The first 32 pages of “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy
Not exactly impressed this many pages into. Being plopped right into a middle of what seems like a post-apocalyse darkness of a terrain, a father with a yet to be revealed illness, an innocent curious son, I find I have to reread passages twice in order to get at the … feelings that the author might have meant to evoke? Is it despair? Is it hopelessness?
“Autistic dark”, “the banished sun circles the earth … like a grieving mother”, and let’s keep repeating the words dark, darkness, darkening, ash, ashen, black, night, black water, dead, corpse, dying, die, and describe everything gray and everything cold, and then find some ways to fit them into abstract sentences to convey how dark this journey is, regardless if the sentence makes any sense.
That’s what I get so far out of this book. It’s a bit annoying, trying to make sense of the sentences and perhaps that’s because I prefer metaphors (which you get a sense of the profound) over abstract (which is.. uh, beautiful and artistic but what’s the meaning?).
I’d prefer the post-apocalypse world described in “Cat’s Cradle” at the end than the beginning of this novel. It’s also dark and gives you a sense of the end of the world, not unlike the barren, dark, mountains and rivers thus far described in the first 30-something pages of The Road.
And no, the sun cannot be a grieving mother, especially if you’ve seen it during a totality of an eclipse. Its flares are so bright and couldn’t possibly be darkened, that’s how powerfully bright the sun is, and I cannot imagine describing it as “grieving.” The attempt at abstraction in that specific sentence, even cleverly crafted, eludes me. Having seen the eclipse, when the sun cannot be completely overshadowed even if the moon tries its darndest, I can only imagine the sun with its rays as hope. A grieving sun doesn’t make sense (though you might feel free to disagree).
Will continue reading but so far, 2–3 stars.
