What I learned over the weekend.
25 August 2008
I learned that it's really, really stupid to read some dark apocalyptic quasi-horror fiction right before bedtime.
I know. I'm a real genius.
I finally got around to reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road, and geez, if you're looking for scary imagery, depression, and cannibalism, do I have the book for you. As when discussing True Crime, "enjoy" is not really the word that can be applied to reading a book like this. But I did read the whole thing, and then spent a couple of nights working it out in my subconscious with nightmares. Yikes:
"He wrapped their coats each in turn around the trunk of a small tree and twisted out the water. He had the boy take off his clothes and he wrapped him in one of the blankets and while he stood shivering he wrung the water out of his clothes and passed them back. The ground where they'd slept was dry and they sat there with the blankets draped over them and ate apples and drank water. Then they set out upon the road again, slumped and cowled and shivering in their rags like mendicant friars sent forth to find their keep." (p. 106.)
No, I'm not going to share any of the disturbing cannibal bits with you. I will not be held responsible for your nightmares. The story is simple: the end of the world is come, everything's destroyed and smoking, and a man and his son are out wandering the road, trying to make it to the coast, scavenging what they can to eat, and avoiding the few other humans still alive. And, if you want to know what the end of the world looks like, they're filming the movie: outside Pittsburgh.
In another interesting twist, Mr. CR spent the weekend reading The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman, a nonfiction account of what the world would look like, well, without us. Hm. I'm reading fiction and he's reading nonfiction? Up is down! Black is white! Maybe this is a sign of the end times. If it is, I can promise you I'm going to lay right down wherever I am and die. No walking to the coast with a grocery cart, avoiding other deranged and starving remnants of the human race, for this girl.