McCarthy's The Road

Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road has been called "a triumph." I always pause when marketers describe literary works as triumphant. What, after all, are the lonely writers out there battling against. In the case of The Road, the terms actually fits...a rarity.

Down far too low on my list of must-reads, I finally got to take in this beautiful piece of what can only be called literature. It is a wonderful book of what could be called speculative fiction. But great works like this one remind us that shoehorning a book into categories can sidetrack the attention they deserve. It won a Pulitzer Prize for a reason...it's an achievement by a seasoned writer who has put everything together so well that it can truly be called a masterpiece.

There are two things that I'd like to mention about this book: the style choices and the imagery.

As far as style goes, I learned much from reading this book. Selections McCarthy made like eliminating unnecessary apostrophes and many brief sentences contributed so much to the threadbare world vision he creates in the story. Chapters would have added too much order to the book .... there are none. The creation of a world in chaos translated into a book requires clever style and McCarthy pulled no punches.

On the imagery side, its such a poetic book that I had to stop and reflect a number of times. As I read along, I found myself immersed in a story of brutal events and then calmed by the beauty of a thoughtful passage. The book ends with a paragraph that I will reread many times in my life. It is, simply put, one of the most eloquent closings to a book I've ever read.

For all the writers out there: thank you Cormac McCarthy, you've shown us how it's really done.