Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Randomly Noted Oprahcalypse Now: Oprah Book Club
Posted by Curt Holman @Curt_Holman on Wed, Mar 28, 2007 at 8:14 PM
Oprah Winfrey has picked The Road by Cormac McCarthy as her latest Oprah Book Club pick. Considering that it's a post-apocalyptic novel about an unnamed father and son struggling to survive in an American landscape burned to ashes by an undefined cataclysm, The Road is not your usual Oprah Book Club novel. It's kind of like Oprah telling America to go out and rent Mad Max.
For example, here's a taste: "They picked their way among the mummified figures. The black skin stretched upon the bones and their faces split and shrunken on their skulls. Like victims of some ghastly envacuuming. Passing them in silence down that silent corridor through the drifting ash where they struggled forever in the road's cold coagulate."
Cormac McCarthy is best known for the Western novel All the Pretty Horses (made into a Matt Damon film), but has a dark streak a mile wide. His novel Blood Meridian, one of the most acclaimed novels of the past 40 years, is probably the most violent thing I've ever read. The Road, despite its unrelenting bleakness and desperation, isn't quite the massive bummer you might expect. The father/son relationship is so strong and so touching that a certain amount of hope and faith shines through, almost in spite of itself.
One of the major literary recluses of our time, McCarthy has nonetheless agreed to be interviewed by Oprah, and this is one of the rare times when I might actually watch the show. Maybe Oprah's going to go on a sci-fi/fantasy kick next!
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