Hacker News Reader

Comment by the_af | Hacker News Reader

Everyone is praising McCarthy and in particular mentioning how The Road impacted them, so allow me to go against the grain here.

First, I do like downbeat, apocalyptic fiction. I sometimes enjoy reading fiction that evokes anguish or that portrays failures. Kazuo Ishiguro is one of my favorite English language writers.

But... I didn't like "The Road" at all. I think I get the point, but to me it was essentially "apocalypse porn". It was about pointlessly and joylessly describing a dying, hopeless world, but in a way that wasn't interesting to read. I didn't even like how it was written, after a while I started counting how many times McCarthy saw fit to write "the last of [food]". "They ate the last of the biscuits". "They ate the last of the beans". Etc, etc.

I'm sorry but I cannot find better words for this, The Road felt like "hopelessness porn".

I expect people won't agree with me. So be it.

View on HN

I read all of his books and tbh the road is a minor work of him. a small book that is easy to enter into and tell a story to a lot of people.

blood meridian, sutree, the border trilogy are not that. they are work of art where words are crafted in ways that go beyond the pages. it is really the work of a master like very few writers ever did in history. a small excerpt of blood meridian. with so many little words, ..

« And by and by they came to a place where the road was darkened in a deep wood and in this place the old man killed the traveler. He killed him with a rock and he took his clothes and he took his watch and his money and he buried him in a shallow grave by the side of the road. Then he went home.. The harness maker lived until his son was grown and never did anyone harm again. As he lay dying he called the son to him and told him what he had done. And the son said that he forgave him if it was his to do so and the old man said that it was his to do so and then he died. But the boy was not sorry for he was jealous of the dead man and before he went away he visited that place and cast away the rocks and dug up the bones and scattered them in the forest and then he went away. He went away to the west and he himself became a killer of men. »

He never explains what happens, but The Road stuck with me because IMO it depicted how fragile everything we have is and the hellscape we would be inviting if civilization were to collapse.

Since he wrote it this has been done to death by numerous writers (including comic books), but at the time it felt fresh, and I vividly remember wanting to curl into a ball on my bed in horror at some of the depictions in the book, not just because they were horrible, but because I thought: "Yup. That's what would happen alright."

I think there's a beauty in the bleakness. Some of the descriptions are just so vivid, like a charcoal sketch.

> He came forward, holding his belt by one hand. The holes in it marked the progress of his emaciation and the leather at one side had a lacquered look to it where he was used to stropping the blade of his knife. He stepped down into the roadcut and he looked at the gun and he looked at the boy. Eyes collared in cups of grime and deeply sunk. Like an animal inside a skull looking out the eyeholes. He wore a beard that had been cut square across the bottom with shears and he had a tattoo of a bird on his neck done by someone with an illformed notion of their appearance. He was lean, wiry, rachitic. Dressed in a pair of filthy blue coveralls and a black billcap with the logo of some vanished enterprise embroidered across the front of it.

The line about how the "holes in [his belt] marked the progress of his emaciation" is seared into my brain forever.

Well, you know what they say about tastes... I just don't find McCarthy's style compelling, at least not in The Road.

I preferred blood meridian. McCarthy, and especially The Road, is definitely a continuation of the hemingway style, it's not for everyone. I find that the bluntness of the prose can hide some very beautiful insights he has though.

Interesting. I actually like Hemingway! For example, I consider "The Killers" a masterpiece: blunt, short, well-written, the dialogue is mundane but interesting, and nothing heroic happens. I don't know if I could stand a full novel in this style though.

To me, McCarthy in the "The Road" was the boring kind of depressing.

I’ve read a bunch of his books and The Road is the only one I know of that actually ends with a glimmer of hope.

When did you read it? I think the US went heavy on post-apocalyptic movies and books since the GFC. Maybe there's a bit of "Seinfeld isn't funny" going on?

There are several doomsday movies that predate The Road, were better at the time, and hold up far better today, IMO. Children of Men (2005) would be my top suggestion. The rare movie I've gone back and watched multiple times. You know why it's good? Because the central premise didn't come true (humanity is infertile), but we live in that dystopia now anyway. It's like Black Mirror but for the police state. It didn't go into hyperbole like The Road or The Day After Tomorrow. It was a realistic, slow-motion apocalypse. Going out with a whimper instead of a bang.

However, Children of Men is admittedly not as bleak as The Road, so not a fair comparison. If you really want a film that produces bottomless despair in the viewer, I recommend Threads (1984) instead. It was produced by the BBC on a shoestring budget, and yet it's still a better film. I can't say I recommend it, but if you do watch it, the ending is on par with Requiem for a Dream for being memorable and filled with doom and horror.

The Road just wasn't very good IMO. No Country for Old Men, on the other hand? Same writer, different genre, but excellent.

Not sure. Ten years ago, maybe ?

Mind you, I didn't think it was samey or cliched, I don't remember thinking "there are too many of these already". What I thought was that it was poorly written and uninteresting, and that it seemed like bleakness for its own sake.

I couldn't get into The Road either and I know others that feel the same. I've always wanted to try a different McCarthy but haven't yet, maybe this will give me the final impetus.

You could try Child of God? It's shorter than Blood Meridian and feels a bit less serious and rollicking, even though it's about a necrophiliac.

Suttree and Blood Meridian are the elite tier, IMO.

Blood Meridian.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com