Book Review: The Road

The Road by Cormac McCarthy (New York: Vintage International, 2006. 287 pp)

Cormac McCarthy was born in Rhode Island in 1933. One of six children, Cormac’s family moved multiple times in his childhood as his father accepted different occupations. In 1951, McCarthy attended theUniversity of Tennessee majoring in Liberal Arts. Midway through his studies, McCarthy served in theAir Force for four years. After his service, McCarthy returned to college, writing his first short stories. In 1959 and 1960, he won the Ingram-Merrill Award for Creative Writing. Mccarthy’s first novel, The Orchard Keeper, was published in 1965. Several years, grants, and fellowships later, McCarthy published Suttree, Blood Meridian, and All the Pretty Horses marking his rise in literary acclaim. McCarthy is widely considered one of the great modern American authors and many of his works have been translated to film.

Back to Basics

In The Road, Cormac McCarthy explores the idea of innocence, good and evil, and the idea of “carrying fire”, where he explores innocence and human resilience. Unlike so many dystopian novels that merely explore what humanity’s darker sides are, McCarthy uses the harrowing and depressing post apocalyptic landscape to ultimately show the brilliance of the human spirit.

The Road opens in a post-apocalyptic world which sees humanity reduced to its most basic elements. A never named father and his son journey across the landscape.

"He’d had this feeling before, beyond the numbness and the dull despair. The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much was gone already? The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality” (88).

Filled with ash and devoid of any living animals and vegetation, many humans have resorted to cannibalism or committed suicide. The boy’s mother gave up after the disaster and evidently committed suicide before the story begins. The more sophisticated elements of human civilization have been obliterated, but perhaps more importantly concepts such as altruism or the ability to hope no longer exist. The boy, however, is told to carry “the fire” by his father, a concept developing throughout the book.

Good versus Evil

In Starkian fashion, the man realizes winter is coming, and decides to take the boy south, where it’s warmer. The father is sick, coughing blood occasionally, but continues south with his son, hoping to get him to where it’s warm before he dies. The father’s love for his son is incredibly deep. He vows to take care of his son no matter what.

 “You wanted to know what the bad guys looked like. Now you know. It may happen again. My job is to take care of you. I was appointed to do that by God. I will kill anyone who touches you. Do you understand?Yes.He sat there cowled in the blanket. After a while he looked up. Are we still the good guys? he said. Yes. We’re still the good guys.And we always will be.Yes. We always will be.Okay” (77).

The father, carrying a pistol with only two rounds, killed one of the cannibal attackers on their journey. He justifies the killing as a sacrificial act, but a difference in innocence begins to emerge. The father doesn’t doubt they are the “good guys”, but conversely the son wonders having murdered someone if they can truly be considered “good”. The father wants to protect his son at all costs, but with the new world in which he lives, the rules of good versus evil have changed, morality is different, and he struggles to transform with the times, finding himself an alien in this new hopeless landscape.

Carrying Fire

The Road is one of the darkest most hopeless books I’ve read. Perhaps showing a bit of McCarthy’s philosophical stance on human life, the book serves to tell of how humans will always strive for hope, to carry the “fire” (as McCarthy puts it in the novel) of humanity’s greatest achievements forward. But, the universe is indifferent. In the wake of the unnamed calamity, the earth has left humanity no foreseeable future. But, despite the universe’s disinterest, life goes on.

"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 groundfoxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it" (130).

The boy and the man still carry the “fire”. The fire isn’t literal fire to survive with, but a symbol of hope and human resilience. The man consistently tells the son to carry the “fire”. No matter what horrors they encounter, the boy never desires to hurt others, and through his innocence, protects the human condition. People will always carry the fire, but sadly, far too many people choose self-preservation at the cost of genuine love and concern for others. Our world is more complex than the one in which the boy and his father live, but this truth remains the same: the fire of human compassion is too easily lost. McCarthy seems to argue that innocence is the only thing that can preserve it. His characterization of the boy is an attempt to show that innocence in the juridical sense is one of the most important human attributes. Though The Road is dark, hopeless, harrowing and depressing, the truth extrapolated from the text is worth a read.

Verdict: 4.5 out of 5


What do you think?  Do you enjoy post-apocalyptic novels, and do you find this one to be different?  Is innocence one of the most important human attributes?  Did you find The Road to be hopeless? Share your thoughts below.
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Posted by: Andrew Jacobson

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Book Review: Cities of the Plain

Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy (New York: Knopf Publishers, 1998. 292 pp)

Cormac McCarthy was born in Rhode Island in 1933. One of six children, Cormac’s family moved multiple times in his childhood as his father accepted different occupations. In 1951, McCarthy attended the University of Tennessee majoring in Liberal Arts. Midway through his studies, McCarthy served in the Air Force for four years. After his service, McCarthy returned to college, writing his first short stories. In 1959 and 1960, he won the Ingram-Merrill Award for Creative Writing. Mccarthy’s first novel, The Orchard Keeper, was published in 1965. Several years, grants, and fellowships later, McCarthy published Suttree, Blood Meridian, and All the Pretty Horses marking his rise in literary acclaim. McCarthy is widely considered one of the great modern American authors and many of his works have been translated to film.

The Border

In a Grantland piece posted this summer, column writer Brian Phillips pontificated on the U.S.-Mexican soccer rivalry through the meaning of the Border, a place where Mexico and America bleed together as a “sun-obliterated desert where law and chaos expire into each other and civilization dissolves.”

Setting aside the significance of the soccer portion of this piece, Phillips rightly defines the mythic qualities of two vastly different cultures operating in close proximity to each other.

In the mouth of a Mexican pimp, Cormac McCarthy points to the core of this conflict in Cities of the Plain when he writes,

“Your kind cannot bear that the world be ordinary. That it contain nothing save what stands before one. But the Mexican world is a world of adornment only and underneath it is very plain indeed. While your world – he passed the blade back and forth like a shuttle through a loom – your world totters upon an unspoken labyrinth of questions. And we will devour you, my friend. You and all your pale empire” (253).

In other words, Mexican and American culture clash violently in this land as both try to consume each other.

A Eulogy

Upon reading Cities of the Plain, the last installment of Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy (a series of stories set on the Mexico-Texas border featuring John Grady Cole and Billy Parham), I must amend my previous review. In it, I suggest that the Border Trilogy acts as an anti-western, that McCarthy writes of a mundane Cowboy adventure in order to dispel any romanticized notions of the great frontier.

With a big giant spoiler warning in effect, Cities of the Plain alters my viewpoint in such a way that I suggest that the Border Trilogy is not an anti-western, but rather a eulogy to the Western genre.

The days of blockbuster Westerns are long gone. With CGI and high budget action films dominating the box office, movie executives view westerns as a genre of waning popularity. Even Jon Favraeu’s big budget Cowboys & Aliens failed miserably this year barely breaking even.

John Grady Cole and Billy Parham

Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy and Cities of the Plain specifically function as a reaction to the grim reality of the failing western. With gorgeous prose evidenced in the quotes you will read shortly, McCarthy elegantly portrays the lives of mid-nineteenth-century cowboys. From intense hunting sequences to poetic lines discussing love gained and lost, McCarthy’s pen depicts the pure beauty that the western genre provides.

With this third episode, McCarthy unites the protagonists of the previous works in the series, John Grady Cole and Billy Parham. Laboring together on a cattle ranch in post-World-War-II New Mexico, John Grady and Billy develop a close-knit friendship. The duo, developing horses and living close to the land, clearly enjoy their lot in life and find the ranch owners to be generous and kind people.

Nothing New Under the Sun

At the center of the story, themes are presented from the previous books of the trilogy. Similar to All the Pretty Horses, John Grady falls in love with a woman he cannot have – this time a young prostitute named Magdalena; he engages in a knife fight with an outlaw – this time a pimp.

In fact, McCarthy cites these themes in the text itself:

“He did not know if she was awake but he told her things about his life that he had not told her. He told her about working for the hacendado at Cuatro Ciénegas and about the man’s daughter and the last time he saw her and about being in the prison in Saltillo and about the scar on his face that he had promised to tell her about and never had” (205).

Billy, on the other hand, remains centrally influenced by the history presented in The Crossing. Haunted by the death of his brother, Billy acts cautiously and considering the evils of Mexican-American border country.

The Standard McCarthian Refrain

Likewise, Cities of the Plain ponders the meaning of death – a standard McCarthian refrain. With a dark, twisted, and brutal ending, the reader sweats through violent passages. Yet, McCarthy finds value in telling the story of life and death.

He writes,

“Every man’s death is a standing in for every other. And since death comes to all there is no way to abate the fear of it except to love that man who stands for us. We are not waiting for his history to be written. He passed here long ago. That man who is all men and who stands in the dock for us until our own time come and we must stand for him. Do you love him, that man? Will you honor the path he has taken? Will you listen to his tale” (289)?

This beautiful passage brings meaning to the story of a life; it also elegantly eulogizes the Western genre. From urban to rural, every person tells a meaningful story. Cities of the Plain is a beautiful capstone to an excellent trilogy. While Westerns are going the way of the buffalo, the book honors the genre and the lifestyle in its glory and its death. I urge you to read the Border Trilogy, and Cities of the Plain in particular.

Verdict: 4.5 out of 5

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Donovan Richards is a University of Washington undergraduate alumnus from 2008, graduating with a BA in Philosophy. He is also a graduate of the inaugural Seattle Pacific University School of Theology graduate program class of 2009 as an MA student in Business and Theology. He is a huge fan of music, books, and movies. You can reach him via email at lemurfarmer@gmail.com.

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Book Review: The Crossing

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy (New York: Knopf Publishers, 1994. 432 pp)

Cormac McCarthy was born in Rhode Island in 1933. One of six children, Cormac’s family moved multiple times in his childhood as his father accepted different occupations. In 1951, McCarthy attended the University of Tennessee majoring in Liberal Arts. Midway through his studies, McCarthy served in the Air Force for four years. After his service, McCarthy returned to college, writing his first short stories. In 1959 and 1960, he won the Ingram-Merrill Award for Creative Writing. Mccarthy’s first novel, The Orchard Keeper, was published in 1965. Several years, grants, and fellowships later, McCarthy published Suttree, Blood Meridian, and All the Pretty Horses marking his rise in literary acclaim. McCarthy is widely considered one of the great modern American authors and many of his works have been translated to film.

American Cowboys

Burned into the American psyche is the cowboy persona of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. Over the years, Hollywood has earned gigantic monetary sums producing Western blockbusters. We conceptualize the Southwest in romantic terms.

On one side, the sheriff fights for the virtues of honor, peace, and justice. Bandits, on the other, drink booze, steal possessions, and undiscerningly use firearms. Amongst ruddy mesas and sparsely lit saloons, the cowboy lives a life of adventure. While most of us sit in our cubicles, it is easy glorify this unanchored wanderer.

The Anti-Western Novel

In The Crossing, Cormac McCarthy turns this paradigm upside down. In short, this book is the anti-western novel. Although the narrative communicates enough action to keep the reader interested, the lives of the protagonists, Billy and Boyd, are depicted rather mundanely as they traverse the U.S./Mexico Border.

Instead of shooting their way through each town as depicted in classic, western narratives, Billy and Boyd meander through the country, splitting their time between tracking their family’s stolen horses and searching for their own horses as they continually wander off in the night.

The Lone Wolf

Photo by Tambako the Jaguar

Over the course of the book, McCarthy splits the narrative into three sections. First, Billy – the main character – hunts a lone wolf who is terrorizing the family cattle. Upon catching the wolf in a trap, Billy feels compelled to return the wolf to its mountainous habitat across the border.

In my mind, McCarthy’s prose in this section defines the book. Using deeply poetic language, he illustrates the hunt and capture from the perspective of both human and wolf.

The author writes,

“What blood and bone are made of but can themselves not make on any altar nor by any wound of war. What we may well believe has power to cut and shape and hollow out the dark form of the world surely if wind can, if rain can. But which cannot be held never be held and is no flower but is swift and a huntress and the wind itself is in terror of it and the world cannot lose it” (127).

The Search for Something Lost

In the second section, the brothers, Billy and Boyd, unite under the common purpose of locating horses stolen from the family. As these cowboys search the border country, they find curious characters, love, and, most importantly, a connection to the land.

During this time, and throughout the work, McCarthy masterfully keys the reader into upcoming events without divulging future narrative.

While the boys search for their horses, McCarthy writes,

“Long voyages often lose themselves.
Mam?
You will see. It is difficult even for brothers to travel together on such a voyage. The road has its own reasons and no two travelers will have the same understanding of those reasons. If indeed they come to an understanding of them at all. Listen to the corridos of the country. They will tell you. Then you will see in your own life what is the cost of things. Perhaps it is true that nothing is hidden. Yet many do not wish to see what lies before them in plain sight. You will see. The shape of the road is the road. There is not some other road that wears that shape but only the one. And every voyage begun upon it will be completed. Whether horses are found or not” (230).”

Therefore, while the second section alludes to and ends with the brothers parting ways, the third finds Billy seeking to reunite with Boyd. Although the end result is not necessarily cheery, The Crossing communicates its story with an incredible gravity. As a reader, you really connect with the characters.

Some Reservations

Despite my joy while I read this impressive book, it is by no means perfectly composed. First, at 4 chapters and 432 pages, The Crossing is not a book to read in short spurts. Stopping points rarely arrive and McCarthy’s dense writing style requires 100% attention.

Second, as Billy and Boyd met new characters, McCarthy possessed a tendency to elaborate on a character’s backstory whether or not it contributed to the central thrust of the narrative. I often found myself not caring about these backstories and ultimately becoming disappointed at its lack of cohesion with Billy and Boyd’s narrative framework.

A True Western

Nevertheless, The Crossing is masterfully crafted and its main characters carry the utmost intrigue. In truth, these cowboys engage in an adventure – just not a romanticized adventure so often depicted on the silver screen. Billy and Boyd’s story seems true. McCarthy finds reality amongst his vivid descriptions of the mundane actions encountered during a long-term adventure. The Crossing is an excellent book and one worth reading. I recommend this book to everyone.

Book Review: All the Pretty Horses

All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992. 302 pp)

Cormac McCarthy was born in Rhode Island in 1933. One of six children, Cormac’s family moved multiple times in his childhood as his father accepted different occupations. In 1951, McCarthy attended the University of Tennessee majoring in Liberal Arts. Midway through his studies, McCarthy served in the Air Force for four years. After his service, McCarthy returned to college writing his first short stories. In 1959 and 1960, he won the Ingram-Merrill Award for Creative Writing. Mccarthy’s first novel, The Orchard Keeper, was published in 1965. Several years, grants, and fellowships later, McCarthy published Suttree, Blood Meridian, and All the Pretty Horses marking his rise in literary acclaim. McCarthy is widely considered one of the great modern American authors and many of his works have been translated to film.

An Overture

Acting as the first installment of the Border Trilogy, All the Pretty Horses reads like an overture. The prose flows like beautiful introductory notes setting up the themes and characters for the rest of the piece.

In this book, we meet John Grady Cole, a teenaged horseman set on adventure as his Texan hometown and his occupational prospects fizzle in a puddle of wasted dreams. Packing few possessions, John Grady travels toward the border with his best friend, Rawlins.

During the gestating stages of the duo’s adventure, they meet Blevins, a young kid just north of thirteen. While his pin-pointed shooting accuracy offers an asset to the group, Blevins’ eccentricities and rash behavior provide extensive difficulty as the story unfolds.

Pure Poetic Prose

All the Pretty Horses illustrates some of McCarthy’s most poetic writing. Discussing a horse, the central transportational character in the story, he pens,

“He’d ride sometimes clear to the upper end of the laguna before the horse would even stop trembling and he spoke constantly to it in Spanish in phrases almost biblical repeating again and again the strictures of a yet untabled law. Soy comandante de las yeguas, he would say, yo y yo sólo. Sin la caridad de estas manos no tengas nada. Ni comida ni agua ni hijos. Soy yo que traigo las yeguas de las montañas, las yeguas jóvenes, las yeguas salvajes y ardientes. While inside the vaulting of the ribs between his knees the darkly meated heart pumped of who’s will and the blood convolutions of who’s will and the stout thighbones and knee and cannon and the tendons like flaxen hawsers that drew and flexed and drew and flexed at their articulations and of who’s will all sheathed and muffled in the flesh and the hooves that stove wells in the morning groundmist and the head turning side to side and the great slavering keyboard of his teeth and the hot globes of his eyes where the world burned.” (128)

Introducing another theme seemingly of critical importance to the trilogy, McCarthy discusses the notion of fate versus free will especially in regard to choices of life, death, and love:

“In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was. It is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I don’t believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that even God – who knows all that can be known – seems powerless to change.” (239)

The Beginnings

Ultimately, it is unfair to judge All the Pretty Horses by itself. The writing is gorgeous, and the setting, rustic. The characters are well developed and the tome pushes me toward continuing the series. Just like a well-written overture introduces musical themes that will further develop as the piece expands, so too does All the Pretty Horses poetically build on themes of fate, free will, love, death, and what it means to be alive. Without knowing the rest of the symphony, I highly suggested reading the overture known as All the Pretty Horses.

Book Review: No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy (New York: Vintage International, 2005. 320 pp)

Cormac McCarthy was born in Rhode Island in 1933. One of six children, Cormac’s family moved multiple times in his childhood as his father accepted different occupations. In 1951, McCarthy attended the University of Tennessee majoring in Liberal Arts. Midway through his studies, McCarthy served in the Air Force for four years. After his service, McCarthy returned to college writing his first short stories. In 1959 and 1960, he won the Ingram-Merrill Award for Creative Writing. Mccarthy’s first novel, The Orchard Keeper, was published in 1965. Several years, grants, and fellowships later, McCarthy published Suttree, Blood Meridian, and All the Pretty Horses marking his rise in literary acclaim. McCarthy is widely considered one of the great modern American authors and many of his works have been translated to film.

Who Actually Lives Happily Ever After?

It seems to me that there is a need for redemption engrained into humans as they encounter a story. If the narrative does not conclude with a “they lived happily ever after” motif, viewers leave unsettled and more than likely not enjoying the story. Redemption is a powerful motif; nothing pulls the heart-strings better than a down-on-her-luck character figuring it out and finding happiness. In my mind, however, life does not always resemble these idealized redemptive stories. Sometimes, bad things happen to good people; sometimes, good things happen to bad people. In McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, the narrative follows this motif with disquieting results.

No Country for Old Men details the intertwining movements of three characters: Llewelyn Moss, a law-abiding Vietnam veteran; Ed Tom Bell, a small-town sheriff; and Anton Chigurh, a sociopathic killer for hire. While hunting in the Mexico-Texas border country, Llewelyn Moss happens upon the aftermath of a drug-runner shootout and finds a bag containing over 2 million dollars. By taking the cash, Moss thrusts himself into the crosshairs of the ruthless murdering spree of Anton Chigurh.

The Mind of a Killer

Chigurh’s character is the most chilling human depiction I have ever read. First, every scene Chigurh enters results in death and destruction. Second, Chigurh carries no emotion and allows “fate” or “destiny” to make his decisions. He often allows a coin-flip to decide the fate of his victims.

“Chigurh took a twenty-five cent piece from his pocket and flipped it spinning into the bluish glare of the fluorescent lights overhead. He caught it and slapped it onto the back of his forearm just above the bloody wrappings. Call it, he said.”

“Call it?”

“Yes.”

“For what?”

“Just call it.”

“Well I need to know what it is we’re callin here.

“How would that change anything?”

“The man looked at Chigurh’s eyes for the first time. Blue as lapis. At once glistening and totally opaque. Like wet stones. You need to call it, Chigurh said. I can’t call it for you. It wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t even be right. Just call it” (55-56).

A Scene from No Country for Old Men/Miramx Films

Not only does Chigurh place the life of his victim in a coin-flip, he also uses a cattle gun as a unique execution device. Such a chilling account raises an interesting philosophical question. Is McCarthy’s representation of a serial killer considered art? On one hand, his finely crafted character represents everything that is evil with the world. Yet, on the other hand, is such a vivid representation of malevolence and nihilism prone to creating copy-cats? I remember hearing a story about a movie that accurately depicted the cracking of a bank safe. Weeks after its release, an uptick in bank robberies occurred. Should we view art differently if it affects real life? While I have not heard stories about mass-murderers mimicking Anton Chigurh, the possibility of such an occurrence frightens me.

A Sliver of Hope

In between Moss and Chigurh resides Sheriff Bell, the man charged with hunting down Chigurh and protecting Moss. As bodies pile up, Bell struggles with the toll of such dark circumstances. Nevertheless, he carries the slightest sliver of hope.

“People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they don’t deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things. I don’t recall that I ever give the good Lord all that much cause to smile on me. But he did” (91).

McCarthy’s dense and precise writing implies the gravity of the novel. The themes sit with you long after the last page turns. Not much redemption exists within the text of No Country for Old Men but redemption is not the point of the book. Dark, dreary, and depressing things happen in the world and Cormac McCarthy documents these happenings well in the novel. In fact, a happy ending in this novel betrays the premise of the book. Life is tough and the good guy does not always win. However, life goes on. No Country for Old Men is a masterpiece worth reading.