border's bookclub, the curve damansara on mc carthy's `the road'

may 11, 2007

almost everyone turns up at around eightish. amanda, brian, kim, sarah, jade, dr roy and me.

rose and wan shen come later.

jade tells us a little about the road and how we had no idea what it was all about when brian suggested it last month. she opens the discussion to the floor.

kim and dr roy speak. we all agree how depressing the book is.

the only rose amongst the thorns, brian, says it is the best book he has read in his life. he clearly sees something we don't. :-)

there are no chapters in this book. hardly any punctuations. no apostrophes, no names mentioned. one wonders if that makes everything irrelevant? do we only need information through his narrations and descriptions?


dr roy talks of how many time mc carthy mentions the landscape as barren with ashes of grey giving a feeling of further depression.

however, brian insists it is incredibly beautiful, even though it is stripped off colour, it is still full of texture, extremely serene and hugely spiritual. there is a sense of mystery in their journey and all that comes with it.

amanda agrees, adding that it does not explicitly bring out the spirituality but the evidence of it cannot be ignored.

dr roy maintains that mc carthy shows life as a continuous process. the fact that one goes on living, striving, struggling, making every effort to stay alive, searching and carrying on the journey on the road itself presents a spiritual thought.

i ask if such a thing would happen to us.
jade immediately springs on to that saying why not?
sarah doesn't go that far in thought, she just reads the book for what it represents.

but the thought crosses my mind several times.
what will i do in a situation like that?

will i be like the mother of the boy who gives up her life knowing she will die anyway? or will i be like the father who chooses to carry on living mainly for the sake of his child?

i bring up another option, there is still the bad guy. in a situation like this, will i choose to be the bad guy, the cannibal, who is also a survivor?

most of us do not think of that. we are the good guys, we will not turn bad. but then, how can we positively say anything correctly if we are not in that situation?

jade brings up the fact that we have never really been that hungry...starving. we eat all our meals on time without even ever being hungry.

i mention the movie papillon where this guy in prison grabs the cockroaches to eat them. with disgust i commented once that i will never do such a thing even if i am dying, and a friend immediately said, `how will you know if you have never been in that situation?'

food for thought.

in a situation like that, my belief system may not be the same anymore, it will change my thoughts, my perceptions, my strengths and i may end up eating my own friend's flesh. remotely unlikely but never impossible.

jade talks of right and wrong. will we not do the right thing, the human thing?

but my views on this are a little perplexing to those who do not quite perceive it the same way. i think people divide vice and virtue, right and wrong as though they are two different things, neither one having anything to do with another, yet there is no useful virtue which has not some alloy of vice and hardly any wrong which carries not with it a little dash of right. virtue and vice, right and wrong are like life and death or mind and matter, things which simply cannot exist without being qualified by their opposite.

thus, would it be wrong to be a cannibal, because it is the inhuman thing to do? or would the perception of wrong and right change the whole concept of humanity? i don't know. i am merely suggesting a different point of view.

jade asks if this novel is about death. i say yes. mc carthy says death is a major issue in the world. any writer who does not address it is not a serious writer.

amanda wonders how mc carthy will end his book. dr roy says it seems an unending story. i think very early in the book that mc carthy will end it with someone's death.

however, the book does not end in itself. it is a new beginning. kim contributes but she has not finished the book so she just listens to everyone. rose has not read it at all but is so convinced that she is dying to read it. brian says it is not about an ending.it is a momentum. the boy goes back to the road like he is allowing things to come as they may and he is prepared to face them. brian mentions trust. despite the inspites, one can still trust in a situation so horrifyingly deceitful and fearful.

the boy has an aura. a halo of goodness around him. he cares for the other souls along the way. he is youngish, probably ten years of age and according to sarah is afraid of his father dying. she says they have a special bond, jade thinks they actually do not get along. dr roy says they needed each other to carry on the journey and their lives.

jade brings up about the memory thing. it seems like the father does not want to remember the past. then amanda comments about how he wants to but does not know how. it is strange because he throws away his wife's picture, that being one way or perhaps the only way he could remember her and the times together.

wan sheng says remembering makes things difficult. an attachment to the past makes it difficult to live the present. every thing is in the now. they have each other and they must carry on. the boy knows no hoarding, no worrying, he just lives for that moment, perhaps because he knows no other way. he grows up suddenly towards the end and when the father gets ill, the roles are sort of reversed and he becomes the protector.

a difficult book to breeze through or even discuss i think. but brilliantly written and presented. this is a first for most of us in the post-apocalyptic section. hope to read, think and understand further into the possibilities of a completely different life than the one we are presently leading.

maybe, just maybe we should think of our lives first before we can think, understand and appreciate the life of pi for next month.

my registered financial planner's exam is on the 24th so there will be no indulging in reading until after that. good luck to all and hope to hear from you.