Oprah Hits "The Road:" Dads Everywhere Shiver

Oprah Winfrey has selected Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road as the latest selection to her book club.  I cannot imagine a more unlikely choice, but I’m impressed.

I finished the book several weeks ago, with the intention of writing a review.  I can’t.  For several reasons.

As a father, reading The Road reminds me of the guy who looks to take care of his persistent headache by drilling a hole in his skull – it’s a tough place to go looking for relief.

The novel is a meticulous and philosophical working through of every father’s worst nightmare.  Maybe I’m strange, but there have been days when the news has sent me down a similar (if less brilliant) road in my own imagination.  News of nuclear weapons in North Korea or Iran, or new reports on climate change can send me careering into a twisted fantasy about what I would do if the world fell apart.  What does a worst-case scenario look like?  What would I be called upon to do to protect my family?  Would I be up to the task?

Am I the only guy outside of Idaho that thinks about stocking the storage shed with canned goods, fresh water and vodka (best unit of trade) for when the lights go out for good?

Apparently not.  Apparently Cormac McCarthy thinks about these things, too.  In a depth and detail that I could not bear to.

I finished the book, but it was very, very difficult.  In it, an unnamed father trudges through a post-apocalyptic landscape of snow and ash, with his young son in tow.  The sparse narrative is mostly taken up with the father’s struggle to keep the pair fed and sheltered and warm and always, always moving forward.

The uncertainty of where exactly they are going gives the novel an element of suspense and philosophical depth.  McCarthy makes it clear the world is utterly destroyed; there is no happy untouched city in the mountains.  It’s all undone.  They are all doomed.  Yet they struggle on.

Why?  And why do I read about it?

There is a cinematic, page-turning skill to the storytelling that makes this savage picaresque as compelling as a trainwreck, and that craft almost obscures the questions of faith that the book raises.  Why does this father go on in the face of all the evidence reality puts in front of him?  Why do any of us?

If you are a parent, a father in particular, McCarthy’s book will horrify you.  That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read it.  Fiction should do that every once in a while.  Which leads to my guess as to why someone like Oprah would choose to bring to the masses a book as bloody-minded, atrocious and brilliant as The Road.

She must be very, very scared.

Clay Nichols, Health Correspondant

Clay’s column, Dadventure, published twice monthly to Gather Essentials: Health, is a sure-fire guide to raising flawless, perfectly behaved, and always obedient children.  Yeah, right.
 
Clay is the co-author of Filmmaking for Teens: Pulling Off Your Shorts, an award-winning playwright, and the Chief Creative Officer at DadLabs.com, a fatherhood website.