And the road becomes my bride…

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.]