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What books should everyone read before they die?Add Book
The Road
Cormac McCarthy
Literature
James Mustich
Jul 29, 2018
The Road starts simply enough: A father and son, waking after a night camping in the wilderness, prepare to journey onward. But we’re soon aware that the simplicity belongs to no pastoral idyll—the sky is endlessly gray, the rivers are the color of oil, and ash drips from above. Nearly all plants and wildlife have gone extinct. The nights, Cormac McCarthy writes, are “blinding cold and casket black.” Millions—billions—of people have died, and those unlucky enough to have survived exist on the sharp edge of starvation, either prey or predator in the cannibalistic food chain that catastrophe has unleashed. Apocalypse has come to America. It is a moving, riveting tale, an indelible vision of a future Wild West whose arrival—given the spate of climate-soaked catastrophes that dominate our news—seems more possible every day.
McCarthy deserves mention, but probably not so much for this one ... try Blood Meridian or All the Pretty Horses for a better sense of his abilities.
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Read "The Road". Look at the world around you. And then cry with both mourning and joy as you observe your life.
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This is a book you love, but not in an uplifting sense. You love it because of the Father's devotion. You love it because you want things to turn out right, even though you know it won't. And, yes, you'll figure out the ending before it comes, but you'll wish and wish and wish you're wrong, but you know you're not.
I cried.
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There are few books I despise more than this book. Yes, I get the message of the depths of a parent's love which McCarhy is trying to proffer. However, the vehicle he chooses to portray is so flawed that I could not see past the oversights to absorb the moral. Examples: There is enough daytime light to see a mile, but not enough for any plants to grow; there are many plant which thrive in those conditions. How are there not peaceful strongholds subsisting on mushrooms and earthworms? It would be pretty easy to construct an electric generator and drive it with a water-wheel. I could go in for days about the technical shortcomings of this book. McCarthy was only interested in creating the grimmest, most depraved conditions he could think of, science/engineering be damned. I hated nearly every page of it.
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The Tale of a Father and his Son, the survivors of a cataclysmic event that has ravaged the human race. The story deals with morality and what we pass on to our children, especially when the world around us has devolved into savagery. Despite being very bleak, the ending has a wonderful message of hope and the future. Prepare to cry, but also be prepared to "carry the fire."
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"1,000 Books To Read Before You Die" is a registered trademark of Workman Publishing, Inc. Based on the book: 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die by James Mustich, (Workman Publishing Co., Inc.: © 2018 James Mustich)
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