The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I don’t do many book reviews on this blog, but when I finished The Road the other day, I felt compelled to write something about it. In any case, I don’t consider this to be a review. There are already hundreds of those online. The book was a runaway success and most of you will probably have seen the recent movie adaptation (I haven’t). No, these are more the thoughts seeping from my freshly blown mind. This book is stunning; probably the best I’ve read of McCarthy’s and certainly the most thought provoking.

What I enjoyed most about his writing in All The Pretty Horses, The Crossing, No Country for Old Men, is how much he makes from so little and how he makes that little work for him. He takes this to the next level here. When I was in journalism college, my lecturer constantly told me that every word has to earn its place on the page. I’ve yet to encounter an author that practices this as brilliantly as McCarthy. In the post-apocalyptic American setting of The Road, he squeezes so much from the bleakness of the landscape. He conjures up the most barren of imagery: dark and lonely, all the while being uber-economical with his language. In his previous books (particularly the Border Trilogy), he used this to positive effect. I wanted to experience the spaciousness and under-the-stars beauty of Southern America and Mexico. This time, he’s turned it on its head.

I love how McCarthy gradually feeds us lines of information… drip, drip and then suddenly, bang! He mentions nothing about how the earth found itself in this situation. He occasionally alludes to the past, but mostly in the form of memory. There is little historical information. It makes it all the more striking when he says, kind of in passing, that cows are extinct. Or when the boy is asks his father whether crows could fly high enough to see the sun, should they still exist. All the time, the reader is left to wonder what catastrophe could have befallen the planet, but such is McCarthy’s deftness of language, it never distracts from the actually story.

This, incidentally, focuses on the relationship between father and son in the most desperate of situations. They are traveling south… but why? To escape the cold? But what will they do when they get there? What hope do they have? They have no hope. They have nothing. Each is kept alive by the desire to maintain the other. At times, their plight is truly heartbreaking. Here is a little boy who has never had a friend. He doesn’t care if he dies or not, anesthetized as he is to human demise. McCarthy attempts to show just how inter-dependent father and son are on one another. The son will do anything the father says. He accepts anything he is told. The father does everything in his power to keep his son alive, despite the knowledge that they would both be better off dead.

No part of the book brings this home more forcefully than after a time they are confronted by one of the nomadic bands of cannibals. The father washes his son’s hair in a river, telling himself that he must wash the murderous brains he’s just blown from their assailant's head from his son because that is his job. He is the boy’s father and he must try to keep his hair clean. Simple, yet devastatingly effective and it sums up what, for me, is the meaning of The Road. Even in the most horrifying circumstances, parents are driven by an unbreakable bond at childbirth, the evolutionary desire to keep their offspring.

I had a conversation with a friend the other day about modern literature. We were wondering which contemporary writers would be viewed as “classic authors” one hundred years from now. Which authors will be studied by sixteen year old high school students? We both immediately suggested McCarthy. His books are the most wonderfully analogous I recall from modern literature. We can all learn a lot from them and particularly, The Road.

BBC 1: Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

Published by Vintage Classics

First published in 1953

337 Pages







First things first: I haven’t seen the Hollywood version and having read the book, have no desire to. Too many “classics” are getting the Beverley Hills treatment and absolutely do not want to see Leonardo Di Caprio massacre a brilliantly created character in Frank Wheeler. Equally, the thought of Keira Knightley’s wooden beak all over the movie adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, one of my favourite books, is enough to make me shudder. In fact, I struggle to think of a film adaptation that’s better than the original. I could say The Shawshank Redemption, of course, but I think the film’s almost unrecognisable from the novella by Stephen King, such is the artistic liberty they were permitted to take.

The first thing I noticed when I picked up Revolutionary Road was an endorsement in the inner sleeve from one of my favourite authors, Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut calls it “the Great Gatsby of my generation”. Now, it’s been a while since I read Gatsby, but I think I see where he’s coming from. This is a commentary on status in Middle America; people aspiring to something greater; people trying to outdo their peers and neighbours; people thinking they deserve better, because they’re better than those around them. Less keeping up with the Jones’, this book is about shitting all over the Jones’ perfectly coiffed lawn. In that respect, I would also draw a comparison with Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller. Whilst there isn’t a character in this as tragic as Willy Loman, Revolutionary Road too exposes the flaws in the very concept of the American Dream.

It’s the story of a young, handsome couple, the Wheelers, and their efforts to escape the banality of plush New England suburbia. It’s about the dynamics of their own relationship and how their dissatisfaction with their own lives really stems from their displeasure with each other. Their relationship is a war of attrition. They fell for each other under a mask of his deceit, which he has kept up throughout their marriage. He is callous, manipulative and calculating. He always thinks one step ahead of his wife, colleagues, neighbours and employers.

As you read on, though, it becomes clear that he is of limited ability and far from the great man he believes himself to be. He has gotten as far as he has on a wing a prayer and a whole load of hot air. He is one of the best characters I have come across in a long time: both pitiable and despicable. Wrapped up in the smug, clean-shaven, suited and booted persona of Frank Wheeler, I see a lot of contemporary politicians. Richard Yates does brilliantly to capture a whole breed in one smarmy character.

But what really struck me about Revolutionary Road is just how much of it I see in my every day life. The Wheelers’ existence is built upon putting on a show, keeping up appearances, as is that of the rest of the characters. People hear what they want to hear. Few are prepared to upset the applecart. In fact, the only person who isn’t afraid to speak his mind is John Givings, a certified lunatic. As I move into my late twenties (eek) I see far too much of this. Teenage abandon is, well, abandoned. People are nice, as a rule. Yates captures the anxiety that comes with getting a little older and getting trapped in a life you don’t want brilliantly. People inhabit a world of trite courtesy and phoniness. It’s not how you are, but how you are perceived to be.

It’s a cliché to say “you don’t know what goes on behind closed doors”, but it rings particularly true here. As a society, we’re obsessed with fly on the wall documentaries and real-life dramas. But few are as effective a reminder as Revolutionary Road that adversity befalls everyone. Everybody has their problems. Appearances can be deceiving. Woven in amongst these observations is a great story: slow paced and methodical. This is a great book and it comes highly recommended.

Welcome to BBC

I read a lot of books. Lately, I’ve been getting through a few every week. When I finish reading a book, I normally have a little think about it, discard it and open a new one. Recently though, I’ve been thinking I should write about them, which is what BBC is: Barney’s Book Club. I don’t envisage these pieces being reviews: more my own commentary on the books. I won’t write about every book I read, just the ones I feel I have something to say about, something people might find interesting.

I also don’t do much contemporaneous reading. I return to authors I enjoy and read books recommended by others. These are rarely the latest bestsellers and rarely anything published in the recent past. That’s not to say I purposely seek out unheard of tomes: quite the contrary. Many of the books I read are considered classics, and thus, it may be tough to shed any fresh light on them. I’ll just write what I’ve taken from the book. If it’s good, I’ll recommend it. If it’s not I won’t.

That's about it. The first one will be coming soon.