Cormac McCarthy’s The Road has earned an even higher honor than the Oprah-book stamp. It has earned the Pulitzer. That makes this the first time that the Pulitzer has gone to a book I’m currently reading. Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window)Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Related Norton the HulkIan McEwan's "Atonement" - The Trailer
This is so eerie. Take the #1 news story of this week and put it together with this Pulitzer for a book that my bookstore manager-boss said was the book that “almost convinced me to buy a gun”… And it just sort of gives me the chills.
Hmmm, that’s an interesting observation Adam. I’m just happy the man got the recognition. I have a feeling that this Pulitzer is in part an award for the body of his work. Blood Meridian is significantly better, but he was too obscure when it came out to get the credit that it deserved. Not that the Road doesn’t deserve a Pulitzer, but it’s certainly not his best.
And Blood Meridian is certainly not his most accessible. I plan on reading it someday, but I gave it 80 pages last year, and it didn’t do much for me so I gave up on the book temporarily. I’ve heard similar reactions from many, many McCarthy readers. There was nothing in those first 80 pages to draw me into the characters; as far as I could tell, it was all pure style up to that point.
Adam, I had the same experience with “Blood Meridian” a few years ago: 70 pages, and that was it.
But “The Road,” which I’m about a third of the way through (unabridged audio), is marvelous so far.
I don’t see how it would encourage someone to buy a gun. This is not the here-and-now, but sometime in the future. I don’t want to say more, having not read the majority of the book yet, but its connection are emotional and in the portrayal of the extent of human evil. I don’t get the feeling that the author wants us to think that this sort of malevolence (which is still murkily portrayed at this point in the novel) is something that we’re all capable of, but something that the most dire of circumstances might one day bring out, broadly.
We DO see isolated instances of horrible evil, of course. But this book is getting at something much more desperate and much greater in scope.