I've been lucky enough to stumble upon a couple of really good reads in a bookstore in Oak Park called The Book Table while buying Ayn Rand books as gifts for people (and myself). Anyway, the first of the pair I stumbled upon was Miracle In The Andes by Nando Parrado who was one of the survivors of the plane crash in the 1970s that left a group of Uruguayan rugby players marooned high in the Andes for 72 days. The story is incredible to say the least. It was made into a movie starring Ethan Hawke that was based on the book Alive. I have not read that particular version of the story, and I'm sure that there are some discrepancies between that account and the one I read by Parrado. Either way, it is an extremely personal, moving, and intense account of what happens at the extremes of human experience. It certainly filled the void in my need for adventure left by finishing Chasing Che, another incredible book that has inspired in me an interest in Latin America, both geographically and socially. I digress. I recall feeling the full range of human emotion reading Miracle in the Andes, something I can't say I expected from any story. Reading a story like this makes me think if I have what it takes to survive something like these men did and make it clear that I hope to never have to find out.
After plowing through Miracle in the Andes, I went back to the Book Table one day mainly out of boredom, and to replace my copy of The Fountainhead, which I gave away. I walked around and felt lost. I felt like what I expect a lot of people feel coming into a wine store for the first time: completely lost. I didn't know what I wanted to read, I wasn't sure which section to look in. I didn't want to just pick a pretty cover. So I wandered around aimlessly looking for something to strike my eye. After grazing around the fiction section, I came across Cormac McCarthy's area in the fiction section. I'm not sure where I heard his name before, other than my cousin Jonny's middle name, but I picked up The Road and read the teaser on the back. It sounded good, adventure, danger, very personal, fiction.
The book is written in a very strange perspective, sort of a little third/first/first or something. Hard to explain, but it took a little getting used to. It's a post apocalyptic world where a father and son are traveling, more or less aimlessly, and just trying to survive. They scavenge and run, fight and evade. It reminded me of a zombie story except no real zombies, just cannibals. It was a fast read once I got used to McCarthy's writing style, but what really struck me was that, in spite of the very stripped down language (lots of abstract description and dialogue without explicit cues to who is speaking - "he said") I felt like I got to know the characters very well by the end of the book based only on their actions and words. I think it actually felt more real that way, like I was experiencing them for myself. I think that, if someone else were to read this book they might have a very different opinion of who the characters are.
Well, there you have it, some books I've read recently, yay I read stuff!
2 comments:
Colyn, I read "The Road" a couple of years ago and found it to be a book that I was thoroughly engaged in and thoroughly down and depressed when I finished. It was an excellent book but what a devastating and hopeless picture it painted. And, whether it is realistic about how people would treat each other in such a situation it certainly doesn't cast the human race in a good light.
I also remember reading the book "Alive" many years ago while still in school.
Hope you, Brother M. and the old folks are well.
Joe
I have to say, Joe, I didn't feel that "The Road" painted quite so bleak a picture of mankind. I think that it shows our greatest and highest quality, our integrity. Our ability to go against our animalistic instinct toward violence and survival and say, "I choose not to become this because, if I do, I am no longer in control of myself." I think that the fact that the father and son in this book stuck to their conviction that, even though the world has become a terrible place, we can still have our integrity.
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