# The Road by Cormac McCarthy



## Patrick Skelton (Jan 7, 2011)

Just finished reading this boring, overrated novel. Nothing happens in this book...

A fifth grader could have written the dialogue! LOL
Example:
  "I'm hungry, papa"
  "Have some peaches"
  "Okay, Papa. I'll have peaches."
  

The man and boy walked on.  Repeat above dialogue.  The man and the boy walked on.  Repeat. The man and boy walked on. Repeat...


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## kiyash (Jun 9, 2011)

The thing about this book that's stuck with me years later is the language. His vocabulary is so incisive and unique. He uses these brutal, unfamiliar words, like "salitter" and "gryke" and "firedrake," that I've never seen anywhere else, but that I haven't been able to get out of my head after seeing them only once. They have a real primal power in them. 

I agree that something about the book kind of left me cold. Felt almost like it was glorifying this "end of days" scenario, like, portraying it as an actual male fantasy, and that turned me off. But I think he's a true master of the English language, and this book is a powerful showcase of that, and probably still worth a read just to experience his voice.


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## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

kiyash said:


> The thing about this book that's stuck with me years later is the language. His vocabulary is so incisive and unique. He uses these brutal, unfamiliar words, like "salitter" and "gryke" and "firedrake," that I've never seen anywhere else, but that I haven't been able to get out of my head after seeing them only once. They have a real primal power in them.
> 
> I agree that something about the book kind of left me cold. Felt almost like it was glorifying this "end of days" scenario, like, portraying it as an actual male fantasy, and that turned me off. But I think he's a true master of the English language, and this book is a powerful showcase of that, and probably still worth a read just to experience his voice.


Yeah, what you said! McCarthy is one of my favorite writers.


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## CNDudley (May 14, 2010)

Gotta throw in my two cents that I loved this book. Lean, stripped-down prose for a lean, stripped-down world. It did confuse me if I lost track of who was speaking, and the ending was a little deux ex machina, but overall a huge thumbs-up. Very moved by the father-son relationship.


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## RobynB (Jan 4, 2011)

CNDudley said:


> Gotta throw in my two cents that I loved this book. Lean, stripped-down prose for a lean, stripped-down world. It did confuse me if I lost track of who was speaking, and the ending was a little deux ex machina, but overall a huge thumbs-up. Very moved by the father-son relationship.


Ditto this. I didn't expect to like the book, but I was drawn in and haunted by it. Couldn't put it down and couldn't stop thinking of it.


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## stormhawk (Apr 29, 2009)

I didn't get it either, also found it to be boring and overrated.

People who have the grit to survive the apocalypse are not that kind of whiny.


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## Ethan Cobb (Jun 7, 2011)

I have to chime in and say that I thought it was a little overrated as well.  About ten pages in I wondered if it was going to end so predictably.  Flipped to the end.  It does.  Tried to struggle through, but couldn't finish the book.  Only book out of 60 last year that I didn't finish.  Guess it just wasn't my type of book.  However, I agree, the writing was well done even if the story didn't hold me.


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## jackblaine (May 22, 2011)

Wow--it's always so interesting to me how differently readers find stories.  I ahve to throw my hat in the "LOVED it" ring.  I was so irritated initially with the stylistic choices (the fragments) but realized soon that they work for the overall meaning so well.


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## wm ollie (Aug 9, 2010)

i liked it a lot


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## ashel (May 29, 2011)

jackblaine said:


> Wow--it's always so interesting to me how differently readers find stories. I ahve to throw my hat in the "LOVED it" ring. I was so irritated initially with the stylistic choices (the fragments) but realized soon that they work for the overall meaning so well.


I've heard this before, but I've never heard anyone explain what they thought the overall meaning actually was. What did you think it was? (I tried to get into this book a long time ago and couldn't. Maybe I'll try again?)


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## ashel (May 29, 2011)

OT, but before I forget: Jack, I checked out Helper12 - great read so far.


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## jackblaine (May 22, 2011)

genevieveaclark said:


> I've heard this before, but I've never heard anyone explain what they thought the overall meaning actually was. What did you think it was? (I tried to get into this book a long time ago and couldn't. Maybe I'll try again?)


genevieveaclark--first, thanks so much for the comment re HELPER12! I am so excited with the feed back I am getting, and so happy you are enjoying it.

I think what I meant with the style comment was that he chose to write in sentence fragments, with no identifiers like quotation marks, etc., and that this style resonated with the overall feeling of the book--the emptiness of our world, the lack of anything but ashes and death, the actual lack of energy the characters experience form fatigue and weakness. It was brilliant in my opinion, especially when you watch how he varies that style with a richer one, at times like when the father is remembering his dream of the cave (I still get chills about that dream--I think of Slouching Toward Bethlehem every time--the monster is us--or what we will become).

I think I don't know what his overall message was--it could have been that there is hope even in the darkest dark (the ending is not hopeless) or that we are destined to fail even though that hope exists. I don't know. I just know it';s a book I have read three times, and still think about in different ways.


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## Not Here (May 23, 2011)

CNDudley said:


> Gotta throw in my two cents that I loved this book. Lean, stripped-down prose for a lean, stripped-down world. It did confuse me if I lost track of who was speaking, and the ending was a little deux ex machina, but overall a huge thumbs-up. Very moved by the father-son relationship.


Couldn't have said it better. I usually explain that the writing is just another means to convey the feelings in the book. Really liked it but could also see why others wouldn't. It's a love it or hate it sort of book. It's also not a book I'd like to read again. Personally I prefer something that portrays the good in humanity during bleak moments. I think it's just a preference difference.


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## Ty Johnston (Jun 19, 2009)

Didn't hate it, but feel no fondness for the novel. The style didn't bother me as much as the lack of anything happening throughout the tale. And the fact I could pretty much guess the ending within the first dozen or so pages.

As for post-apocalyptic tales, I felt it was more gritty and realistic than the majority of the shoot-em-up movies and novels based upon a similar premise. Not that there's anything wrong with a good action flick of book.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

I didn't care for it much either.  One of the few cases where I liked the movie better than the book.  I just didn't like McCarthy's writing style at all.


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## James Everington (Dec 25, 2010)

I thought it was brilliant. Reminded me of that TS Eliot line: "This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper". The last embers flickering out. Which, as others have pointed out, is why the prose style really made sense.


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## Harry Shannon (Jul 30, 2010)

McCarthy is an acquired taste, but he is a brilliant existentialist. If you read The Road and No Country for Old Men as metaphors for mankind's need to locate and hang on to some kind of integrity in an unforgiving universe, what appears to be simplicity becomes much richer in meaning and texture. 

SPOILER ALERT


The abrupt ending of The Road has caused a lot of controversy, but my reading of it is that the bitter father was wrong all along--hope and meaning do survive even the darkest passages.


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## jason10mm (Apr 7, 2009)

McCarthy's inability to use common grammatical symbols is what turns me off of his work. Quotation marks for spoken words is extremely prevelant, why does he get to buck the trend? Granted, the paucity of characters and dialogue make it possible to figure it out, but it is annoying and tedious. Kind of like a writer who, for no discernable reason, decided to not use the word "the" or decline to give anyone a gender.


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## Patrick Skelton (Jan 7, 2011)

Has anyone seen the movie?  I've heard that it's even worse than the book.


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## stormhawk (Apr 29, 2009)

Patrick Skelton said:


> Has anyone seen the movie? I've heard that it's even worse than the book.


Significantly worse, yes.


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## Geemont (Nov 18, 2008)

Actually, I think _The Road_ might be McCarthy's weakest novel along with _No County for Old Men_ which I liked slightly better. His wasn't up to snuff with his earlier novel Now _Blood Meridian_ is fantastic. But the language is rich and more complex than _The Road_ which might turn some readers aside.


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## balaspa (Dec 27, 2009)

Loved this book, No Country for Old Men and Blood Meridian.  McCarthy is one of the greatest of modern novelists.  This book was profoundly sad and, at time, terrifying.  I also think, all too realistic as to what would happen if the world suddenly became as described in the book.  You would be left with people wandering, starving, dying...and many would turn into monsters.  It's a haunting book and likely to stay with you for a long time after.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

balaspa said:


> Loved this book, No Country for Old Men and Blood Meridian. McCarthy is one of the greatest of modern novelists. This book was profoundly sad and, at time, terrifying. I also think, all too realistic as to what would happen if the world suddenly became as described in the book. You would be left with people wandering, starving, dying...and many would turn into monsters. It's a haunting book and likely to stay with you for a long time after.


balaspa, I notice I'm agreeing with you a lot today. 

Haunting is exactly the word I was going to use in regard to this novel. His prose is stripped down and hard from some people to get into, yet it is evocative and gripping.

This is one of my all-time favorite novels. The ultimate in post-apocalyptic literature.


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## Ian Fraser (Mar 8, 2011)

For me The Road just couldn't compare to the serious heavyweight books that came before it - look at something in the classic post-apocalyptic genre like Russel Hoban's Riddley Walker for instance. Or the old classic A Canticle For Leibowitz. Or Earth Abides. Those to me are the ones that pushed the boundaries. The Road was just lots of walking - and I expected better from it. 
/my 2 cents worth


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## Patrick Skelton (Jan 7, 2011)

Crazy how divisive this book seems to be!  Seems to be a love or hate it kind of book.


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## jason10mm (Apr 7, 2009)

Well, given how bleak it is, the mixed opinions are not surprising.

And I suspect a lot of folks like McCarthy because someone else told them that liking McCarthy made you cool.


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## jackblaine (May 22, 2011)

jason10mm said:


> Well, given how bleak it is, the mixed opinions are not surprising.
> 
> And I suspect a lot of folks like McCarthy because someone else told them that liking McCarthy made you cool.


LOL. Well, I like Anne McCaffrey, too, and nobody thinks that's cool that I know of. Nope--for me, The Road and Blood Meridian are genius. The rest of McCarthy I can do without.

Funny what people suspect, sometimes. Always makes me wonder why they suspect things.


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## Scott Daniel (Feb 1, 2011)

I did like the book, although his writing style was so far from the norm it did make it hard to follow. The world he created was so bleak, so without hope. I loved the fact that he didn't compromise, didn't give in to the sappy happy ending BS that most novels do. I found that part refreshing.


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## balaspa (Dec 27, 2009)

I can see how McCarthy could be devisive with most of his books. He does not tell happy stories, in general. _Blood Meridian_ has one of the most evil characters you will ever find in fiction with The Judge. No Country for Old Men manages to come close with Anton Chigurh. He definitely is not for everyone and The Road is not going to be a book for everyone.

For me, it worked and I was glad to have read it.

Also, THANKS FOR AGREEING WITH ME JRTomlin!


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## John Hartness (Aug 3, 2009)

Dragged myself through it, but it took months. I just can't handle that much bleak in one sitting. Didn't care for it, and haven't read any other McCarthy, but after seeing some of the comments about other books in this thread I'll put some of his other stuff in my TBR list.


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## Mrs. K. (Dec 31, 2010)

My dislike for this book is well documented (see my entry in the 'Wouldn't recommend even to your worst enemy' thread, LOL...) Someone wrote a one-star review on Amazon for this book that is _hysterical._ It's the very first one listed.


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## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

jason10mm said:


> McCarthy's inability to use common grammatical symbols is what turns me off of his work. Quotation marks for spoken words is extremely prevelant, why does he get to buck the trend? Granted, the paucity of characters and dialogue make it possible to figure it out, but it is annoying and tedious. Kind of like a writer who, for no discernable reason, decided to not use the word "the" or decline to give anyone a gender.


It's not an "inability." I'm sure he knows about quotation marks and commas. And he's certainly not the first writer with that style. William Faulkner anyone? (McCarthy's first editor was Albert Erskine, who was Faulkner's editor.)


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## sheakins (Jun 4, 2011)

> Just finished reading this boring, overrated novel.


I couldn't agree more. I bought this after reading his masterpiece _No country for Old Men_. I read that before seeing the movie and I was blown away. It was my first book by Cormac McCarthy so I immediately looked for more. I read that _The Road_ was his masterpiece, so I bought it and made the mistake of taking it on vacation to the South of France. We all like to have a good read on vacation, don't we?

I remember sitting on the terrace overlooking the Mediterranean with a glass of chilled rose in one hand and the book in the other. I felt marvellous. But then, I started to read. Pretty soon, I was feeling physically ill. The contrast between the natural beauty all around me and the grizzly, bleak landscape of the novel could not have been more stark. This is a very ugly and unappealing book about cannibalism and the degradation of humanity. It's pretty much guaranteed to make anyone feel bad wherever they read it. I ended up dumping it in the trash.

All in all... not the ideal holiday read!


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## Harry Shannon (Jul 30, 2010)

Blood Meridian is brilliant. Darkly funny, brutal and sad. He takes a different approach with dialogue and to some extent style, due to the demands of the story, but in my opinion it is one of the finest horror novels of the 20th century.


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## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

sheakins said:


> I couldn't agree more. I bought this after reading his masterpiece _No country for Old Men_. I read that before seeing the movie and I was blown away. It was my first book by Cormac McCarthy so I immediately looked for more. I read that _The Road_ was his masterpiece, so I bought it and made the mistake of taking it on vacation to the South of France. We all like to have a good read on vacation, don't we?
> 
> I remember sitting on the terrace overlooking the Mediterranean with a glass of chilled rose in one hand and the book in the other. I felt marvellous. But then, I started to read. Pretty soon, I was feeling physically ill. The contrast between the natural beauty all around me and the grizzly, bleak landscape of the novel could not have been more stark. This is a very ugly and unappealing book about cannibalism and the degradation of humanity. It's pretty much guaranteed to make anyone feel bad wherever they read it. I ended up dumping it in the trash.
> 
> All in all... not the ideal holiday read!


I'm not sure I see the correlation between "boring" and "overrated" and it not being about rainbows and unicorns on the Mediterranean.


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## Casper Parks (May 1, 2011)

Enjoyed "The Road"... 

The author breaks many punctuation and grammar rules, and gets away with it as artistic. That said, it was a great book. The film was well-done.

Not everyone likes Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Alan Folsom or whomever. I enjoy films based on King books, however do not read his books often. Yet, I have a great deal of respect for King's books. Folsom, a well-known writer for film gets little respect for his books. I'm more apt to read a new Folsom book than a King book.

Reading "The Road" took getting use too. Its artistic style is a departure from the norm.


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## VondaZ (Apr 21, 2009)

jackblaine said:


> I think what I meant with the style comment was that he chose to write in sentence fragments, with no identifiers like quotation marks, etc., and that this style resonated with the overall feeling of the book--the emptiness of our world, the lack of anything but ashes and death, the actual lack of energy the characters experience form fatigue and weakness. It was brilliant in my opinion, especially when you watch how he varies that style with a richer one, at times like when the father is remembering his dream of the cave (I still get chills about that dream--I think of Slouching Toward Bethlehem every time--the monster is us--or what we will become).


I loved the use of sentence fragments in this books. They would be extremely long passages, but they would be all alike in that the verb was missing from each one. That had to be deliberate. It was like these descriptions of the earth no longer existed in time - there is no more action here, there is not even a "to be" verb. To say that they just "are" allows them too much existence and life. It is like everything has ended just like this and nothing more ever happens or changes. It is over. Then you have the few beings left on earth who still can act, and they are like the last flickers of life and we don't know if they will flicker out or rekindle.

The boy is the the spark that has the chance of rekindling. He is hope and a potential future for humanity.



Harry Shannon said:


> SPOILER ALERT
> The abrupt ending of The Road has caused a lot of controversy, but my reading of it is that the bitter father was wrong all along--hope and meaning do survive even the darkest passages.


I don't really interpret it as the father being wrong, so much as the father was necessary at one time, but now the boy needs to be free from his protections. The father realizes the boy is our hope and knows that his entire purpose has to be to protect this, even though hope and dreams for the future are impossible for him. The problem is that hope can't survive if it doesn't have freedom and the father's overprotectiveness can also smother it. At the end of the novel, the father has reached the end of his usefulness and the boy must go into the world to give hope a chance. Had the father not been so protective up until this point, the boy likely would have perished at some other juncture.


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## Bob Mayer (Feb 20, 2011)

I'm middle of the road on this, pun intended. 
His writing is powerful, although he doesn't use quotation marks because his characters speak like he writes.  He does have some wicked good prose.
The movie was a good adaptation.

As far post-apocalyptic, it's a laugher in terms of actions.  Uh-- gee, dad, there's a whole pile of shows in this room here.  And let's put a rear view mirror on the shopping cart.  If a shopping cart is the best you can come up with to carry your gear, you don't have much imagination.  And it, also, of course, limits you to being on the Road, where those bad people can find you.  I actually use parts of this book in my current nonfiction WIP about survival.  To show what not to do.

The thing about the book i found fascinating, though, was the fact that in being obsessed with 'saving' his son, he didn't teach his son how to really live.  You can look at the father several ways, which is the sign of great story-telling.


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## joanhallhovey (Nov 7, 2010)

I read this book front to back at a sitting, and loved it.  Spare, vigorous language - a fine writer.  Read everything he wrote after The Road.  I so admire his talent.

Joan


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## jackblaine (May 22, 2011)

Bob Mayer said:


> The thing about the book i found fascinating, though, was the fact that in being obsessed with 'saving' his son, he didn't teach his son how to really live. You can look at the father several ways, which is the sign of great story-telling.


I noticed that , too, Bob. I thought it was because the father realized he didn't know how to live, not in the world that was left.


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## stormhawk (Apr 29, 2009)

sheakins said:


> I remember sitting on the terrace overlooking the Mediterranean with a glass of chilled rose in one hand and the book in the other. I felt marvellous. But then, I started to read. Pretty soon, I was feeling physically ill. The contrast between the natural beauty all around me and the grizzly, bleak landscape of the novel could not have been more stark. This is a very ugly and unappealing book about cannibalism and the degradation of humanity. It's pretty much guaranteed to make anyone feel bad wherever they read it. I ended up dumping it in the trash.
> 
> All in all... not the ideal holiday read!


Understand that I didn't like the book ... but your post really underlines the power of the writing.


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## Eric C (Aug 3, 2009)

I don't love or hate the book but sure admire it. There's something about McCarthy's work that is hypnotic. I get sucked in to an extent I don't often feel, and I think the missing quotation marks are part of the effect.

The only other author who sucks me in in the same way is probably Raymond Chandler. (How's that for a weird comparison. Yet there is the similarity that are they are both highly distinctive stylists.)


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## herocious (May 20, 2011)

Patrick Skelton said:


> Just finished reading this boring, overrated novel. Nothing happens in this book...
> 
> A fifth grader could have written the dialogue! LOL
> Example:
> ...


This is hilarious. I just finished The Sunset Limited and had a lot of trouble with the overall grayness of the thing. We both started McCarthy threads. That guy sure gets dialogues started, you gotta give him that.


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## Casper Parks (May 1, 2011)

The book won a "Pulitzer Prize"...


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## stormhawk (Apr 29, 2009)

That just means a bunch of people think it's "literary" or "has merit," neither of which are synonyms for "entertaining" or "readable." 

Don't get me started on 2999 (Roberto Bolano) ... "oh, you gotta read it, literary masterwork, yadda, yadda, yadda." 

Yeah. Right.


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## NormanF (Jun 21, 2011)

It's a horrifying, memorable world he's created.

The fact we're all talking about it means, to a large degree, he's done his job.


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## Adam Kisiel (Jun 20, 2011)

Try the one that "No country for old men" was based on.


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## sheakins (Jun 4, 2011)

stormhawk said:


> Understand that I didn't like the book ... but your post really underlines the power of the writing.


Yes, there's no denying the power of it... but in this instance the power to turn me off!

I think all these posts are valid. But why are they so polarised? I think it boils down to expectations. What are you looking for when you pick up a novel?

The positive reactions mostly read like they were written by literary critics. No doubt literary critics find much to admire in _The Road_. But in the other camp are those expecting to be entertained... and nothing in the world entertains like a good story.

The problem I have with this dreary treatise on the apocalypse is that it is bleak at every level, and it doesn't engage me in a story. I am not interested in the characters or what is happening to them. That makes it poor storytelling in my book, and storytelling is what I'm after. I contrasted it in my earlier comments with the author's _No Country for Old Men_ which is an unashamed masterpiece. Here, the craftsmanship is dazzling. It's a great story with all the values you expect in a commercial thriller 'blistering pace, unputdownable etc.' but at the same time it resonates with literary values. McCarthy uses the action/suspense story merely as a mirror for the sheriff's (the old man's) reflections on his life. He gives us complete intimacy with the sheriff through the old man's feelings about the times he has lived through in Texas and the mayhem going on around him against which he is powerless. It's a wonderful portrait in a compelling story that McCarthy uses to explore his perennial themes. Obviously, the movie shifted the emphasis, so I'm speaking of the book. Successfully fusing commercial and literary, particularly in genre fiction is a real achievement... ergo my disappointment when I followed it with _The Road_.


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## balaspa (Dec 27, 2009)

I loved that someone on this thread mentioned that _Blood Meridian_ was a horror novel. It is not typically called such, but it really is. I had to put that book down a few times because the carnage was just too much. At the same time, it is also brilliant.


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## Julia March (Feb 22, 2011)

I love Cormac McCarthy. I love the way he writes.

The only thing is, I have to take a break from writing for a week or so after reading anything by him, to give it a chance to fade. If I don't let it fade, anything I write will sound like him. (Only of course _nowhere_ near as good.)


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## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

sheakins said:


> The positive reactions mostly read like they were written by literary critics. No doubt literary critics find much to admire in _The Road_. But in the other camp are those expecting to be entertained... and nothing in the world entertains like a good story.


You hold critics in low esteem. Which is fine. As if us mere mortals can't and shouldn't enjoy this novel, and couldn't possibly consider it a "good story." Maybe we're all just pretentious.


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