they have not yet come to fruition.

Still, it was worth the read.