The book is really good so far. I just finished Blood Meridian as my intro to McCarthy (it sat on my shelf alongside The Road for like two years and once McCarthy passed, I figured it was high time I pay respects and actually break into some of his work. I planned to do Blood Meridian, followed by The Rise of Endymion (Hyperion Cantos #4), and then starting my reading of Dostoyevsky's works. Blood Meridian blew me away enough so that I decided I would read The Road and The Rise of Endymion in tandem since the former is quite short and the latter is like 700+ tight pages, so having a stand-by in reserve seemed like a logical choice.
Language wise, very different feel from Blood Meridian – where Blood Meridian used vividly, almost *violently* descriptive language to paint a disoriented and colorful picture and managed to almost create the pacing and a sense of the passage of time through rough conditions by increasing the verbosity and detail of a scene to slow down the reader and draw them in, The Road's bluntness bleeds of the bleakness of the world it exists in. I am only 20 pages in and instantly hooked in for the long run, to the (no doubt gut-wrenching) end.
But…"cold autistic dark"? I've been camping on cloudy nights and woken up to piss in woods that are so black that you can't see a tree two feet in front of you and never once has the thought crossed my mind "damn nights like these really make you feel on the spectrum with how autistically dark it is out here". Like, what made him choose that as a descriptor?? It's not offensive or even close to the strangest thing he's written in my opinion, and that's out of only a book and twenty pages of exposure to him. But there were sooooo many ways he could have conveyed how dark it was. Why this?? Lol
I seldom write in books unless it's to underline quotes or bracket passages that really, really stop and make me go "damn" and reread them a couple of times. I never write my own thoughts or stupid little quips in the margins like some people do. "Cold autistic dark" was enough to warrant a teeny tiny question mark over the line because it literally stopped me dead in my tracks and made me go "huh???" OUT LOUD.
by BrennusRex