Books I Loathed discussion

So I generally don't hate books - Recently when joining a face2face club they asked which book I disliked the most - and had no answer. Well I want to thank Cormac McCarthy for giving me something to be able to put there.

Now I realize the "style" was done purposefully but it grinded on me like nails on chalkboard. If any "first time" or "newly published" author had submitted a book like this -- man how the rejection letters would mount up!

No I did not find the world he created facinating or even particlary interesting. I heard people say the prose moved them - well it moved parts of me - mainly my stomach.

I can't believe that this book gets so much attention.

I totally agree with you. I'm normally the type of person that finishes any book I start. About two hours into The Road I realized that I wasn't interested, life was too short to endure the pain of finishing the book, and I'd be a better person for closing the cover and returning it to the library.

Thank you! I have read a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction and "The Road" is one of the worst examples I've ever read.

oh man...i feel bad for making the kid read this. i didn't actually read it, but i heard so much good stuff about it and when he hadn't selected a book for his weekly read, i selected "the road" for him. he said it was painful to get through and that he wouldn't recommend it to ANYONE! :-( bad momma book selection.

I didn't read "The Road," but I disliked "All the Pretty Horses" to the extent that I don't think I could ever read anything by Cormac McCarthy again.

Since this is off-topic, I'll try to keep my comments to a minimum. But, first off, I found the two protagonists in "Horses" very poorly conceived and executed -- interchangeable adolescent boys who come off on the page like stoical Hemingway types. (I've since been told that cipher-like boy-men are a constant in McCarthy's fiction.) The love object of "Horses" is likewise a teenager with the emotions of someone (at least) twice her age, and her "Take me now!" dialogue is bodice-ripper boilerplate at its worst. Then there's her aunt, an elderly Mexican who expresses herself in flawless, mellifluous English taken directly (though surely it's meant as an "homage") from Faulkner's "Absolem! Absolem!" ("You will no doubt observe that I am of that breed that once broke bread with the Comanches, who once rode bareback with my head held high and my hair flapping in the wind," etc.) Little wonder that "Horses" soon made its way to the big screen; it's less a novel than a screenplay in disguise. Yet McCarthy is lauded everywhere, it seems, as a kind of literary John the Baptist -- ignorant of pop culture as he toils away on his "masterpieces" in rural-Texas seclusion.

Was "The Road" as barren and affected as "Horses"? I'd be curious to hear from someone who's read both.

D. R. wrote: "Was "The Road" as barren and affected as "Horses"? I'd be curious to hear from someone who's read both."

I have only read "The Road". However, I would say that "The Road" was the most "barren and affected" novel I've ever read.

I only finished this book because I was trapped on a plane and it was the only book I hadn't read yet. I hate it when authors "play with language" because usually it means I start out irritated and it goes downhill from there. And never naming the characters?

Schnaucl wrote: "I only finished this book because I was trapped on a plane and it was the only book I hadn't read yet. I hate it when authors "play with language" because usually it means I start out irritated an..."

In Blindness, José Saramago uses the same techniques as McCarthy. Not a single character is named. There are no quotation marks and very little punctuation. The story is bleak, dark and depressing. But, it's an excellent book. Horrifying, but excellent. So, I don't think my hatred of The Road comes from the linguistic stylization.

Sandi wrote: "In Blindness, José Saramago uses the same techniques as McCarthy. Not a single character is named. There are no quotation marks and very little punctuation. The story is bleak, dark and depressing. But, it's an excellent book. Horrifying, but excellent. So, I don't think my hatred of The Road comes from the linguistic stylization."

That wasn't the only reason it didn't work for me, but it had a lot to do with it.

I didn't find The Road incredibly bad, I just found it to be really really boring. I don't see what all the fuss is about, or why everyone likes it so much. I had to read it for a class, but I didn't finish it. It's just about the only time that I haven't finished a book for a class.

I really, really liked the Road. :/

Merrin wrote: "I really, really liked the Road. :/"

To each his or her own :)

Thank you. This book was suggested by a friend who appreciated the 'father-son' aspect....and recommended it to me as the 'father' of a 'son'....It was boring....senseless....and meaningless to me. Two people--the father-son thing seemed superfluous--mosying from here to there. The end. Reading time I will never get back! At least now I don't feel guilty.

It mystifies me why McCarthy's writing, not so much his style as his subject matter, is considered incredible. I read and then saw "No Country" which was hailed as a modern marvel of storytelling.

The plot is a fairly transparent allegory for Death coming to everyone. The famous line by Anton the Death figure in that story, when the next victim is pleading for their life, saying you don't have to do that is " that is what they all say".

The message of the story in No Country is "Death comes for us all in the end". What is new or revealing about that? Dante and Boccaccio wrote about it in the Middle ages. In contrast to those writers it doesn't offer anything by way of instructions for living or insight.

The Road is a dreary post-apocalyptic story about what it takes to survive, and what people will do to stay alive. Jack London wrote about that almost a hundred years ago, in "To Build A Fire", with equally an equally grim perspective. Like No Country, The Road doesn't offer anything other than the obvious sentiment that we are headed towards an apocalypse ( see The Terminator) and that life after the apocalypse will suck ( See Steven King's The Stand)

I agree with Emily that the writing isn't bad, so much as it is boring , because it really doesn't offer a lot of new material.

Overall I enjoyed The Road. But I really didn't like the predictability/inevitability of the ending. Did anyone not know from about page 5 that the man was going to die about two minutes before being found by the good guys?

Also, I'm usually really good at suspending my disbelief, not questioning holes and flaws, just allowing the author to tell the story. But this one just begged the question:
Why were the good guys alone in groups of 1 or 2 (when they wouldn't have eaten anyone), while the cannibals were organized into large armies (when they apparently tried to eat everyone they ran into)? I mean, how does one become the exception that is welcomed into the group instead of eaten by them? For future reference.

I made a valiant effort to slog through "All The Pretty Horses" a few years back and did not make it past page 100. I remember one passage that took up a page and a half, described a train passing by. And I had to read it two or three times to figure out that he was indeed, talking about a train. I realize that's his style, but is it too much to ask to have something interesting to read about?

I read The Road for my book club. Otherwise I'm not sure I would have finished it. There is a certain sparse elegance to McCarthy's prose but the story was unrelentingly grim and depressing and I didn't get anything out of it. And I'm even a fan of dystopic literature.

I summed it up to a co-worker by saying every other page was a baby on a spit. (Another one who liked the book's comeback was "Cmon! Not...every page.") I thought about reading Blood Meridian as Harold Bloom said it was one of the great novels of the 20th century. My Mother told me instead of babies on spits, there were dead babies hanging on trees. Maybe I'm more delicate than I thought. Just no desire to read McCarthy ever again.

(I also saw No Country For Old Men and I didn't really see the point of that either although I loved Javier Bardem.)

Exactly- if this hadn't been an established author it would've never seen the light of day.

I have to (at the risk of being tarred and feathered) disagree with a lot of the rancor here. I have the same problems with McCarthy's lack of quotation marks, apostrophes, etc. I read All the Pretty Horses and found it boring. I read Blood Meridian and found it long and boring. However, I found the story of The Road compelling and moving. The story isn't about the apocalypse; it's really about the relationship between the father and the son and how the father does everything to protect the boy so that he'll be safe; it's about sacrifice. Maybe that kind of nobility isn't popular in today's self-absorbed culture, but frankly I liked it.

Okay, let the pummeling begin . . .

Oh, I'm getting my rotten tomatoes ready :)

Actually, most critics loved The Road so you are in good company. I just found it bleak without purpose. I didn't really get the Messianic symbolism which was a big part of the story.

I did read a review of someone who is a father of a young boy and he said the book profoundly affected him. It's all where you are in life and what you bring to a book.

The first time I read Rabbit, Run, I didn't really understand what the big deal was. I was 18. A few years later, something got me thinking about the book and I thumbed through it was like "I GET it!!"

Thanks Vanessa. I can understand the resistance to McCarthy's writing in many of his books, but I thought that The Road was the most accessible of his works.

I really enjoy post-apocalyptic fiction. One of my favorite categories, Canticle for Leibowitz, Alas,Babylon, One Second After, even love the books that come before these sorts ... Red Alert, Failsafe, and so on.

I just couldn't get into The Road.

For a short book, The Road seemed awfully long. Endlessly monotonous trudging described in endlessly monotonous writing.

I think The Road is the only book I have ever failed to finish, after hearing all the hype then reading the synopsis in the bookshop I was really looking forward to getting home and reading it but now I wish I hadn't bothered. After slogging my way through 90 pages that felt more like 900 enough was enough. I felt nothing towards the characters, the bleak landscapes were dull with none of the intriguing beauty or charm of dead landscapes from other post apocalypse based novels and it all felt rather pointless just leaving me bored.

Cormac McCarthy is always hard for me to appreciate! His writing style challenges me every time and I have to say The Road is his only book that I finished. After putting it down many times because I felt totally drained I made the decision to finish it and am thrilled that I did! It opened my mind, challenged my thinking.

It should be on every reading list around the world for high school age kids! Remind them they are part of a much greater humanity and that their acts of unkindness, small and otherwise, make such a difference.

Caron wrote: It should be on every reading list around the world for high school age kids! Remind them they are part of a much greater humanity and that their acts of unkindness, small and otherwise, make such a difference.

This is the only thing I've ever heard or read that made me reconsider this book. It definitely demonstrates the fruits of unkind acts.

Thanks, Vanessa. I also wondered while reading it if all high schoolers were required to read this novel if nuclear war or a war of that magnitude would ever happen. It is a sobering book on the ramifications of a total environmental disaster and how it would effect the entire planet, not just the "enemy".

I had the opposite problem Sandi had: I loved The Road and hated Blindness by Jose Saramago. With Blindness, I kept wanting to build a fire underneath the plot to get it moving, kept shouting, "Something happen! Anything!" Wasn't able to make it to the end. Yet while The Road is slow, somehow I was able to enjoy it till the end. I think it's because of the powerful love the father has for his son, a brief light in all this darkness.