The Road
I’m currently 100 pages into Cormac McCarthy’s best-selling and
pulitzer-prize winning "The Road", and I haven’t fallen asleep in
reading a book as often as I had in reading this one.
What a listless storytelling this is! I didn’t expect it to be a
high-octane action-packed thriller in the same vein as Battle Royale,
but gee does The Road ever make the story of survival lethargic! This
is coming from a guy who hasn’t fallen asleep watching movies besides
The Awakenings (this isn’t a bad joke! It’s true!).
Grapes of Wrath, another Pulitzer Prize winner, isn’t exactly the
most "aggressive" novel ever, but I stayed awake reading it because of
the lively character interactions and because each chapter is
progressive, fresh, and eventful. While the theme of the Road (set in a
post apocalyptic world where a father and a son tries to survive
tribulations while traveling south) is inventive, the plot is tedious.
All the father and son do (so far) is walk, sleep, scrounge abandoned
homes, talk about love, safety, security and death, lathered, rinsed
and repeated ad nauseum. When something interesting finally happens
(like having an "enemy" show up) it is short-lived, and is afterwards
followed by the tedium of their same-old "normal" traveling routine.
I’m not sure where this Pulitzer-prize distinction came from
because I don’t feel like reading anything classic. Last I checked,
Pulitzer books aren’t much of a bore. And while I can understand the
beauty of understated storytelling, something HAS to happen in order
for a story to be good.
At a 100 pages in, I haven’t read anything happen yet.
