The Road | Cormac McCarthy

This episode of Books for Men features The Road by Cormac McCarthy. A post-apocalyptic novel about a boy and his father trying to survive in what remains of a burned-down America. It's painfully good—subtle yet searing. Listen for more!

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Welcome back to Books for Men, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do. So I'm really excited to share today's book with you. It is a literary work of fiction. Perhaps there is no better book that can be labeled a book for a man. Now, that's not to say that this book wouldn't be enjoyed by females. Actually, it was an Oprah book club pick, I think when it originally came out. That was one of the many pieces of acclaim that the book got, probably most notably, was the highest prize in fiction, the Pulitzer, the following year. So it won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2007. The book came out in 2006, and it is called The Road by Cormac McCarthy. So I made a bold claim and said that this is like a quintessential book for male readers.

(01:02)

Why did I say that? Well, quite simply, it is a story about a father and a son trying to survive in what remains of a burned-down America. So it's a post-apocalyptic novel. And for anyone who might be thinking initially, I don't know, I'm not really crazy about those types of books. Well, I want to take a moment to just assure you that yes, it's a book that relies on place and setting as a cornerstone for the book, obviously, because you can't have the story that unfolds without it, but it really just serves as a stand-in for what someone would consider a hopeless situation. So yes, there's commentary on the postapocalyptic portion of the novel, but it's not the core of what this novel is about. It's about the father-son relationship. And that dynamic is essential to the entire novel, right? It's how do you maintain hope inside of a hopeless situation?

(02:04)

How do you guide somebody who doesn't know as much as you do when you're on a journey or on a path that you know is almost unwinnable? And I don't want to ruin what happens inside the novel, but I do want to accurately depict that this novel is all about the father-son relationship and the journey that a father and a son is on in this very dire circumstance. And it just makes the book very, very emotionally charged, which is odd because of how simplistic and barren I would say the writing style is. It's beautiful. It's something that I really, really enjoy about the novel, but it's also very bleak and direct and simple in a way, which also makes the book very readable. I think that that quality actually adds to the novel in any other form of this story told in a different manner wouldn't land nearly as well as it did.

(03:10)

And I think that that's one of the major reasons why this book touched so many people and resonated with so many people across the world really. If there are a couple of things that just come to mind when describing it, I would say painfully good or even searing in a way, right? Like a knife going through hot butter. And probably one of the things that I love most about the book is even the story itself, but it's when I heard Cormac McCarthy talking about it, he said that it only took him six weeks to write. And so I love hearing that because it kind of dispels the myth that you have to take a really long time on something to create a piece of art that is amazing or that it can resonate with millions and millions of people. And we just know that this logically isn't true.

(04:02)

But there's like a popular idea that speed is bad for quality. I think that they're too independent. Things that don't necessarily run parallel with each other. You could write extremely fast and poorly, or you could write extremely fast and greatly, or the opposite is true too. And I think we've seen this throughout history. Another example of this was Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, which most considered to be the greatest jazz album of all time was written in four days. And so there are countless anecdotal examples of this that you can look at throughout history that would dispel that myth of you have to take a long time on something for it to be great or for it to be of a certain quality. Now with that being said, of course, there is a higher propensity of anything being of high quality, and I'm using quotations if you take a longer amount of time on it than a shorter amount of time.

(05:02)

With that being said, I do believe there to be a point at which there's a diminishing return, but I don't want to make this about the creative aspect of it. This has all just been to say that this Cormac McCarthy example and the road and the fact that it only took six weeks to write it was a really, really cool story, and it was quite inspirational, especially if you are a creator out there. But while I'm on that note, I should also mention that Cormac McCarthy is an author who is most considered to be or many, I should say, considered to be one of the great American authors of our time. And you should know that his story is pretty inspirational all in itself, in that it wasn't until he was about 60 years old, 59, I believe it was that he first got his big break.

(05:52)

He had never sold more than, I think the number was something like 5,000 copies of any book. And he started writing in 1965. It was 1992 before he had his big break with the book, All the Pretty Horses. And so that was 26 years later, and he was 59 years old, 60 years old. And what's even crazier about it was his dedication to the craft of writing in that he was a full-time writer and he didn't have other jobs, and he notoriously believed in working on his craft and being the best writer that he could be. And look, this is detrimental probably to other aspects of your life. I'm not going to paint it like it's glorious in that manner, but if you are looking at it purely from overcoming adversity coming from the bottom, never quitting on what you believe in, and having success at any age, then this is a story that is nothing short of inspirational.

(06:57)

And this book, I should say, the Road came out 40 years after he started his career, which is just amazing to me. And I also love the idea that perhaps he needed 40 years to write this story in only six weeks. I think that that's a unique way of looking at the entire journey of this book and Cormac McCarthy's life and this story as a whole. And of course, after his breakthrough in 1992, all of his work was then reconsidered, right? And rethought of and rethought about. And Blood Meridian, the novel that preceded the 1992 novel is actually considered by some to be the Great American novel. And it was largely unclaimed and unknown at the time of its publishing. I don't know, I just kind of am really enamored by this whole story. And it's an interesting one for sure, and it adds to the book that I am sharing with you today, which by the way, is again called The Road, and it's absolutely excellent.

(08:04)

And it's a book that you should absolutely read. So for any technical people out there, you should know that the book is written in the third person. The characters largely remain nameless. It also is written without quotations around the dialogue, which again, for some might be a little tricky. But I think because of the simplistic nature, the direct nature of how the book is written, you shouldn't get tripped up by this at all. It's actually a very cool quality and it's a very attractive quality that makes the book a little bit easier to read if you could believe that. And lastly, you should know that this book is about 280 pages, 290 pages, but it reads more like a 200-page book. So again, it's going to read fast, it's going to read simplistic, but I don't want you to confuse that with profundity because it's very profound and it's very heartfelt in a way to, as always, I want to thank you so much for listening to this episode.

(09:03)

I hope that you enjoyed it. And if it wasn't your cup of tea, then I want to remind you to stick around until next week, because I will be featuring a non-fiction book, and I have an excellent one lined up, one that I think you'll definitely enjoy quite different than today's book, of course. But if you did like today's episode and the book that was featured today, maybe you've read it or maybe someone who would like it, then I want to encourage you to share it with that person because word of mouth is really, really important for anything to grow. And this podcast, as you know by now, is really aimed at doing one thing, and that is inspiring more men to read and bringing together men who do. And that is, without a doubt, the most important aspect of this show and what I aim to achieve with it. On that note, if you have any ideas on how we can improve the show, whether it's from a design or promotional aspect, please reach out to me at dv (at) booksformen.org. Lastly, you could visit BooksforMen.org for more information, where you can also sign up for the newsletter, which is just a monthly roundup of all the books and authors that you hear on the podcast.