The Road, by McCarthy (spoilers)

[MikeWaters]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

Good questions. Clearly you get it, you have the gift. Stated another way, here is one of my favorite scenes in the McCarthy canon , coming very near the end of the Border Trilogy:

"Billy watched the light bring up the shapes of the water standing in the fields beyond the roadway. Where do we go when we die? he said. I don’t know, the man said. Where are we now?"

This exchange occurs as Billy Parham is sitting under a viaduct, reduced in old age to being a street person by the terrible spirit breaking events of his life. In some respects The Road might be the least bleak of McCarthy's novels. Mabye his son in old age gave him some reason for optimism.

In fact, you could look at this book's structure as nothing more than a journey down a road (which actually reminds me of Huckleberry Finn going down the Mississippi, now that I think about it) with episodic events, with the sole purpose of each event to present an ethical dilemma. Followed by a wrap-up discussion of the ethics between the man and the boy.

A very key point in the novel is when the boy points out the dissonance between what the man says, about them being the good guys, "but we never save anyone."

In fact, without the philosophical struggle between the man and the boy, I don't think you have a novel here. Imagine a scared boy who simply agrees with the man on everything. Boring.

In my own journeys, I have discovered that most people have zero inclination (and perhaps ability) to think about ethics. And to the extent that this novel might go over their heads, this is the reason.

Now, this is not a summation of the novel in its entirety, but it's an essential part of it.

[MikeWaters]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

The payoff for the father contining to try is really just those few years he spent with his son amid that blasted environment. That should be enough, hard as such a life was, the novel tells us.

Actually no, McCarthy argues, in the man's actions at the end, that that is NOT enough. Being together is what it was, but it is not enough. After promising that he would take the boy with him to the grave to "save him" he cannot do so. We've always had luck, he says, do what we have done before. Go forth my son. Despite the odds.

It is not his to grant mercy that extinguishes faith, no matter how desperate.

....

The hopeful ending with the shotgun wielding man and his group....

McCarthy bookends the book, in a way with women. The boy's abandonment by his mother's suicide. Then at the end, "the woman" appears again, not his mother, but a woman, who is portrayed as dear to the boy. In the gap between these two women, is the man. By bookending the novel with women, McCarthy may have intended to magnify the idea that this was an exploration of what it is to be a man, and what it is to be a father. What is it specifically that a man can give to his son?

[Levin]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

A very key point in the novel is when the boy points out the dissonance between what the man says, about them being the good guys, "but we never save anyone."

Are we saving anyone today? In the ashen circumstances of The Road, it's easy to see how to "save someone" -- it is to feed them, to free them from the meatlocker. Who is McCarthy saving today? Who does he save in his personal life apart from his writing?

Is nobody being saved today? Do we pass each other by, to die, in order to self preserve?

How am I to save anybody today?

[MikeWaters]

Originally Posted by Levin

Are we saving anyone today? In the ashen circumstances of The Road, it's easy to see how to "save someone" -- it is to feed them, to free them from the meatlocker. Who is McCarthy saving today? Who does he save in his persona life apart from his writing?

Is nobody being saved today? Do we pass each other by, to die, in order to self preserve?

How am I to save anybody today?

Discussions of an author's personal life, are tedious beyond imagination. They are not important. The work is wholly separate from the artist. Read some of Kundera's non-fiction to know what I am talking about.

[Levin]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

Discussions of an author's personal life, are tedious beyond imagination. They are not important. The work is wholly separate from the artist. Read some of Kundera's non-fiction to know what I am talking about.

I don't care about McCarthy's personal life. I care about The Road's questions and the way we answer those questions right now. I care as much about whether you are saving anybody as I do about whether McCarthy is -- not much. What I care about is how we save people today in the modern world. Do we still ask the same questions as the boy? More importantly, do we give the same answers as the dad? How do you save someone today? Do you not save anyone b/c you feel like it would imperil the survival of your family?

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

Actually no, McCarthy argues, in the man's actions at the end, that that is NOT enough. Being together is what it was, but it is not enough. After promising that he would take the boy with him to the grave to "save him" he cannot do so. We've always had luck, he says, do what we have done before. Go forth my son. Despite the odds.

It is not his to grant mercy that extinguishes faith, no matter how desperate.

....

The hopeful ending with the shotgun wielding man and his group....

McCarthy bookends the book, in a way with women. The boy's abandonment by his mother's suicide. Then at the end, "the woman" appears again, not his mother, but a woman, who is portrayed as dear to the boy. In the gap between these two women, is the man. By bookending the novel with women, McCarthy may have intended to magnify the idea that this was an exploration of what it is to be a man, and what it is to be a father. What is it specifically that a man can give to his son?

These are all good points. Some say McCarthy for all his genius really can't do women except as flat symbols. I can't think of a time he's ever been in a woman's head.

On a totally unrelated subject, how about McCarthy's technical brilliance in writing about physical objects. Much of the girth of this slight novel is made up by detailed descriptions of the father's desperate work. In other novels he goes into great detail describing fairly ordinary or repetitious manual labor. These descriptions, though detailed, are always deeply engaging to me, despite that I have never been a guy like the protagonists to the extent of the work they are good at. Here McCarthy shows his unsurpassed skill.

Another area where he excels is his fairly economical but brilliantly cinematic descriptions of the natural environment, even when imaginary as in the Road. Often he paints a scene and the writing is so good it really makes a film superfluous. Sometimes there are metaphorical elements in his natural descriptions.

[MikeWaters]

Originally Posted by Levin

I don't care about McCarthy's personal life. I care about The Road's questions and the way we answer those questions right now. I care as much about whether you are saving anybody as I do about whether McCarthy is -- not much. What I care about is how we save people today in the modern world. Do we still ask the same questions as the boy? More importantly, do we give the same answers as the dad? How do you save someone today? Do you not save anyone b/c you feel like it would imperil the survival of your family?

My point is that it is dumb to drag McCarthy, the author, into the discussion.

But the general point that as much as the novel raises questions about ethics in the world it presents, it also raises the implied point about facing these same questions in our current world.

I personally have struggled with some of these scenarios, some of which I have discussed. Where literally I have felt like I could be risking my hide, at no personal gain, with disastrous results for my own family should I perish, for some possible theoretical gain for another person. I still struggle with it.

[SeattleUte]

In Harold Bloom's prologue to Blood Meridian he calls the novel a genuine work of genius, easily the best novel by any living American writer, for these reasons:

1) The descriptions of nature

2) The descriptions of violence; Bloom says these initially made the novel unreadable to him but the artistry of the imagery transports the violence into metaphor, as in the Iliad.

3) Maybe most of all, the judge's philosophical monologues.

[Levin]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

My point is that it is dumb to drag McCarthy, the author, into the discussion.

But the general point that as much as the novel raises questions about ethics in the world it presents, it also raises the implied point about facing these same questions in our current world.

I personally have struggled with some of these scenarios, some of which I have discussed. Where literally I have felt like I could be risking my hide, at no personal gain, with disastrous results for my own family should I perish, for some possible theoretical gain for another person. I still struggle with it.

Like Elizabeth Smart's dad who employed the homeless man who abducted and abused his daughter and unbelievably did not kill her.

Or the bishop who neglects family to visit the sick.

Those are probably bad examples, as in The Road, to save another truly would have resulted in death. Or would it have? The family, after all, took the boy in in the end.

A slight disagreement with you. I find an author's personal life very interesting in at least one respect: how does the author answer the very questions he raises? I guess this is interesting to me for the same reasons why it's interesting to learn about a prophet's personal life. Words versus actions.

If you've read the letters of Flannery O'Connor, her work means much more to you. But the same is not true for all authors, for sure. I agree with you about kundera. And why Franzen thought we would want to read a memoir already about his short, self-involved life, I have no idea.

[Levin]

To SU's point, I agree that McCarthy's descriptions of the physical environment are remarkable in The Road. Only a few pages in I asked myself: how is he doing this? Why is the setting unmistakable and vivid?

So I listed the adjectives he used -- remarkably, there weren't that many, and they were all ordinary; none too showy or obscure. And he used the same ones over and over. "Gray." "Ash." "Dead." "Cold." "Dark."

If you have a singular vision, and know how to describe it with economy and familiarity, then that is worth a million words (or pictures).