The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

I added The Road to my top ten list. I read it at home and nearly cried in front of my roommate. I read harrowing and tender passages of such craftsmanship, beauty, and sorrow that I choked up. This is a dark and terrifying book. It is a work of art.

I dare not attempt to address larger compositional issues, not after reading Michael Chabon’s superb NYT review. Is The Road science-fiction or literature? What possible outcomes are there in an apocalyptic novel, and how does the reader’s understanding of the limited number of resolutions affect their reading? Chabon addressed these and many more issues, so I direct you there. As far as Oprah selecting The Road for her book club, a fellow bookseller said it best: “I want those people to feel like I did.”

How did I feel? I felt like someone close to me died. Over and over and over again, with every turn of the page.

The following paragraph constitutes a single scene interrupting descriptions of a ruined landscape in which the father observes gray snowflakes fall on his hand and watches them “expire there like the last host of christendom:”

“From daydreams on the road there was no waking. He plodded on. He could remember everything of her save her scent. Seated in a theater with her beside him leaning forward listening to the music. Gold scrollwork and sconces and the tall columnar drapes at either side of the stage. She held his hand in her lap and he could feel the tops of her stockings through the thin stuff of her summer dress. Freeze this frame. Now call down your cold and your dark and be damned.”

This is some of the most masterful writing I’ve ever read. This is a stand-alone creative writing lesson.

A burned, winter landscape transitions easily and swiftly into a pleasurable memory of music, summer, and love. Then it slams the reader back with one of my favorite lines in any book, “Now call down your cold and your dark and be damned.”

That line is pure English. Monosyllabic pentameter, pure poetry of the English tongue. The alliteration of “down, cold, dark, damned.” The beautiful vowel sounds of “now, down, your, dark, and, damned.” Everything works, and it works together. Immediately following the bliss of memory, it is a crushing, emotionally devastating statement that ties two people in love into the dualities of past and present, have and have not, happiness and sorrow, civilization and wilderness. More, it subtly supports one of the central themes of the novel, that of a father’s love for his son.

These dualities run throughout the scene. Take, for example, “seated/theater,” “tops/stockings,” thin/stuff/summer/dress” – evocative pairings of S and T sounds again mirroring the two lovers, the pleasure of memory with harsh reality.

Or, look how well the syllables of “gold scrollwork and sconces” compare to “tall columnar.” The letters of “tall columnar” almost resemble the physical objects the words describe, with the vertical stems of the L’s and the rounded bowls and stresses of the C, O, and U. Say “gold scrollwork and sconces” and you also find that the sounds resemble the letters.

McCarthy chose every word with the utmost care. It is spare prose to match the subject and it is beautifully crafted. Nothing is wasted, overwrought, or unnecessary. A casual reader will read it with ease, without an awareness of the craft, and that is, perhaps, for the best. Too much awareness of the writer’s work spoils the stew – and this is heavy stew, considering the scene with the baby on a spit.

Yet, despite the weight of its subject matter, The Road is a hopeful novel. The father’s love for his son, his unwavering efforts to protect and provide for his son, and his hope for his son’s future make even the bleakest moments bearable, and sometimes, uncomfortably familiar. Although McCarthy has shown us a world where the living exist with “Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it,” he also shows that beauty and happiness also exist in borrowed time, in a borrowed world, through borrowed eyes.

Rainier

First Published in PoetSpeak Vol VII, #1 Spring 2003


You splash your feet
in the clear water creek
where the Coho come
to spawn.

The rocks many-colored,
the water cold—after a time
warm grass restores
the feeling in your toes

and we pick blackberries,
gorge ourselves,
our hands and faces
purple smeared.

Then, nestled between
cedar roots, we kiss
for the first time–

our lips and tongues trade stains
until we hardly know each other
from each other.

Banning, CA

First Published in PoetSpeak Vol VII, #1 Spring 2003


Thin as winter fruit,
he stood in the orchard
and extended his hand,
begging in an unknown tongue.

I was nine years old.

Fourteen years later
I want to offer him

a taste of orange
juice flowing down
a dusty throat.

I was nine years old.

Hiking Multnomah 441 to Wahkeena 420

I finally had a chance to get out to the Gorge yesterday, on the last nice day we're likely to have in a while. I started at Multnomah Falls, which was quiet at 8:30 in the morning, and just past the bridge, I stopped to watch a great blue heron in the pool below the falls. I don't think he was having any luck.

The trail is paved up to the top of the falls, then it changes to a slightly rocky path leading gently uphill along the creek. There were two at the overlook, but from here on, I didn't see anyone else until the last mile of the hike. The creek above the overlook here is peaceful, and it winds around mossy boulders and drops over a few nice waterfalls (Wisendanger and Ecola) before the trail catches 420 around the ridge to the Wahkeena drainage.

I love this stretch of forest. It receives a decent amount of sun, even in early morning, and the trees change from the moss and lichen-clad cedars, big-leaf maples, and cottonwoods near the creek to straight douglas firs. The understory burned a few years ago, and many of the firs are still blackened. The ground-cover consists mainly of fern broken by patches of yellow vine maple. The trail continues to climb gradually as it loops around to a great lunch spot at an intersection with several other trails.

From here, you can hike up to Devil's Point, and from there, on to Angel's Rest. Both are worthy destinations if you have time, and they can be loop or shuttle hiked as well as hiked point-to-point. Either way, a quick side trip to Wahkeena Spring is a short, pleasant diversion. I took the uppermost of the two trails that parallel Wahkeena creek at it rushes downhill in a pretty cascade through incredibly verdant mossy rocks, around banks of cedar roots, and through a narrow chute before spilling out over Wahkeena Falls. Incidentally, Wahkeena means "Most Beautiful" in a local Native American language (possible Yakima). I agree with the sentiment. The stretch of trail from Fairy Falls to the main falls, and the view from the trailhead, are some of the most gorgeous scenery in the Gorge, whatever the season.

From Wahkeena Trailhead, I hiked a connecting trail back to Multnomah Falls, which by this time was swarming with people taking photographs of the falls and watching spawning salmon splash in the pools and ripples below the parking lot. I recommend starting this hike from Multnomah just to avoid the crowds, but also to avoid starting with the paved switchbacks at the Wahkeena trailhead. They can seem endless, even coming down.

I had enough time to drive up to Sherrard Point on Larch Mountain and spy on the volcanoes. The sky was clear to Mt. Hood, which had a little steam or cloud rising from the peak. In the distance, St. Helens, Adams, and Jefferson were all out, if a little cloud-covered, but the thick forests and rolling cascade mountains stretching as far as the horizon made up for it.

I can't believe I waited so long to get back to the Gorge. Despite having missed most of the fall colors, it was a great way to spend a few hours. Good for the lungs to breathe piney air, good for the heart to climb the trails, and good for the head to get out of town, find some solitude, and be able, even if just for a little while, to be lost in your own head, under your own power, and with no real plans but to walk, walk, walk.

Bookstore Humor.