by pinback » Mon Jun 02, 2008 2:11 pm
I am placing this book review in the sports/music base because it seemed to fit best, or at least not fit the least. Also cuz I fuckin' pown this base.
I picked up The Road for three reasons. One, I thought I'd try my hand at reading a "fictional" book, taking a break from the torrent of books which I'd read previously, all of which begin with the sentence, "Unlike all of the other books, this one can help you with your many emotional problems!"
Two, I liked No Country for Old Men, The Movie, and was aware that it was based on a book by Cormac McCarthy.
Three, when I was browsing the bookstore, I saw Cormac McCarthy's section, and in it was an ominous looking book with a black cover called The Road, which looked cool, so I tried it.
Normally I wouldn't review a book, and I guess I'm not really going to review this one, except to say that it's being turned into yet another movie, starring Viggo Mortensen, and being released later this year.
This will be tricky, because The Road has little-to-no plot, anywhere within it's 260+ pages. It is about a man and his son, trying to make their way down... well, the road, in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Things happen to them, but they're all separate incidents, and since the world has been blown to hell, there's really nothing waiting for them at the end of the road, so the whole book is just them going down the road, trying to survive. To no particular goal, to no particular destination.
That is going to be tough to make into a movie, unless they artificially throw a plot on top of there somewhere. The only other way it could work is if they give up on having anyone actually see the movie, and make another Gerry, but in an ashen nuclear winter instead of a desert. And nobody but me liked (or saw) Gerry, so they probably won't do that.
The real joy (if it can be called such) of the book is the writing used to describe the voyage. It is really quite amazing the way the author has used words to paint more vivid and dreadful a picture than you might have thought possible. He also has a tendency to use words that either nobody has ever heard of, or that have never existed, which can make some of it slow going, but all in all, each page still reads like a prose poem, as he paints pictures in gray, drab tones, but with a piercing, deep brush.
In other words, it's the journey which makes the book, not the destination. Which of course, there isn't one of.
So, I'm looking forward to seeing how they make the movie. Particularly how they make a movie that won't leave everyone saying "so what was the point of that?" at the end.
I am placing this book review in the sports/music base because it seemed to fit best, or at least not fit the least. Also cuz I fuckin' pown this base.
I picked up The Road for three reasons. One, I thought I'd try my hand at reading a "fictional" book, taking a break from the torrent of books which I'd read previously, all of which begin with the sentence, "Unlike all of the other books, this one can help you with your many emotional problems!"
Two, I liked No Country for Old Men, The Movie, and was aware that it was based on a book by Cormac McCarthy.
Three, when I was browsing the bookstore, I saw Cormac McCarthy's section, and in it was an ominous looking book with a black cover called The Road, which looked cool, so I tried it.
Normally I wouldn't review a book, and I guess I'm not really going to review this one, except to say that it's being turned into yet another movie, starring Viggo Mortensen, and being released later this year.
This will be tricky, because The Road has little-to-no plot, anywhere within it's 260+ pages. It is about a man and his son, trying to make their way down... well, the road, in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Things happen to them, but they're all separate incidents, and since the world has been blown to hell, there's really nothing waiting for them at the end of the road, so the whole book is just them going down the road, trying to survive. To no particular goal, to no particular destination.
That is going to be tough to make into a movie, unless they artificially throw a plot on top of there somewhere. The only other way it could work is if they give up on having anyone actually see the movie, and make another Gerry, but in an ashen nuclear winter instead of a desert. And nobody but me liked (or saw) Gerry, so they probably won't do that.
The real joy (if it can be called such) of the book is the writing used to describe the voyage. It is really quite amazing the way the author has used words to paint more vivid and dreadful a picture than you might have thought possible. He also has a tendency to use words that either nobody has ever heard of, or that have never existed, which can make some of it slow going, but all in all, each page still reads like a prose poem, as he paints pictures in gray, drab tones, but with a piercing, deep brush.
In other words, it's the journey which makes the book, not the destination. Which of course, there isn't one of.
So, I'm looking forward to seeing how they make the movie. Particularly how they make a movie that won't leave everyone saying "so what was the point of that?" at the end.