Oprah Picks Next Book; Crisis Counselors On Standby

The guys at Freakonomics blog (I call them Dubner & Levitt, even though I don't know them) ran a little contest over the last few days where they called on their readers to predict what Oprah's next book club book would be. Amazingly, one of their readers chose the correct book, which is The Road, by Cormac McCarthy.

This is sort of an amazing choice. I read a lot of books. I tend to concentrate on non-fiction, but I read my share of fiction, too, and when I do I try to alternate between "serious" fiction and "not-so-serious" fiction (like the book I just finished). I read The Road about three months ago, and I have to tell you, I haven't gone back to "serious" fiction yet. Images from that book literally continue to haunt me to this day.


It was like this, but bleaker. And they ate the dog.

I wrote a review of it back in December, but since no one was reading this blog then (unlike now, when I get literally dozens of hits a day), I will re-print my review in its entirety:

Jesus God, what a book. The blurb on the back cover says it is destined to become known as McCarthy's masterpiece, and I have to agree. I read 'All the Pretty Horses' when it came out but haven't read any McCarthy since. I knew he wrote spare, haunting, brutal books, but even knowing that I wasn't prepared for 'The Road.'

This is a brilliant novel, possibly one of the best I've ever read. It tells the story of a nameless father and son, trying to survive in the aftermath of what I assume is a nuclear holocaust. The two spend the book on the verge of death, one mistake away from fading away like, the reader assumes, just about everyone else in the world. As they scramble for food and shelter and try to avoid roving gangs of cannibals, the father reflects on life both before and after the conflagration, and what it means to live in a world where none of the trappings of civilization or culture exist anymore.

The writing is spare and the dialect McCarthy writes in echoes both the Old West and the Old Testament. But what I thought at first was a sort of forced was simplicity turned out to feel more like the narrator's failed attempts to describe the world around him. When the modern world has ceased to exit, it may be that modern language is no longer adequate or necessary. There are, after all, only so many ways to say that the entire world -- sky, land, and water -- is gray, there are no animals besides a handful of humans, and looking beyond tomorrow is folly.

I'm pretty tough when it comes to reading. Violence and gore don't bother me (the last two fiction books I read before this one were Scott Smith's 'The Ruins' and Don Winslow's 'Power Of The Dog') but I almost couldn't finish this book -- I was reading it before bed every night and had to stop for a while and then read the last 100 pages in one burst so I could process and start getting it out of my head. Not because it's particularly violent or gory, but because McCarthy does such an amazing job of describing a situation void of hope. This is not the apocalyptic punk of George Miller's 'Mad Max' or the fantastic post-eco-collapse of Miyazaki's 'Nausicaä.' This is a world where people survive by killing human babies, gutting them, roasting them on a spit, and eating them. It makes 'Huis Clos' feel like Club Med. It left me feeling hopeless, helpless, and crushed.

It's also, as I mentioned, brilliant. It has instantly found its way to the top of a list of "loved it but never want to see/read it again" movies and books, nestled squarely between 'A Simple Plan' and Stephen R. Donaldson's Thomas Covenant books. Go get it, read it, and revel in McCarthy's virtuosity. But don't say I didn't warn you.

"Hopeless, helpless, and crushed." Hmmm. Looking back, I might have understated things a bit. The blurb on Oprah's site calls it "awesome in the totality of its vision...an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation," which is true, but makes the book feel cheerier than it actually is.

I applaud Oprah for choosing such a difficult book (and it's not the first time; after all, Elie Wiesel's 'Night' is hardly a breeze), and I sit here sort of amazed to think that millions of people are going to have the opportunity to be moved (and more than a little freaked out) the way I was by this book.