Last week on the plan I read Cormac McCarthy's The Road. It won the Pulitzer Prize, and has recently been made into a major motion picture.
I have an interesting relationship with books that won (or almost won) the Pulitzer Prize. I think most of them are garbage. They're all top-heavy on character development and low on plot. My favorite example is All the King's Men. The book is mind-numbingly boring. The movie was mind-numbingly boring. Yet somehow, it's one of the greatest books ever written.
And All the King's Men is a dream when compared to Brideshead Revisited (which didn't win the Pulitzer but is on most 100 Best Books Ever lists).
The Road pleasantly surprised me. I enjoyed the artistry of McCarthy's writing style (much better than All the Pretty Horses, which was so bad I would have preferred watching MTV Cribs). The plotline has been done hundreds of times before. I didn't find it particularly deep or applicable to my life. I didn't look at the world differently. But in its defense, I was entertained for a few hours while my plane was delayed on the runway in Boston.
3 comments:
I completely agree with you on All The Kings Men, I did not enjoy the book or the film enough to say they are masterpieces. But Jessica enjoyed the book and we have often discussed that 'last summer', and I felt that it really affected us the last summer we lived at home together. So if for that reason alone, I am glad I read it.
i have a few items of business.
a) you hardly ever blog anymore.
b) if you read all the pretty horses, you must know that it is a trilogy, and you don't get the payoff until you read the third book, cities of the plain, while having read the crossing before all the pretty horses. do that before you judge all the pretty horses.
c) the road is one of the best best best books i've ever read.
Amen- all the "best books" have loads of character development but lack a good plot. Glad you found a satisfying read. I'll have to try it.
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