Cormac McCarthy On The True Meaning of The Road

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  • Опубликовано: 17 окт 2024
  • From an interview conducted in 2012 by Mario Paul Martinez.
    The Road: amzn.to/3EPnuAf
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Комментарии • 117

  • @FlowMichael
    @FlowMichael 9 месяцев назад +98

    "But who will find him if he's lost? Who will find the little boy?"
    "Goodness will find the little boy. It always has. It will again." - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

    • @black_foresst
      @black_foresst 2 месяца назад +2

      Dude I cried so hard when I was reading the last bit of this book. The boy still caring about the other little boy he saw a long time ago had me feeling hopeful for the first time in the book. He was just such a good hearted kid stuck in this bleak situation. I think the very end, talking about fresh moss and trouts in the river is the boy's narration as an older man, who survived and got to see a part of the old world come back.

  • @colet1096
    @colet1096 Год назад +139

    Reading that book after becoming a father is a devastating experience. It's about the true meaning of fatherhood.

    • @saltyd8165
      @saltyd8165 Год назад +11

      Devastating is a good description, I read it when my son was young.
      It broke me down

    • @Shoelessjoe78
      @Shoelessjoe78 9 месяцев назад

      ​@@saltyd8165same and to top it off after a deployment when I hadn't seen him in nearly a year. Broke me down something fierce.

    • @GregPowellD
      @GregPowellD 22 дня назад +1

      wrecked me

    • @AshikurRahmanRifat
      @AshikurRahmanRifat 21 день назад +1

      My father is very similar to that ofc ,we did not suffer like that but it was a terrible experience.i remember it was cold very cold my mother had gone to a foreign country,we slept in open area without any shed.He would grab me and hug me close to him so that I don't get cold.I will never forgeT that memory.

  • @SJorgeRoc
    @SJorgeRoc 5 месяцев назад +32

    The boy, a living tabernacle, carrying the fire-the Holy Spirit burning from within.
    My favorite book.

  • @morelocks
    @morelocks Год назад +49

    An extremely vulnerable love letter to a son. Well done Mr. McCarthy.

  • @Chris-fh3qv
    @Chris-fh3qv Год назад +99

    It is so beautiful that he is saying that his love for his son is what helped him write this novel. That he could frame a story around the love between a father and son, one that he knows so well. It is very much the enduring quality of the novel, in spite of everything with love you can overcome anything. When has that never been true? A universal truth.

    • @JuanCamiloAcostaArango
      @JuanCamiloAcostaArango 8 месяцев назад +2

      A father that after all left his boy to survive by him self in the apocalypse

    • @rustyshackelford934
      @rustyshackelford934 15 дней назад +1

      @@JuanCamiloAcostaArango I think he saw that within himself. Cause at the inception of the book I believe McCarthy was already in his 70s and his son was very young, and he knew he wouldn’t be around forever to guide his son through life. If I remember, he said it came to him when he and his son were staying in a New Mexican motel room, and he was watching the desolate landscape during a torrential downpour or thunderstorm. And he began to think about what if he and his son were some of the last people on the planet, surrounded by nothing but chaos and violence, and the thought of his son being left alone in the world after his passing. I think that’s what it was-I could be wrong, it’s been a while since I read his exact quote, so my memory may be a little bit off.

  • @dancinggold17
    @dancinggold17 2 года назад +201

    The Road is one where I'll probably never watch the movie. It's so crystallized in my mind and I don't want to change that.

    • @Garbageman28
      @Garbageman28 2 года назад

      It’s an admirable effort scuppered by Hollywood bullshit imho

    • @mattpark909
      @mattpark909 2 года назад +5

      My one issue with the film is the Boy is played off as really simple. Ineptly nieve, despite being 11-12 ish books I'd say he'd be 8 (even still I know a 8yo quicker with his tounge and sharpe wit so what gives with the casting?). The boy is not mature as time went on so it was a bit infuriating watching a 12yo use crayons like a 5yo. Also being blissfully unaware needing to be dragged to safety during dangerous moments with Cannibals coming, Or just nievely trusting of the dog coming meaning "good people", The Thief who left them with nothing being luged by his father to chase after him, Trusting the old man with no suspension.
      Pardon my French but I wasn't near as nieve and arguably autistic at 5yo let alone 11yo, myself I use to run logic fractals around my mother's head, riffing back and forth with my father. he was a Master journeyman brick layer but Wicked smart and a silver tounge, definitely the smartest Man in the room. So it's not as if I wasn't spoken too intelligently to make me as smart as I was, so The Boy's simplness is a large bother, despite The Man saying he's teaching him how to survive when he dies he's not getting taught anything. He's just called "Boy" so it could have been poor casting movie wise.
      Was the boy like this in the book? Still have yet to read it. If he's just a little kid why did they cast his actor so badly. I liked it, sad but not as hard to watch as I expected it to be, it could have been great but that young actor was unignorable.

    • @smithywerbenjagermanjensen
      @smithywerbenjagermanjensen 2 года назад +1

      ​@@mattpark909 it's been a long time since i watched the film, i read the book before though and i remember being extremely annoyed by the boy in the film, it's a good adaption but i couldn't stand the way they portrayed the boy. Give the book a read, it's fairly short.

    • @michaelhalterman8812
      @michaelhalterman8812 Год назад +2

      The movie is just as good!

    • @wanbawmcgraw3022
      @wanbawmcgraw3022 Год назад +12

      Honeslty, I doubt the film would ruin your enjoyment of the book. It's a great adaptation. Obviously may not come close to the intimate, personal experience of reading a book, but it's a very impressively done interpretation. Viggo Mortensen is kind of perfect for that role. He has that wild, rugged, maybe slightly unhinged quality aswell as that gentle stoic thing he does, which really works for the father character.

  • @dallas1891
    @dallas1891 8 месяцев назад +17

    Currently reading this and I have to put the damn book down every three pages or so because I can’t just flippantly read on. It’s just fresh horror after fresh horror and the love of a father is the only light in this icy Hellscape.

  • @bear5945
    @bear5945 Год назад +42

    Mccarthy's sense of humour is totally underrated. It's on full display in the passenger especially

  • @sevenpak
    @sevenpak 3 месяца назад +7

    Yeah I remember watching that movie when I was younger and thinking it was the most depressing thing ever. I just rewatched it after becoming a father a few months ago and thought it was one the most hopeful uplifting movies I’d seen in a long time.

  • @tobyforbes1343
    @tobyforbes1343 6 месяцев назад +14

    You have my whole heart. You always did. You're the best guy. You always were.

  • @jasonuerkvitz3756
    @jasonuerkvitz3756 Год назад +96

    "We're going to be okay, arent we Papa?
    Yes. We are.
    And nothing bad is going to happen to us.
    That's right. Because we're carrying the fire.
    Yes. Because we're carrying the fire."
    "How do I know you're one of the good guys?
    You don't. You have to take a shot.
    Are you carrying the fire?
    Am I what?
    Carrying the fire.
    Your'e kind of weirded out, aren't you?
    No.
    Just a little.
    Yeah.
    That's okay.
    So are you?
    What, carrying the fire?
    Yes.
    Yeah. We are.
    Do you have any kids?
    We do.
    Do you have a little boy?
    We have a little boy and we have a little girl.
    How old is he?
    He's about your age. Maybe a little older.
    And you didn't eat them.
    No.
    You don't eat people.
    No. We don't eat people.
    And I can go with you?
    Yes. You can.
    Okay then.
    Okay."
    "Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery."
    ~from _The Road_ by Cormac McCarthy

    • @charlotte5372
      @charlotte5372 Месяц назад +2

      He wrote so beautifully it hurts.

    • @jasonuerkvitz3756
      @jasonuerkvitz3756 Месяц назад +1

      @@charlotte5372 It makes me weep every time. Hope you're well.

  • @USEER-bxleo
    @USEER-bxleo Год назад +22

    Rest in peace good man.

  • @r.s.9861
    @r.s.9861 Год назад +22

    Rest In Peace.

  • @spidermonkey304
    @spidermonkey304 6 месяцев назад +3

    Amazing. Just finished it. I was scared to finish it for a week or so so I read a few pages at a time waiting for my son to get out of school each day.

  • @georgespiese7388
    @georgespiese7388 Год назад +13

    And when there is no love, you are thrown into the abyss

  • @jameshall401
    @jameshall401 49 минут назад

    I've never thought of it as depressing, but more sad and touching. Blood Meridian is depressing for its hopelessness, pessimism, and bleakness, but I wouldn't say The Road is that way. Just as McCarthy said, it's a powerful father-son story, and a haunting depiction of the lengths a father will go to protect his son.

  • @mehran7449
    @mehran7449 Месяц назад

    Can i get the whole interview somewhere? The links from the comments don't work

  • @juanchicrysuk4963
    @juanchicrysuk4963 4 месяца назад +1

    Como todo sentimiento un amor verdadero e interminable como es un vinculo tan cercano,que bueno este relato,me acuerdo poco de la peli y relata bastante los cimientos morales..

  • @FireFortProductions
    @FireFortProductions 2 года назад +15

    Where can I find the full interview?

    • @TheNarrativeArt
      @TheNarrativeArt  2 года назад +9

      ruclips.net/video/7VOFQ5acDMc/видео.html

    • @johnsmith8906
      @johnsmith8906 2 года назад +2

      @@TheNarrativeArt Thanks'

    • @mehran7449
      @mehran7449 Месяц назад

      The link is dead. Can i get it somewhere else?

  • @joed7185
    @joed7185 2 года назад +10

    Whats your favorite McCarthy novel?

    • @trouble820
      @trouble820 2 года назад +17

      I love Blood Meridian. But The Road is pretty heartfelt and spectacular. What he says in this clip is actually what I took away from the book, it is depressing and alarming at first reading but the love between the father and boy overcomes and is a saving grace. My father and I have talked about this.

    • @joed7185
      @joed7185 2 года назад +10

      @@trouble820 Blood Meridian is his Magnum Opus. Suttree is just behind. is most overlooked novel is Outer Dark

    • @trouble820
      @trouble820 2 года назад +1

      @@joed7185 you are better read in his work than I am. I will have to check those others out sometime. Thanks for the suggestions. Best of luck to you.

    • @lynclark6877
      @lynclark6877 2 года назад +3

      Child of God

    • @cannedheat2264
      @cannedheat2264 2 года назад +5

      All the pretty horses

  • @DoubleNN
    @DoubleNN 8 месяцев назад

    I definitely got that impression I my readthrough (well, audiobook). There's this looming ambiguity about what the nature of this apocalypse was, nuclear? Some solar thing? You only know it has something to do with fire. The relationship between the man and his son is the only thing that isn't immensely mysterious.

    • @holben27
      @holben27 8 месяцев назад +1

      iirc, there's a flashback earlier in the book that mentions impacts and bright flashes, and the man's wife was blind.
      I think it's safe to say it started with nuclear blasts and then the protags are living in a post nuclear winter world where the ecology is completely fucked.
      But it could also have been meteor impacts I guess. So perfectly vague lol.

  • @63_prathameshzore2
    @63_prathameshzore2 2 года назад +8

    I have this book but I'm afraid to complete it. I always try to read it but I'm too afraid of the fact that it will make me so sad that I don't want to read it. I'm too afraid.when I bought it I just read some pages and then just gave up then again after few years I thought giving it a try but no . Couldn't do it.

    • @Monsterassassin3
      @Monsterassassin3 2 года назад +22

      I would really encourage you to finish it, its a beautiful novel

    • @late_privktorian_era
      @late_privktorian_era 2 года назад +13

      i'd encourage you to finish it too. it really tore me up but it has quite a beautiful ending in many ways.

    • @geraldwalker2612
      @geraldwalker2612 2 года назад +4

      I think you'd be better served not to worry so much about our great big feelings and go ahead and take the novel in its entirety because it is a thing of austere Beauty... of course I have sons so it speaks to me heart ache and all

    • @terrorkind
      @terrorkind 2 года назад +2

      I'm not trying to be mean here, but: if you cant finish the road, how are you even gonna live? Like.. yeah the road is sad, but so is real life.

    • @thedokkodoka4349
      @thedokkodoka4349 2 года назад +2

      I've only watched the movie, which is already heartbreaking. I can totally understand why someone would not finish the book. Reading can be painful.

  • @B_R_Thorn
    @B_R_Thorn 9 месяцев назад +9

    It is depressing, when you had a shit father.

  • @jamesbarry1673
    @jamesbarry1673 6 месяцев назад

    A nearby gamma-ray burst could sterilise Earth. These bursts of energy are so powerful that they can briefly outshine the rest of the Universe. Fortunately, the chance of one occurring nearby is slim. Beaming with energy: The radiation from gamma-ray bursts is strongly beamed in two opposite directions.

  • @whawkins8636
    @whawkins8636 Год назад +1

    Great book. That boy was aggravating.

  • @jamesbarry1673
    @jamesbarry1673 6 месяцев назад

    Everyone will be dead.............

  • @chrisred4579
    @chrisred4579 Год назад +6

    If a reader has missed the point he makes here, they’re a pretty poor reader

  • @SajjadKhan-cn6mv
    @SajjadKhan-cn6mv Год назад +6

    Massively overrated book. Could have been a short story.

    • @godofdogs6198
      @godofdogs6198 Год назад +37

      Don't read novels then.

    • @SajjadKhan-cn6mv
      @SajjadKhan-cn6mv Год назад

      @@godofdogs6198 oh my God, someone has a different opinion than you....grow the fuck up, you weenie

    • @khomatech6428
      @khomatech6428 Год назад

      nobody cares about your opinion though.

    • @SajjadKhan-cn6mv
      @SajjadKhan-cn6mv Год назад +1

      @@khomatech6428 why are you replying?

    • @khomatech6428
      @khomatech6428 Год назад +18

      @@SajjadKhan-cn6mv just trying to help you grow as a person baba