The "fire" is symbolic of the light within, humanity. If it goes out, a dim world becomes completely dark. The boy and the father are looking for others who have the fire. At the end, the boy apparently finds some.
CORMAC MCCARTHY may well be my favorite writer
by Terry 30 Replies latest jw friends
-
-
Open mind
Thanks willyloman.
That was pretty much my take as well.
Here's the soul-searching part, IMO.
As I read this novel, there was more than one occasion when I honestly thought that if I was in that situation, death would sound more appealing than carrying on. The father, of course, was wrestling with this throughout the book as well.
It's all well and good to sit back in the comfortable light of 21st century life and say "I know I'd carry the fire!"
This book really made me wonder.
Great stuff.
OM
-
Open mind
Just finished doing a little more reading about Cormac McCarthy. He's a bit of a recluse. Started writing in the 60's.
He has only given TWO interviews in his entire career.
One with the New York Times in 1992, and another with Oprah after he finished "The Road".
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/17/specials/mccarthy-venom.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNuc3sxzlyQ
I really enjoyed the Oprah interview. He really seems like a plain old piece of dirt and he just slouches there and won't let himself be "hyped" at all.
Anyone have any recommendations on what to read next?
I'm thinking "Suttree".
OM
-
Crumpet
My copy arrived yesterday. I've read nearly all of it, but have been saving the last pages for tonight. Its the first book that has really gripped me in over a year. It's a bleak world depicted with immense pathos and poignancy, but I am afraid to know what happens and yet don't want it to end.
-
Crumpet
I finished the book. Whew. It was my 1,313th book I've ever read. And one that I will remember for a very very long time.
Lines such as: "How does the never to be, differ from what never was?" and "in the history of the world...there was more punishment than crime" struck me, a did the entire pathos of the story. And the poetry of the descriptions "blind wires singing" over "ashen scabland".
Scenes really are tabletted upon my memory now, but I don't want to spoil the book for other readers so I'll keep them to myself for now.
Thanks for the recommendation. I think I want to read more by McCarthy but not sure anything can live up to this.
-
Open mind
Crumpet:
It was my 1,313th book I've ever read.
Whoa! How old were you when you started keeping track?
Just started "All the Pretty Horses", BTW.
I wonder where this thread's instigator went?
Prolly writing the next Great American Novel.
OM
-
BizzyBee
Based on Terry's recommendation, I just finished Child of God, the only McCarthy at my library. Read it in about 3 hours, and quite a good read. His use of language does remind one of Faulkner, only a bit easier to read. The pacing and language also puts me in mind of James Agee, A Death in the Family, which, come to think, was also set in Tennessee.
Thanks, Terry, I shall look for more by this author.
-
Crumpet
Crumpet:
It was my 1,313th book I've ever read.
Whoa! How old were you when you started keeping track?
Open Mind - I started when I was 7 or 8 noting them all down with ratings, but I included all the books I'd read since I was 4 or 5 - which to be fair weren't all that many!
I went to Waterstone Bookshop today so I could finger and smell the books. I noticed that there was a trilogy which had All the Pretty Horses as the 2nd book so I don't know if the characters are all connected throughout the three.
I bought No Country for Old Men, Alice Hoffman's Skylight Confessions and Karin Slaughter's Skin Privilege to read when I finish Anais Nin - Henry and June.
-
willyloman
I read The Road, then No Country For Old Men (before the movie came out). I plan to read the trilogy he wrote in the 90s, starting with Pretty Horses. Someone I work with recommended an older book of his, Blood Meridian.
Here's a link to his web site and list of all his works:
-
Terry
I am so very pleased others have taken the time to read THE ROAD as I did.
It is a book that stays with you; there is no doubt about that.
Several things about McCarthy's writing that are original.
His prose is "simple". But, it is not simplistic. I come across line after line that is so striking I have to stop and re-read it aloud for
full effect. It is magnificent and poetic at time in a way most contemporary writers don't bother to conceive.
Further, McCarthy has a lot to say philosophically without preaching. In No Country for Old Men he poses the problem that when children stop saying "ma'am and sir" it is the beginning of a tide of disrespect which ends badly for society. Actually, he demonstrates that a lawman who is up in years cannot begin to understand the current crimes of a society aparently gone mad. Integrity and honesty are no match for remorseless evil. In McCarthy's literary worlds, evil is not just the absence of good intention or polite practices. It is the culmination of where society finds itself once the checks and balances of conscience are removed.
That sounds heavy--and it is--but, it is precise.
In THE ROAD, the child is idealistic and genuinely worried by his conscience at the harm the "good guys" often deal out to others in the course of self-preservation. The father knows the cost of staying alive is not only altruism, but, kindness of even a superficial sort.
In ALL THE PRETTY HORSES, the young men who find themselves in Mexico must fend for themselves in a way none of them imagined would lead to evil and ruin. Friendship, love and the survival of what is human meets a trial by fire.
McCarthy has stated he can't imagine anything is worth writing about that doesn't involve the issue of life or death.
That makes him pretty deep, thoughtful and powerful in his choice of material.
His words are so strikingly well-crafted as to be beyond nonsense and even the rules of grammar!!
He pours our purity, radical reality and mythic self-delusion by the bucket. I can't read his books at a fast clip; I want to taste every word and let it rest on my palette.
If any of you saw the recent remake of 3:10 to Yuma, you might wonder (as I do) if the screenwriter had not just read McCarthy's Blood Meridian. The Russell Crowe character is awfully similar to the JUDGE in that novel.
T.