Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” wins Pulitzer Prize

Editor’s note: Cormac McCarthy has won the Pulitzer Prize for The Road. America’s most distinguished literary award comes on the heels of perhaps its most lucrative honor: Oprah Winfrey named the novel as her latest book club pick. In the following review, which we originally posted in January, we agree that it is a phenomenal book. —Updated April 17, 2007

No book in a long time has meant more to me than The Road. It’s been years since a book has grabbed hold of me and taken me on such a captivating, stunning journey. And I don’t remember any other contemporary literature that is more beautifully, starkly written. In other words, Cormac McCarthy has written a book that is on par with Beloved or The Shipping News—landmark modern novels by authors at the pinnacle of their craft. In still other words, The Road is the best book of 2006 and beyond.

This is just my opinion, of course. Naturally, I didn’t read every book published last year. And other book critics would disagree with me. (Many critics hailed the supremacy of Philip Roth’s 2004 novel The Plot Against America, while I was fairly nonplussed about the fuss.) But The Road has greatness on multiple levels: a story that is under-wrought and overwhelming; pacing and plotting that are perfection; characters that are timeless and yet painfully mortal; and page after page of writing that is so accomplished that it begs to be read again and again. I couldn’t get enough of uncounted passages in The Road, and found myself re-reading entire paragraphs—for the simplicity and power of the dialogue, for certain astounding plot developments, and for the sheer beauty of McCarthy’s voice. This is not a book written for the sake of prettiness. It is a tight, austere, harrowing tale about the death of the world that happens to be gorgeous in its horror and its humanity. Consider the following excerpt:

Beyond a crossroads in that wilderness they began to come upon the possessions of travelers abandoned in the road years ago. Boxes and bags. Everything melted and black. Old plastic suitcases curled shapeless in the heat. Here and there the imprint of things wrested out of the tar by scavengers. A mile on and they began to come upon the dead. Figures half mired in the blacktop, clutching themselves, mouths howling. He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. Take my hand, he said. I don’t think you should see this.

The Road is the account of a nameless father and son who are making their way down an unnamed road in an unknown country at an unspecified time. Ash covers everything and is carried in every gust of wind. The father pushes a shopping cart filled with their only possessions—dwindling food stores, threadbare clothing, and a gun with two bullets. The sun orbits a dimmed horizon, which appears to be obscured by a nuclear winter. History, animals, and vegetation are dead, as is the vast majority of the human race. The goal of the pair is simply to survive … and to keep heading south along the road to possible warmth. On their journey, we glimpse their struggle (illustrated by ghastly scenes like the one excerpted above), urge their survival, and embrace their tenuous yet tenacious bond as father and son and solitary travelers in a silent but perilous world. When I finished their story, I was stunned by its purity and power. I was amazed by McCarthy’s skill, and at his ability to simultaneously convey such fragile hope among such harsh hopelessness. And then I closed the cover of a book I knew was unlikely to forget.