Overheard a guy at the library dismissing 'The Road' as edgelord garbage

I was grabbing a new book for my club next month and this older dude near the fiction section straight up told his friend that Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road' is just misery porn for people who never camped a day in their life. It got me thinking because I actually loved that book when I read it 3 years ago. But he had a point about the whole survival aspect feeling detached from real hardship. I took his opinion as a challenge and reread the first 50 pages last night. Now I'm sitting here wondering if the bare prose is actually lazy writing or if it's meant to strip everything down on purpose. Has anyone else had a book they treasured get totally wrecked by some random stranger's take in 10 seconds flat?

2 comments

2 Comments

emery_lopez14d ago

Nah the stripped prose is the whole point.

terry_jones14d ago

Yeah but I think people miss that the stripped prose works because you first have to earn it! You can't just write flat and call it minimalist, there has to be real tension underneath. @emery_lopez I bet the stuff that pulls it off has tons of stuff happening in the white space between sentences. The real trick is making readers work for the meaning without realizing they're doing it.