[OneLoneClone]

Worst Case Scenario: The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

Post-Apocalyptic fiction has just recieved the 'literary treatment" from Cormac McCarthy, its called "The Road". Cormac McCarthy (All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Blood Meridian) is one of the best american writers alive.

His writing can be difficult, not for the squeamish. Unflinching looks into the heart of darkness; the amoral voilence of the American West in "Blood Meridian" and post-apocalyptic despair and hopelessness in "The Road".


"The Road" takes place 7-10 years after a nuclear war. The sun no longer shines. Nothing grows. The birds are dead. Almost everything is dead and grey. Drifts of ash blow around and cover everything and destroy the survivors lungs.


A father and son have survived so far, but there is little reason TO survive. Their friendship is really the only thing they have. The communes have mostly been overrun. If communities do exist, they mostly want to kill you and take your stuff and probably eat you.

Roving bands of thugs in dust masks just go around 'finding whatever they can to eat". Which is mostly other survivors. Only the worst psychopaths are left, mostly. Rapists and cannibals.

The book is realistic in its look into the human heart, but not realistic regarding accurately presenting the after effects of nuclear war. Its more poetic on that level.

It's more like a post apocalyptic "Waiting for Godot". I almost posted this in psychology. Its sooo much worse than anything we will likey face it almost helps you face some "worst case peak oil scenarios". Unless you think it will be a nuclear fight, then you'll just be more terrified.

This is an incredibly powerfull book, be prepared to be shaken. Yet still it manages to have hope even when all is hopeless.

Very intense experience.

[americandream]

I'm not so sure that the post-whatever is going to be a secular sex fest.....I suspect the god men will get into the act and have us all tending our little plots like the good little chilluns we are.

[AgentR]

Learn to like Potato Salad and Wednesday evening tent revivals.

[Colorado-Valley]

Well, it sounds like I'd better raise some fava beans and a nice chianti.

[OneLoneClone]

Eh? Secular sex fest? Potatoe salad? Tent revivals? I dont even know what you people are talking about.

The father and son seem kind of religious in the novel, but the only active religions mentioned are 'blood cults". Bonfires on hilltops with drums and chanting. a pile of skin and clothing left behind.

no godmen, sorry. No protato salad, sorry. mostly just drifts of grey ash and hopelessness.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he soft black talc blew through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea floor and the cold crept down and the dark came early and the scavengers passing down the steep canyons with their torches trod silky holes in the drifted ash that closed behind them silently as eyes.

[tivoli]

Just a note that this book is now an Oprah pick, so it looks like the post-apocalyptic is making it into mainstream...

[kochevnik]

I read this book pretty much as soon as it showed up at my library.

You DO NOT understand the meaning of GRIM until you have read this book. I had never heard of McCarthy till I saw 'The Road' mentioned and before I got my hands on it, I read one of his other books - very very good. Great style, interesting point of view. I think he write from the viewpoint of an old man (emphasis on manly man) with a lot of wisdom, humility and smarts.

The Road is about a boy and his father travelling south to the ocean after some terrible war/disaster has occurred. The writing takes place many years afterwards, the boy in born during the disaster and he seems to be 8 or 10 during the book. The mother has killed herself because there is no hope. The father struggles on, with his son, with no hope other than pure survival as well.

The book is mainly about what a father will do to protect his son.

I am probably as much of a doomer as anyone, but this book was very very hard to finish - dark does not even begin to describe McCarthy's writing here.

Even if you think you can handle the truth - you're going to have a hard time handling this.

All that said, this is a very important book to read - maybe because even doomers need to be scared every once in awhile.

[madrid]

Pstar needs to do a bit more thinking about the book and closer reading of it.

In any case, I teach literature at a university in the Northeast, and along with Jose Saramago's Blindness, which is also incidently an apocalyptic novel, McCArthy's book is a tremendously important book.

There are few books that can really shape the world's consciousness.

Of course, Shakespeare's quartet, as his four best plays are sometimes called, has shaped all of consciousness so completely that it would be hard to conceive of the world without them.

In recent years, the only book that has had such an effect is Saramago's Blindness. The Road is such an amazing book that I predict that it too may soon be a catchphrase for describing the human condition-- McCarthy's knowledge of the Western tradition of literature is immense. In any case, we owe McCarthy enormous thanks for this, and also Ophra Winfrey (who I personally can't stand).

[kochevnik]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('madrid', '
')
There are few books that can really shape the world's consciousness.

[BigTex]

I just finished the book and I thought it was amazing. It takes a great writer to write about hunger and starvation with such vividness that you have to put the book down and go get something to eat.

Just a tremendous depiction of utter hopelessness and complete despair. A situation where suicide actually seems like a pretty good option.

Cannibalism? No problem in this world, since each other is about all that's left to eat.

Terrifying. It exposes so many small human frailties and our endless need for accessories just to survive (in addition to the obvious large ones of food and water). Humans are incredibly poorly adapted to living in the wild. We get cold, we get wet, we get sick, we get depressed, we lose stuff, we fight with each other....

Rebuild the world? How? With what? Cooperating with whom? Perhaps most importantly, why bother rebuilding a world so completely destroyed?

As the book continued I began to understand how people, no matter how sturdy to begin with, could reach a point where they just give up. Too many missed meals, too much fear, too much trauma, too much lost hope, too many dead bodies, too much desolation....the will to live just begins to weaken. For those who survive, they become a lot like desperate and vicious (though clever) wild animals with little trace of their former humanity.

A really amazing book. If you think you can't be shaken by a book, give this one a try. Keep some snacks close by as you read.

[jato]

I finished it this week. Great book! I was suprised by the ending.

[BigTex]

I was happy to hear that it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for 2006.

It's about time that future doom stories start getting a little respect. : )

[Revi]

I have just started it and it seems like it will be darker than any doomer scenario I can imagine. That should cheer me up a bit!

[roccman]

I read this book maybe 5 months ago...

Grim

Impregnated woman as a source of food was probably the darkest part.

I have an 11 year old son.

This bites.

[Revi]

I have to add this to my list of "uh-oh" books. This book is so well written you can't put it down, but there isn't much reason for the characters to keep going. It's a dark trip to hell. It makes me think of the quote that after a nuclear war the survivors will envy the dead.

[mgibbons19]

I just found this thread. I read the book a few months ago. I don't think of it as doomer porn, which is why I wouldn't agree with pstarr's take on it. If one is a doomer, and one likes porn, then this will fit the bill. But I don't think the point is the apocolypse, how it happened, what it will be like after, and all that.

I think the point is the relationship between the father and the son. The point is the darkness of the human heart. The point is hope. We don't know what happened to cause the armageddon because it doesn't matter. All that matters is the little world of the boy and the man. And in a world of such utter desolation, why do we go forward? Well, many don't. And those that do often go forward at the cost of others. But in the end, for this father, what keeps him going forward is the boy.

Which is why it is an existential novel. Why do YOU go forward? What do YOU hope to find?

It has nothing to do with Peak Oil and doomer porn. It is a very troubling book. It's a little like reading Nietschze, like looking over into the abyss.