Post Apocalypse, Roads and the Writer's Writer.

[skull_bearer]

I love post-apocalyptic novels.

And movies, I love the movies, although the bits I like are mostly the myriad of ways the world can implode, as what happens after is usually dull and predictable. Macho man and pretty lady gather a group of reasurringly enthically diverse people to start a new world. Yay.

Novels are better, because novels are longer. A novel can spand several generations and show how things move slowly onwards. But with all but one exception, all the post-apocalytpic novels I've read have had happy endings (even the first one I read, 'Brother in the Land', was re-written to give it a happy ending).

It's ironic, that the best one I ever read (debatably the best book I've ever read) was the only one without a happy ending.

Enter Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road'.

I heard about the book when my father raved about it to me. It apparently was the first book he'd ever seen get the full six stars in the 'Time Out' magazine, which is very discriminating normally. He's a huge fan of Cormac McCarthy, and I, like most people would when confronted by a book their parent loves, immediately thought 'right, another dull culture and mystery book that will go completely over my head'.
Then I actually read the review and, wow. Post-apocalyptic novel! My favourite! My father rather reluctantly lent me his copy, it was a first edition, and I'm not exactly famous for my good treatment of books.

I can all but imagine his surprise the next day when he found the novel, still neat and safe, on his kitchen table, and me gone. He called me up and asked why had I not taken the book with me. I said I didn't need it. I'd stayed up until 3am and finished it, and anyway needed to get my own copy.

'The Road' is characterised by the vagueness of the setting and the characters. The characters have no name, identified only as the father and his son. They have no goal, only a desire to reach the coast- dispite having no idea what they might find there. The title fits perfectly, as the whole book is one long, all-but-aimless journey along the blasted road of what might once have been America.
But of course, we all know that what makes a good post-apoc novel is it's setting. And here, Mr McCarthy has apparently gone for the ultimate simplicity.

Everything's dead.

And by that I mean everything, dead bodies don't decay because there's nothing to eat them! The only creatures moving in this desolate landscape of ash and death are humans, who are starting to feed on each other now that the food supplies are vanishing. It's never explained what happened to caused such a disaster, and personally, I like not knowing. It's never discussed and thus, scarier that way. Anyone who's ever read Lovecraft would known that it's the things that aren't described that are the most frightening.

The death in the world serves to throw into sharp relief the relationship between father and son, the love between them standing as the only light in this very dark world. It's painful and very real and just... wow.

It helps that Mr McCarthy is by miles the best writer I have ever read. My father calls him a writer's writer and dear gods, he's not far wrong. Sometimes- and I'm sure everyone who writes is familiar with this- you manage to write a paragraph or sentance or even a line that says exactly what you want it to say. Every word is in the write place, and the patterning is just right to evoke the image in the reader's mind. No amout of re-writing could improve on it, and it's what makes writing worth writing.

This guy writes like that ALL THE TIME!

If the story itself wasn't scary enough, that certainly is. Wow.