#cormacmccarthy

An excellent commentary on Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

Content Advisory:This post references difficult historical themes, intense subject matter, and emotionally heavy ideas. While specific details are intentionally softened and indirect, readers should be aware that Blood Meridian is widely known for confronting humanity’s darker chapters. For decades, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West has occupied a peculiar, almost legendary…

This Thursday: The Road – Are We Still the Good Guys?

This week, we’re heading into the grey wasteland of The Road (2009), a brutal and heartbreaking adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer-winning novel.

A father and son walk through a dead world. There’s no society left. No animals. No hope. Just the ash, the cold… and a flicker of something worth saving.

“We’re still the good guys, right?”

“Yes. We’re still the good guys.”

But what does that mean when every decision is life or death?

What does morality look like when the world no longer demands it?

In this episode:

• We unpack the film’s stark emotional tone and minimalist style

• Explore McCarthy’s ideas about inherited violence, love, and survival

• Ask whether the fire they carry is hope… or just memory

• And reflect on how the film captures the tension between staying human and staying alive

Next Episode: The Road — This Thursday

This week, we go deep into one of the most haunting dystopias ever put to page or screen: The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

We explore McCarthy’s brutal minimalism, the silence of his world, and what it says about love, legacy, and the burden of being human when everything else is gone. Is it bleak? Absolutely. Is there hope? Maybe. But it comes at a cost.

We’re asking: is The Road the bleakest dystopia ever conceived? Or is it, somehow, the most honest?

Cormac McCarthy's The Road: A Graphic Adaptation by Manu Larcenet. Harry N. Abrams, 2024. 9781419776779. 160pp. Includes Larcenet's letter to McCarthy about the book at the end.

I've read a few graphic novels drawn by Larcenet that I really enjoyed -- Ordinary Victories, plus a few volumes of Sfar and Trondheim's Dungeon series -- but both were drawn in a simpler style. The stark, realistic way Larcenet adapts McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel is stunning, and makes me feel like it's time to look more deeply into his work.

The story follows a father and son struggling through a wasteland of ash and destruction, trying to get to the ocean and maybe some semblance of safety. The two are wrapped in stained, dark clothing. They're also starving. The pair avoid others out to do whatever it takes to survive and struggle to be good guys.

The book is drawn in color, but it's hard to tell on most pages. There's a bit of color when the sun is up, and some when they're able to risk a fire or light a lamp. But the most vivid color at the beginning of the book is from packaging, on a box of matches and a soda can, things left over from the way people used to live.

Don’t fear Death.Its only gonna help you die faster,its not gonna help you live. Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses OVERVIEW:Recently I had a suggestion to read a book called “All The Pretty Horses” by Cormac McCarthy. I learned McCarthy was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and the book had even won a National Book Award. My library had the audiobook on the Libby app so I picked it up and…