Cormac McCarthy Dead at 89

I still remember the day I bought The Road. It was one of the last times I spent an afternoon just browsing through books at a bookstore with a good friend. It was a Borders that closed down soon after. The paperback had a big sticker on the front - a stamp of approval from "Oprah's book club, even though it had already won a Pulitzer prize. I don't know why I'm talking about it in the past tense, I'm sure that exact copy is still in my apartment somewhere.

The writing style was hard to get into, but boy am I glad I bought that book, and glad I stuck with it. It felt like someone had taken the English language and adapted it to best give you a sense of that post-apocalyptic world - stripping it of the grammar that didn't seem to matter there, keeping things distant in a world where identity didn't seem to matter. Of course, he'd bring you into the first-person conversation briefly, unexpectedly, to feel their bond - a gentle nudge to connect with them, nothing like the devices a lesser writer would have to resort to. The book kind of surrounded you - an oppressive sense of hopelessness that hung around you, as you followed that father and son around for a glimmer of hope and humanity. It was very effective - took me a few weeks to recover from that book. I'm not even a parent - I feel like it would have hit even harder if I were one.

I'm glad he had a long career and got the recognition he deserved. Maybe reflecting about how this book affected me will get me reading more again, especially his trilogy that I never got around to. I did watch No Country For Old Men, and Anton Chigurh is still one of the most chilling characters I've ever encountered. I don't know how faithful that movie is to the book, but it'd a great watch. The movie they made out of The Road? My friends forced me to watch it even though I told them there's no way it could translate, and I'll implore you again - please, please read the book instead!