Jason's review

Great review, but I have one bone to pick....these days science fiction can be literature. See Neal Stephenson, Jeff Vandermeer, M. John Harrisson and many others. I'm not a sci-fi geek in any sense, but much of what it great in writing these days is coming out of the sci-fi arena.

I'm not an SF geek, either; my tastes in SF stick mainly to Asimov, Orson Scott Card, Arthur C Clarke, Day of the Triffids (can't remember the author), and so on. The classics, really. Certainly not the space opera stuff, or the plethora of vast, multi-volume series.

And clearly, I like literature (a slippery and incomplete definition of my tastes).

Yet, as I said, read the Michael Chabon review for a great examination of The Road and SF:
http://www.nybooks.com/article...

You may also be interested in a completely off-base article ercently posted to bookninja.com that predicts the death of SF as a genre. I completely disagree with that assessment, but I do agree with you that there's a lot of great recent literature that transcends the SF genre and is much more artistic, visionary, and literary than the stereotypical stuff. Why can't excellent writers explore SF themes without being pigeon-holed?

i just put this book on my to-read list, but i agree with the first poster. why are "literature" and "SF" often described in mutually exclusive terms? I contend that there are many, many great SF writers out there who are pigeonholed by this expectation and not the actual content of what they have written -- the underlying assumption is that if they write SF, they must be somehow unworthy of literary analysis. Actually, i'd say a lot what we typically call "literature" is in fact SF (from Frankenstein to Nathaniel Hawthorne to Borges to Cervantes to the Handmaid's Tale) although it is generally not marketed in that fashion (in fact, Vonneget refused to have his books published by the Del Rey "SF" label at Scholastic)

Inversely, when someone like Chabon or Auster (both of whom delve into Fantasy/SF devices to achieve thier literary aims) write a "contemporary" novel it's often taken seriously, even when it's a stinker (Brooklyn Follies comes to mind), while amazing writers like Gene Wolfe are largely ignored by the New York Review of Books and relegated to providing insulation at the back of Barnes and Noble next to Star Trek and Drangonlance serializations.

btw, Day of the Triffids was by John Wyndham.

jw, SF-Geek.

and sorry for the rant.

Great writing is great writing and great stories are great stories. But i don't think the Road would even qualify as science fiction, since it contains nothing that is not contained in today's world. McCarthy has not imagined a distant world; he just presents today's world under very different circumstances.

Barnes and Noble would agree with you, Adam. I looked for this book under the Science Fiction section but it was in the Fiction slash Literature section. In fact, the word "Science Fiction" cannot be found anywhere on my edition. I looked and looked.

There should really be a "post-apoclypse" section. The Road could rest next to the Left Behind series, as well as numerous medieval works and the rash of Peak Oil/Economic Disaster books that have been coming out in the last several years. And, I guess, the Bible.

I hope you both have a few minutes...

SF is simply literature that takes a theme -- primarily scientific or technological -- and examines it in a future setting.

The quality of writing is not at issue. I work in a bookstore, and a lot of our literature section is made up of poorly written books.

For that matter, so is our SF section.

The way I make the distiction between literature and any genre is this: Is the story plot-based or character-based? If plot, then genre; if character, then lit.

As for the sticky subject of genre writers not receiving a fair shake, I'm of two minds. Genre writers are often reviewed in genre-specific journals and magazines, and in Publisher's Monthly. Unfortunately, readers unfamiliar with the genre aren't going to see these reviews. Readers will see the widely-distributed NYT reviews, and the fact that the NYT doesn't review genre writers widens the perception that genre writers are hacks, and that SF/Fantasy, Mystery/Suspense, and Romance books are "light" reading. I do see mystery reviewed more often than other genres; I don't know why.

There's enough excellent writers and enough excellent books that bridge the gap between genre and "literature" to muddy the water. At my store, the SF section leader and I share a number of titles between our sections (1984, for example). Any reader who limits themselves to one style, genre, or theme is only doing themself a disservice.

The Road may not be SF in the broadest sense. But imagine if it was. It would soon achieve classic status, but fewer people would read it. McCarthy isn't an SF writer in the least, although he, like many others, borrows from SF as much as SF borrows from literature. A lit author may "experiment" with SF, while a SF author may write a "literary" novel.

Perhaps the single biggest problem I have with this debate is that readers are screwed by distinctions such as SF. Most readers share Adam's view from above (that great stories are great stories) but many are put off by the sheer bulk of writing available. Distinctions are necessary, but risky, misleading, and sometimes narrowing. Some readers don't want highly literate writing, such as Calvino, but will eagerly dive into an esoteric SF novel, not realizing they cover the same territory and that both are worth the investment. SF and literature can be, often are, the same thing.

As for apocalypse writing, let me make one observation. It seems to me that in the last few years, perhaps as a result of the millenium and 9/11, our culture has shifted its apocalypse fiction (in any media form) from the perspective of "the world will end/is ending, so what do we do" to "The world ended, what do we do."

The distinction between tense is important. It used to be zombies attacked NY; now they rule the world. We used to be inches from pressing the nuclear launch button; now we've got nuclear winter. Aliens attack and we used to fight hard to beat them; now our planets are destroyed and there's less than 50k of us.

In other words, we always won, in the past. Now, we start from the stanpoint of defeat.

The question, then, is this: how are our writers dealing with this cultural shift, and how will they deal with it in the future? That might be the exclusive province of SF...

Let's face it, bookstores need to sell books, libraries need to organize their holdings, and purchasers and browsers need to find what they're looking for. The established classification system serves those purposes well enough. But it's a fact that when I'm looking for, say, apoclypse writing, I have to hop in and out of several different sections. It would sure save me a lot of time if I could just go straight to the apocolypse section.

I'm reminded of Borges' animal classification system:

those that belong to the Emperor,
embalmed ones,
those that are trained,
suckling pigs,
mermaids,
fabulous ones,
stray dogs,
those included in the present classification,
those that tremble as if they were mad,
innumerable ones,
those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
others,
those that have just broken a flower vase,
those that from a long way off look like flies.

Oh thank you -- this is turning into a superfine discussion for me, as the degradation and obsfucation of Science Fiction by publishers, critics and big box booksellers has been a bugaboo of mine since undergrad. Borges had it right -- the classification of things in general is haphazard at best and should not be taken too seriously.

Having said that, why does displaying books by genre help sell? couldn't "great stories" be displayed instead by saavy booksellers and customers who are looking for something specific could search for books by keywords(such as "apocalyptic")?

I like to think of the genres as Venn Diagrams. And I like to follow Harlan Ellison's definition of SF as "Speculative Fiction" which encompasses Fantasy, Dark Fantasy, Horror, Hard Science Fiction, Soft Science Fiction, Alternate History, Pre- and Post- Apocalyptic Narratives, etc... all genres and subgenres whose Venn Diagram circles may overlap with each other. Perhaps a store could be organized based on Venn Diagrams. Now that would be cool, interesting and helpful. And it would make a great floorplan.

Defining Science Fiction is as difficult as defining Literature. I am intrigued by your idea, Jason, of genre-defined writing as plot-driven and literature as character-driven, but I don't think this helps us much. Was _The Road_ character or plot driven? The characters do not change -- they do not undergo any kind of transformation -- they are as singleminded and colorless as the environment. The plot, getting to the ocean, is the only reason for the characters to keep moving.

I also like your idea that 911 has changed the collective imagination of our post-apocalypic archetype. A few years back I read a very intesting essay on how the Atomic Bomb changed Japanese Pulp culture very quickly. Godzilla could not have been created in a Japan that didnt experience Nagasaki or Hiroshima. (Btw, today the pilot of the Enola Gay died in Columbus, Ohio.) There's a dissertation in there somewhere.

However. I do think that a bleak post-apocalyptic narrative in which we "lose" has been around in SF for quite awhile. The Cold War gave popular culture an obsession with the possibility of Nuclear War (did "The Day After" scare you as much as it did me? what about _On the Beach_?) and perhaps 911 has given us more television shows and movies about bleak post-apo worlds ("Heroes" comes to mind immediately, but also the movie _Children of Men_, which was scary in how close it resembled current times) but I could name several great SF writers who wrote about loser-post-apo-narratives long before 911. And so I shall: James Tiptree Jr, the aforementioned Margaret Atwood (Handmaid's Tale. Wow), Octavia Butler (Adam, I'm buying you the _Parable of the Sower_), P.D. James (the original _Children of Men_ novel and someone who is typically considered a Mystery writer) -- all women, btw. But then there's Harlan Ellison with his "A Boy and his Dog" and Boulle's Planet of the Apes (of later movie fame). And I think Gene Wolfe's Urth series qualifies as does Vance's _Dying Earth_ stories.

Ok, that's it for now. I'm going to try to organize my MP3's by genre now. DOH!

Do you have to read the other books in this series or can you read this on as stand alone?

The Road is a stand-alone novel. With the movie release of No Country for Old Men, the debate above can't really be framed in terms of the question "Is McCarthy a Sci-Fi writer?" His western novels should probably be read in order, but since I haven't read them, I can't say for sure.

As for all the other books mentioned above, I say read 'em, in whatever order suits your taste and mood.

Just want to take you up on one point, jw. I don't think the characters don't go through any transformation. I believe the boy goes through one, albeit a very gradual one. Throughout the novel he's gradually losing a little bit more of his innocence. He loses his interest in toys, he becomes increasingly silent, he starts to accept that his childhood in the new world and childhood as it once was before the apocalypse are irreconcilable. Remember how he throws away the flute - creation of art has no place in the world of The Road where creativity is best measured by one's ability to fashion survival tools from the trash that litters the post-apocalyptic world.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents. I like your Venn Diagram idea of setting out a bookshop!

I didn't come up with the Venn Diagram idea; that was someone else with the same initials. Still, it's a good idea.

As for character transformation. It's been a year since I read the book, so the details are fuzzy, but I feel that the father "hardened" as a result of the apocalypse. Perhaps he didn't change much; perhaps he simply became more true to a part of himself. Nevertheless, I think the story is based on character-driven action more than it is based on plot-driven actions. It treads the line. The setting is post-apocalyptic, and like much SF/fantasy (aliens attack, a quest to recover something powerful, etc) the plot establishes the boundaries of possible action. The focus is clearly on the characters, rather than the backstory, and the events that occur to the characters are less important than the events that occur because of the characters. I know this borders on semantics and interpretation, but that's the crux of the thread above and the source of reviewer's head-aches: why can't a novel be both literature and SF, and why can't a skillfull writer operate on the edge of plot- vs. character-driven narrative?

You've made some great points, and I don't think anyone is right or wrong. It's a fun debate, and I think we can all agree McCarthy is a fantastic writer deserving of such attention.

Hi Jason,

I was actually responding to jw (message 9) where they said:

"The characters do not change -- they do not undergo any kind of transformation -- they are as singleminded and colorless as the environment. The plot, getting to the ocean, is the only reason for the characters to keep moving."

I didn't think this was quite right, about the characters not transforming, and I actually agree with your last post.

I also wonder whether McCarthy was suggesting that the father's outlook was a bit flawed. The way that he didn't trust anyone else, that if you only see evil in people outside your group, they can be anything but. The boy was more prepared to see good in others rather than evil, and was perhaps rewarded in his outlook (we hope) by meeting up with some of 'the good guys'.

I've only just read the book, so it's still disturbingly fresh in my mind. I've read one other of his, Blood Meridien, and although I can't dispute that he's a great writer, I found it a bit relentless, perhaps because I found it hard to identify with any of the characters. (Interestingly, this was another 'road book').

The Road, however, would probably be in my top 5 books ever read. I was a wreak by the end of it, and for me, that's the mark of a fantastic book.