The Road

The Road
First Edition hardcover of The Road
Author	Cormac McCarthy
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	post-apocalyptic fiction
Publisher	Alfred A. Knopf
Publication date	September 26, 2006
Media type	print (hardcover)
Pages	256 pp
ISBN	0307265439

The Road is a 2006 novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. It is a post-apocalyptic tale of a journey taken by a father and his young son over a period of several months, across a landscape blasted by an unnamed cataclysm that destroyed all civilization and, apparently, most life on earth. The novel was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006.

Development

McCarthy's inspiration for The Road came during a 2003 visit to El Paso, Texas, with his young son. Imagining what the city might look like in the future, he pictured "fires on the hill" and thought about his son. He took some initial notes but did not return to the idea until a few years later, while in Ireland. Then, the novel came to him quickly, and he dedicated it to his son, John Francis McCarthy.^[1]

Plot summary

The Road follows a man and a boy, father and son, journeying together towards the sea for many months across a post-apocalyptic landscape, some years after a great, unexplained cataclysm. The boy's mother, pregnant at the time of the disaster, committed suicide after the birth of her son because of her certainty that she would be raped and that she and her family would be killed by more ruthless survivors. She preferred to choose the manner of her death. The man himself carries a revolver with two bullets meant for suicide, one for him and one for his son.

Civilization has been destroyed, and most species have become extinct. The sun is obscured by dark clouds, and the climate has been altered radically, with cold "hard enough to crack stones." Plants do not grow. As the father and son travel across the landscape, they encounter horrific scenes, including an army of roving cannibals and their catamites and slaves; an infant roasting on a spit; and a basement where slaves, their limbs being slowly harvested for food, are kept, in terrible pain.

As the journey progresses, the father begins to cough up blood and he knows that he will soon die, but he holds on as long as he can because of his love for his son. Finally, after the two reach the sea, the man dies. The grieving boy is taken in by a couple who have been observing him and his father and who have young children of their own, but his future -- and that of the earth -- is left uncertain.

Reception

The Road has received numerous positive reviews and honors since its September 26, 2006 release. The review aggregator Metacritic reported the book had an average score of 90 out of 100, based on 31 reviews.^[2] Critics have deemed it "heartbreaking," "haunting," and "emotionally shattering."^[3][4][5] The Village Voice referred to it as "McCarthy's purest fable yet."^[3] In a New York Review of Books article, author Michael Chabon heralded the novel. Discussing the novel's relation to established genres, Chabon insists The Road is not science fiction: although "the adventure story in both its modern and epic forms… structures the narrative," Chabon says, "ultimately it is as a lyrical epic of horror that The Road is best understood."^[6] Entertainment Weekly in June 2008 named The Road the best book, fiction or non-fiction, of the past 25 years, ahead of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Toni Morrison's Beloved.^[7]

On March 28, 2007, the selection of The Road as the next novel in Oprah Winfrey's Book Club was announced. A televised interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show was conducted on June 5, 2007 and it was McCarthy's first, though he had been interviewed in print before.^[8] The announcement of McCarthy's television appearance surprised those who follow him. "Wait a minute until I can pick my jaw up off the floor", said John Wegner, an English professor at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas, and editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal, when told of the interview.^[9]

British environmental campaigner George Monbiot was so impressed by The Road that he declared McCarthy to be one of the "50 people who could save the planet" in an article published in January 2008. Monbiot wrote, "It could be the most important environmental book ever. It is a thought experiment that imagines a world without a biosphere, and shows that everything we value depends on the ecosystem."^[10] This nomination echoes the review Monbiot had written some months earlier for the Guardian in which he wrote, "A few weeks ago I read what I believe is the most important environmental book ever written. It is not Silent Spring, Small Is Beautiful or even Walden. It contains no graphs, no tables, no facts, figures, warnings, predictions or even arguments. Nor does it carry a single dreary sentence, which, sadly, distinguishes it from most environmental literature. It is a novel, first published a year ago, and it will change the way you see the world."^[11]

Awards and nominations

On April 16, 2007, the novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.^[12] It also won the 2006 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, and was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.^[13]

Film adaptation

A film adaptation of the novel is currently in post-production. It is directed by John Hillcoat and written by Joe Penhall. The film stars Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee as the Man and the Boy, respectively. Production has taken place in Louisiana, Oregon, and several locations in Pennsylvania including Presque Isle State Park and the Abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike. It is due for release on October 16, 2009.^[14]

Notes

References

• McCarthy, Cormac (2006). The Road. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0307265439

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Road

• NPR review
• New York Times review
• Washington Post review
• Sunday Telegraph review
• Booklist review
• Chabon's New York Review of Books Review
• Jennifer Egan's Slate Review