Eric's call for some good nature books has motivated me to do a short book review. I'm not sure the one I've chosen is a good book, or that I would recommend reading it. And it does not have a whole hell of a lot to do with nature writing. Nevertheless.
I don't usually read fiction (preferring to learn something while at leisure). My wife reads a lot of it and recently finished a book from Oprah's book club called The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. She insisted I would like it, so I invested a couple of hours to read it. This is a book you do not want children to read.
It is one of the darkest, most depressing post-apocalypse stories I have ever read. The style is interesting -- the author leaves out things like chapters, and details like names, ages, places, and times. This lets the reader fill in the blanks with their imagination.
Something terrible has happened to our planet (or maybe it is some other planet). It could have been a meteor impact or nuclear war, or possibly a global warming tipping point. Almost all life has been destroyed: plants, animals, and most people. I'm guessing from the clues that whatever the event, it happened roughly a decade or so before the story begins. That is the beauty of this book -- everyone will have a different take on it.
The story is about a father and his young son. We don't know how old either is. They are struggling to survive in some place where there is virtually nothing to eat except dwindling preserved food stocks in abandoned buildings ... and other people. I get nauseated just thinking about it. I like to read archeology articles and know that pockets of humanity have been trapped in just this scenario countless times through history -- and that is why this story had such an impact on me. It is, in my mind, a fictional account of a real-life Ethiopian parent with child in tow, trying to walk out of a famine through a bleak, lifeless landscape.
The story documents their journey down a highway toward a coast. The father has concluded that they will not survive another winter where they are, and is taking a last-ditch gamble that there may be something better somewhere else. I won't say that all ends well, or that it does not. That will be for you to determine.
Gore on the Daily Show: extended dance remix
Why the ‘SuperFreakonomics’ global-warming chapter is worth your time
Reactions to Al Gore’s book o’ solutions, “Our Choice”
Comments
View as Flat
stevenearlsalmony Posted 3:40 am
19 Dec 2007
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
Permalink
odograph Posted 4:03 am
19 Dec 2007
(I've been wary because it's been recommended by "deep pessimists" who find a strange sort of validation in it.)
Permalink
David Roberts Posted 4:10 am
19 Dec 2007
He is in fact a deep pessimist -- he thinks the human race will do itself in long before slow-acting problems like global warming take us out.
Quite an interesting article. Worth tracking down.
grist.org
Permalink
greenfyre Posted 4:42 am
19 Dec 2007
Permalink
JoshG Posted 5:45 am
19 Dec 2007
Interesting that you mention the book as being an Oprah pick but no the Pulitzer he won for it...
(her impact is amazing...I was excited as she secured a rare interview...will have to look up the rolling stones one mentioned)
Permalink
stevenearlsalmony Posted 5:50 am
19 Dec 2007
There is a light at the end of a tunnel covering the "primrose path" we have set out for our children to march into the future. I think magically remain somehow wishful for their long-term wellbeing, for environmental protection and preservation of Earth's body; however, please understand that deep within me is a deep sense of foreboding for the children because the light at the end of the tunnel appears, at this very moment, to be moving toward all of us.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
Permalink
Kit Stolz Posted 6:11 am
19 Dec 2007
According to George Monbriot, the Guardian's chief climate correspondent, this is a book about what happens after the collapse of the biosphere. (The atmosphere still can be breathed, but the skies are so fouled that plants can't grow.) How he reached that conclusion I don't recall, but it makes sense.
McCarthy spends his days at the Santa Fe Institute, founded by a friend of the novelist, a physicist. According to Wikipedia, McCarthy says he prefers the company of scientists to writer types.
Ursula K. LeGuin, the famous science fiction novelist, has complained about "The Road," saying it more or less follows the plot of every post-apocalyptic science fiction novel ever written. Technically speaking, there is some truth to this charge, but no science fiction novel I have ever read has the power of this book, so my advice is, forget her criticism, and read the book -- if you're strong of heart.
Permalink