Crozzled (The Road)
Whenever I start a new Cormac McCarthy book, I take a moment to temper my expectations, reminding myself that I'm probably romanticizing my memories of how good he is. As with all his other books, about 10% into The Road I was reproached for girding myself against him and let my expectations fly. To write a glowing McCarthy review at this point is excessive at best, fawning at worst. Yet this book has gotten some funny reactions, and I feel the need to counter them.
PhilaLawyer and I recently discussed an interesting point in an artist's career when they get too good, and are for some reason consequently panned by the Powers That Be. (We share suspicions that it stems from jealousy, class issues and possessiveness, but I'll let him elaborate in an upcoming post on his site.) While The Road is far from being panned, a lot of the criticism rings begrudgingly hollow and generally tells me more about the critic than the book.
So knock it off, you goofy critics (I'm looking in your general direction, Katie Roiphe). Yes, no work is perfect, but The Road comes as close to it as a book should be allowed to do. The whining about self indulgence, the bizarre application of agendas, the reduction to genre fiction, the accusations of plotlessness, sensationalism, machismo and gimmickry... they're inaccurate and make you look silly. Just stop with the nonsense. You're alive to witness the publication of one of the greatest works of literature ever, you lucky jerks. Shut up and celebrate that.
That's right, I said 'greatest works of literature ever'. To counter the petty bitterness that I keep detecting in discussion of this book, I'm going silly the other way and classing The Road alongside The Iliad, Ulysses, War and Peace, The Grapes of Wrath, Don Quixote, and The Waste Land, whatever title. You pick one; I'll argue it. I've missed the vantage point of a really high, elongated limb.
This book is not a poetically written epic, as has been much noted, but a perfectly classic and possibly intentionally executed epic poem. It shows common features with The Aeneid, Beowulf, and The Song of Roland at first glance, so let's just name some real quick: The Road could be more easily divided into movements than chapters (of which the book has none). It relies upon lyric and almost breezy language as often as repetition and metaphor. It constantly invokes God(s). It juxtaposes sharp tragedy and sustained tension with a heroic journey and feats of courage and cleverness. All of this placed within a wide, daunting setting and anointed with the notion of divine purpose.
I can understand if you object to the idea that The Road is not really a novel, but I invite you to meditate on the final paragraph. I cannot reproduce it here for fear that my keyboard will burst into flames from the beauty, but its arrangement and economy are staggeringly poetic. Or give this passage a whirl:
He woke whimpering in the night and the man held him. Shh, he said. Shh. It's okay.
I had a bad dream.
I know.
Should I tell you what it was?
If you want to.
I had this penguin that you wound up and it would waddle and flap its flippers. And we were in that house that we used to live in and it came around the corner but nobody had wound it up and it was really scary.
Okay.
It was a lot scarier in the dream.
I know. Dreams can be really scary.
Why did I have that scary dream?
I don't know, but it's okay now. I'm going to put some wood on the fire. You go to sleep.
The boy didn't answer. Then he said: The winder wasn't turning.
Goddamn, that's pretty. You could slap a title on it and Poetry 101 kids would analyze it into a fine dust, as I hope they will the whole volume. The Road is more easily comparable to lasting works like the Promethean myth than to purportedly classic contemporaries like The Corrections. The achievements of The Road normally make critics salivate, but seem suddenly unpalatable once packaged cleanly enough for Oprah's audience. Has McCarthy become 'too good'?
Lobbing criticism at the few (so very few!) weaknesses of The Road is fair enough I guess, but there seems to be a little bit of sand kicking in literature's face when we could instead be joyfully volleying this book around in the sunshine. The widespread popularity of The Road is both well earned and humanistically encouraging. I'm sorry for the lit snobs that they're losing McCarthy to the world, but I'm not sorry for McCarthy or the world.