Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by justupvoting 264 days ago
I hope, at least, you managed to watch the films before you had an opinion on them. Tarantino's, I mean.

The Road is not a violent or pessimistic book, tho there is violence and pessimism in it. Don't confuse the set and the setting.

Why write about, 'the worst among us'? Some art (and Cormac tottered over the line between wrought and overwrought plenty) is about finding meaning in the margins, in the edge cases. The statistical noise at the outerbands of anything might make it an impossible endeavor for meaning-making, but that's why art. You try anyway. Some writers are skilled enough to make the mundane sing and that's great, but McCarthy obviously didn't seem to care for that approach.

I think I can see why Child of God put you off enough for the thoughts of others to prevent any further effort, but I'd suggest you give him another go.

I'd save blood meridian for later tho; If you don't get too distracted by the setting of the road, it's a perfectly optimistic book.

As the poet said, something in us does not erode (free pun!)

2 comments

I think it's a stretch to call The Road optimistic.
I would argue that the ending of the book is optimistic despite the event that precedes it. An imperfect father wants the best for his child, and does the best he can with the hand he's dealt. In a dying world of cannibals and worse, there are people who are good, and whose surroundings don't poison their view on what it means to be good. "Do you carry the fire?" is, to my mind, an incredibly optimistic sentiment.
The ending is definitely the most optimistic part of the book, but on balance I think the overall picture is still excruciatingly bleak. It gives me the impression that any optimism of the part of the characters is likely unwarranted. They're still doomed.
The point is that everyone is doomed (even if you imagine we can survive the civilization-murdering tools we've cobbled up, we can't outrun physics), but that even at our most vulnerable, since the book occurs during a period directly after Armageddon, it is possible for some goodness in us to persist.

I don't want to spoil, but the optimism isn't for the characters, it's for we the reader, and the species.

The thimble of fire joins the wider flame. Goodness survives even there, and even then.

Yes, but I wouldn't call that optimistic. It's just an epsilon away from 100% pessimism.
If you say so. I think we could agree that when it comes to McCarthy, one has to grade on a curve.
It’s quite a stretch.
I don't think so; preserving goodness and decency comes at little personal cost to most of us, but McCarthy's effort in the book is at its core a depiction of these things surviving even the apocalypse, and at an incredible cost.

That fire they carry is not extinguished even in a world where all systems and pretenses at civilization have been ruined. It finds the wider flame, and decent folks to tend it.

It is one of the more optimistic works he's done, not despite the setting, but because.

FWIW, I've seen every one of Tarantino's films since "Reservoir Dogs".

I may give "The Road" a chance though.