So The Road is pretty much a Pulitzer Prize winning, Oprah endorsed novel length version of “Wherever I May Roam,” that is, without all the lame band-on-the-run alcoholic nonsense. If you’re looking to read something that takes Steinbeck’s hope, Hesse’s asceticism and Camus’ pestilence [or just the image of Sisyphus], Amazon will probably recommend this book to you.* Sure that may sound reductionist, but comparing it to Road Warrior just seemed to lame. And in the end there’s not enough gasoline for that.
As I read along I couldn’t help but occasionally laugh at the morbidity. It’s just such a brutal book that those images, which to the characters are for the most part banal realities, seem gratuitous before long. It’s a question of quantity over quality of life and little more. Everything has burned. Everything. I scratched my head wondering how the father hadn’t heard of nuclear winter, or if he continued along because there was nothing else to do.
*[Actually Amazon’s probably going to recommend it even if you went in looking for Suite Francaise or the new Murakami or whatever because Oprah says so.]