The Road is an impeccable, heavy, excellent book. It is fairly brutal, but probably not McCarthy's most violent. However, it may be his best. The Road follows the travels of a father and son struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic America. The majority of the world's life has been wiped out by an event (the book isn't specific, the event is not the point) or is in the process of dying and turning to ash.
There is some horrible stuff in this book; there are a few encounters I'm still thinking about. It tends to stay with you I think because it's so realistic, and not in an isolated way, like some of McCarthy's books have been. There is no science fiction horror here, just people, which is enough.
I suggest anyone interested in this book read the great McCarthy (its great to not talk about that jackass Joseph with this name anymore) interview in the WSJ: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424...
As a father and son story, where this father character is trying to show his son how to be a good person and be optimistic in this dying, hopeless, careless environment, where there are fewer and fewer people every day, and all sorts of opportunistic survivalism going on... just the idea of really caring for others... it is fucking impressive.
Five Stars. ]]>
I would like to start by saying I am a humongous Wire fan. This book is just okay. I have heard that the 33 1/3 books are very inconsistent, and I do think this is one of the better models for writing about an album (Neate actually conducted interviews with the band members and producer and was fortunately able to come up with a lot of unknown information about the recording sessions, songs, etc). This certainly is better than the "let me tell you what this album means to me" 33 1/3 books. Except the Master of Reality one, which cannot be beat. This is a good book for the Wire fan, and is a good book about the album but not a great one.
SPOILER ALERT: Bruce Gilbert apparently left the current incarnation of Wire due in some part to the revamped credits on the reissue of Pink Flag which list specific songwriting credits... kind of lame... ]]>
by Ernest Hemingway
Cool, hope it was enjoyable. I know exactly what you mean about the endings. It's as if they were just a way to stop the story sometimes... ]]>
bookshelves: currently-reading
Excited! ]]>
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Tim
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Tim
added a quote:
"I suppose I am talking about just that: the ambiguity of belonging to a generation distrustful of political highs, the historical irrelevancy of growing up convinced that the heart of darkness lay not in some error of social organization but in man's own blood. If man was bound to err, then any social organization was bound to be in error. It was a premise which still seems to me accurate enough, but one which robbed us early of a certain capacity for surprise. " — Joan Didion
"I suppose I am talking about just that: the ambiguity of belonging to a generation distrustful of political highs, the historical irrelevancy of growing up convinced that the heart of darkness lay not in some error of social organization but in man's own blood. If man was bound to err, then any social organization was bound to be in error. It was a premise which still seems to me accurate enough, but one which robbed us early of a certain capacity for surprise. " — Joan Didion
Tim
added a quote:
"Self-respect is a question of recognizing that anything worth having,has a price." — Joan Didion
"Self-respect is a question of recognizing that anything worth having,has a price." — Joan Didion
So far Can't Stop Won't Stop has been a very compelling, if slightly difficult read. While the writing is mostly clear and interesting, there are certain sections that I felt could have been edited, or sections where, after turning the page I was uncertain if I had accidentally skipped ahead.
Sorry, vague criticisms but it's like there's something mechanical about this book that struggles to work. The entire text is set in Futura, which may be a tribute to one of the amazing graffiti writers discussed (Futura 2000, look him up!), but as a reader it gets me frayed pretty quickly.
There are some seriously awesome chapters here that I don't think could be found anywhere else. I loved hearing the history of graffiti as a sort of reverse colonialism and as a pathway outside of gang culture, where graffiti writers were traveling beyond their own neighborhoods to tag sweet spots and then later to spread aesthetics and art. The pieces about DJ Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa's pioneering moves from Jamaican sound systems and african tribal ideas and philosophies into truly innovative turntable culture and togetherness-through-music are strong, captivating stories that will probably make you think differently about music in general. I really enjoy how detailed Jeff Chang is with his stories and writing in this book, although maybe that's one of the reasons it is hard to read, I think the decision to stick to the more complicated and diverse image of history is a valuable one.
I'm excited to see what else is in here. ]]>