Episode 399 || Backlist Book Club: The Road
It’s time for another installment of Backlist Book Club! This week on From the Front Porch, Annie and Hunter Mclendon (@shelfbyshelf) are talking about The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
To purchase the books mentioned in this episode, visit our website:
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Clean Air by Sarah Blake
The Revivalists by Christopher Hood
Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam
Room by Emma Donoghue
The End We Start From by Megan Hunter (this book is permanently backordered)
From the Front Porch is a weekly podcast production of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in South Georgia. You can follow The Bookshelf’s daily happenings on Instagram at @bookshelftville, and all the books from today’s episode can be purchased online through our store website, www.bookshelfthomasville.com.
A full transcript of today’s episode can be found below.
Special thanks to Dylan and his team at Studio D Podcast Production for sound and editing and for our theme music, which sets the perfect warm and friendly tone for our Thursday conversations.
Thank you again to this week’s sponsor, Visit Thomasville. Everyone loves fall in Thomasville, Georgia! When it’s time to getaway, we have exactly what you need! Find romance, explore historical sites, dine out, shop, and make time to relax and unwind. There’s no better getaway than a Thomasville Getaway! Whether you live close by or are passing through, I hope you'll visit beautiful Thomasville, Georgia: www.thomasvillega.com or @thomasvillega on Instagram.
This week, Annie is reading Have I Told You This Already? by Lauren Graham. Hunter is reading The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken.
If you liked what you heard in today’s episode, tell us by leaving a review on iTunes. Or, if you’re so inclined, support us on Patreon, where you can hear our staff’s weekly New Release Tuesday conversations, read full book reviews in our monthly Shelf Life newsletter and follow along as Hunter and I conquer a classic. Just go to patreon.com/fromthefrontporch.
We’re so grateful for you, and we look forward to meeting back here next week.
Our Executive Producers are... Donna Hetchler, Cammy Tidwell, Chantalle C, Nicole Marsee, Wendi Jenkins, Laurie Johnson and Kate Johnston Tucker.
Transcript:
Annie Jones [00:00:01] Welcome to From the Front Porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business and life in the South.
[00:00:24] "No list of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour there is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty, such that one holds them to one's heart, have a common provenance in their pain, their birth, in grief and ashes. So he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you." Cormac McCarthy. The Road.
[00:00:52] I'm Annie Jones, owner of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia. And this week, we're bringing back one of our favorite podcast series, Backlist Book Club. In today's episode, Hunter McLendon and I are discussing our final Pulitzer Prize winner of the year, The Road by Cormac McCarthy. If you're a regular listener, you probably know one of our main goals is to grow the show to 10,000 listeners. You've heard me say this spiel a million times. We are getting so close. Really, truly. We are getting so close. And a lot of that is thanks to everyone who has left a review. We are already at nearly 900 reviews on Apple Podcasts. Here is one of my recent favorites from jenflo76:
[00:01:32] “Thoughtful book Recs! Such thoughtful recommendations. I don't read exactly like the host, but she makes me want to hear all about the books. I love that she includes recommendations from others as well. The Currently Reading group had a curated book selection suggested by Annie and her team, and one of those books turned out to be a book that will be in my all time Top 10. If you love books, this is a great podcast.”
[00:01:54] Thank you, Jen. And also I would love to know what book is going to be in your all time top 10. Please share. I loved this review, in part because we loved our partnership with the Currently Reading podcast earlier this year. If you missed it, you can still find our partnership book selections on the store website. You can just click under partnerships to the currently reading podcast. Thank you Jen again for your thoughtful review. I'm thrilled you found new to you books through our show. If you have not left a review, all you have to do is open up the podcast app on your phone, look for From the Front Porch, scroll down until you see, write a review and then tell us what you think.
[00:02:28] Now, back to the show. Hi, Hunter.
Hunter [00:02:32] Hello.
[00:02:33] Oh, my gosh. I am so excited to talk to you about this. I'm also thrilled we fitted in because we kind of were not sure we were going to do a Backlist Book Club this late in the year. And I have so much to share. I can barely wipe this darn little grin off my face because I'm so happy.
Hunter [00:02:51] Honestly, I am so, so thrilled that you decided to do this because I do not know if I would have had this experience if I had not been in this moment now with you. I just felt like everything coming together..
Annie Jones [00:03:05] It did. It felt serendipitous. If you are new to Backlist Book Club, I do want to put in a plug because sometimes this happens with Kids Table where people skip the episodes because they think it's about kid lit. And Kids Table, as we have discussed, is just me and my cousin talking about life. These backlist book club episodes are fun I think even if you have not read the book. Now, we try to be protective of spoilers, but also most of the books we're talking about are older. And so I kind of feel like we all know what The Road is about, so I'm not too worried about spoilers today. But if you've never read The Road, how I think Backlist Book Club episodes can best be listened to is by thinking about the inspiration that they might provide for future reading. So maybe if you already read The Road, this episode will be enjoyable to you. But if you're like me and you had never read The Road and you're a little discouraged because you're, like, I don't need to listen to this, I've never read The Road. Maybe listen to our conversation, and I hope it might actually inspire you to pick up a backlist title. So that's kind of the inspiration behind Backlist Book Club. You don't have to listen to today's episode, but if you were hesitant, I wanted to give you my elevator pitch on why Backlist Book Club episodes are fun to listen to. Speaking of which, this year, Hunter, you and I have tackled Pulitzer winners. I mean, I wrote down the episode numbers. First we did Beloved, Episode 368. You can go back and listen. We did Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Episode 377. We did Less, episode 386. And now we are doing The Road. I want to talk to you toward the end of today's episode about Pulitzer winners versus National Book Award versus Booker. But how have you felt about your reading experiences for Backlist Book Club this year?
Hunter [00:04:53] I think I have loved it because, as you know, my personal reading project this year has been tackling the National Book Award books. And while there is some crossover, it's been very interesting to kind of see the commonality with-- because the National Book Award, what they're looking for is just the best written books by an American writer doesn't have to be specific to the American experience. But with Pulitzer winners, they're trying to find books that are preferably about the American experience. And so it's really interesting to see what was considered part of the American experience at the time of each of these being released. So, yeah, that's exciting.
Annie Jones [00:05:31] I appreciate you on top of your personal reading project taking on this reading project because it's a time commitment to read these Pulitzer titles. And for you some of these have been rereads. have all of them been rereads for you?
Hunter [00:05:47] No. Actually, let me see. I guess Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was the one that I had not read. I've read something else from her, but yeah.
Annie Jones [00:05:55] Okay. So, anyway, I appreciate you kind of tackling this and adding this to your already filled to the brim reading life. Because, for me, when I look back at those titles and maybe it's because of the positive experience I've had with The Road, I just look back and I'm like these were some of my favorite reading experiences this year. And maybe it's kind of the backlist of it all, like the hidden jewel. They're not even hidden jewels, they're Pulitzer winners, for crying out loud. But my reading life is so very much devoted to the new that one of the joys this year has been reading these older works. And I think because they're all Pulitzer winners, they've all been really good.
Hunter [00:06:38] Right. That's the thing. Honestly, you know what? do I recognize that there are great books that are overlooked? Absolutely. But also it's very nice to kind of have a guarantee that even at their worst, they're going to still be pretty good.
Annie Jones [00:06:49] Right. Yeah. I think that's one of the things I learned in reading these this year. Okay. Would you like to before we delve in maybe to the synopsis of The Road, talk to me about your personal reading experience with Cormac McCarthy and with this title in particular.
Hunter [00:07:04] Back in 2012, I said I'm going to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I'm going to write a novel. But I've always been so ambitious. And so I decided to tread all the Pulitzer winners. And so around 19 I read The Road for the first time and I hated it. I thought, this is terrible. Who likes this? Who was this for? Not me. But I held on to it because a part of me thought, well, maybe I'm being really harsh because I also hated The Devil Wears Prada. And I read them back to back.
Annie Jones [00:07:46] That was an interesting pairing.
Hunter [00:07:48] Which I think just says a lot about like my reading in general.
Annie Jones [00:07:51] That reminds me of me. Station 11 and then the Royal Wave. Do you remember that?
Hunter [00:07:55] I remember that. Yes. Isn't that what always happens?
Annie Jones [00:07:59] Yeah.
Hunter [00:08:00] Well, but so then I read The Road again at 21, 22, and I hated it. And I was, like, who likes this? Who is it for? Don't want it. And then I read it again at like 24, 25, and I was, like, I don't like this book. And it's so funny, I put it down before I even finished it. And I read No Country for Old Men, which was one of his other books and I loved it. I thought it was great. I was like, wow. I was like, this is everything I ever wanted. And then I went back to finish The Road and I thought, this is terrible. I hate it.
Annie Jones [00:08:36] Fascinating. May I ask what kept you picking it up over and over? Were you just determined this is a Pulitzer winner, I need to like it.
Hunter [00:08:46] A lot of books I'd read, I wasn't smart enough, really. I was not smart enough. I was not mature enough. I was not well read enough to really know. And I knew that.
Annie Jones [00:08:57] That's incredibly self-aware. I just do want to commend you. That's incredibly self-aware.
Hunter [00:09:01] Thankyou. Listen, I'm nothing if not self-aware. But then it's so funny because the second time I read it I thought because Tyler loves the book then something's got to be good, which that's not always true. He's got bad taste sometimes, it's fine. But then the third time I read it was because I'd met Lauren Groff. And Lauren Groth had mentioned at one point that if she doesn't like a book, sometimes it's just because she's not reading it at the right time or in the right headspace, or that she has not developed the toolkit that she needs to appreciate it. And so I thought I was like, well, Lauren Groff. So she's right. So it's been very funny because my experience this time was so completely different. But, yes, my first three times I literally hated this book and just hate read it the entire way through.
Annie Jones [00:09:47] Fascinating. Okay. Which is why I think when we were recording --ess, I don't know if it was on air or not-- but at some point you looked at me and we were talking through some other award winning books and The Road came up. And I think you kind of suggested it in part because I think you thought, this will be interesting. I hate this. I have never read it. So my experience is I have seen the film adaptation of No Country for Old Men. And my brother, who is very well read but in a very different way, so he reads a lot of nonfiction and he loves Cormac McCarthy. And I don't know today what his favorite book is, but at one point in time The Road was his favorite book, and he had begged me to read this. And my brother and I are pretty close and I really try hard to read the books that the people I love recommend to me. But Chet and Jordan frequently recommend books that I'm like, oh, I got to read other things that I can sell folks. And so I just put off reading this. And when you mentioned it, I thought, great. I can tell my brother I finally read his favorite book and I can read this thing that honestly I really do not have much interest in, except for my brother's connection to it. And I knew vaguely that it was post-apocalyptic, but that's honestly about all I knew. I've not seen the film adaptation, so I had never read this. I picked it up, I started it. And you had texted last week because we thought we were recording last week, and I hope that it was a relief to you and not a burden to you that it's this week. But you had texted me like, okay, I've started The Road or something. And I thought, oh dear, I have not. And so I started it on Monday and maybe it's because of my current headspace or the moment at which I chose to sit down and read it. , I mean, I don't want to spoil our conversation, but this book could be one of my favorite books of all time. Like, it's in the stack for me. It's in the stack. It's up there in my mind with Gilead, with these books that really mean a lot to me.
[00:12:10] And, again, I think it could be partly-- to credit Lauren Groff, it could be partly because of where I was when I read it. I was telling Olivia that at the very beginning of the pandemic, like March or April, we had a local customer who called and said, "I want every post-apocalyptic book you have in the store." And we compiled like a stack for her. And I remember distinctly looking at Olivia and going, this is someone that I cannot-- I don't understand this. Because at that time in the pandemic, I was barely reading at all. And what I was reading was young adults, feel good fiction. It's all my brain could handle. So the idea of reading these heavy, dark novels was-- not foreign to me just in general. I have read dark things before, but at that moment in time I thought, who can mentally handle this right now? The irony being that I have had a rough few months, like there's just been a lot going on. And I looked at Jordan with tears in my eyes on Monday night and was, like, I think I love The Road because it is hard and dark and it is nice to remember that there are harder and darker things. And I think I needed this book. I was in a book slump. We haven't talked in a minute, but I have not been able to finish very much recently and I devoured this and I'm so relieved you loved it. Because I could not remember, but I thought your feelings about it were complicated. And I was like, how are we going to talk about this? Because I loved it so much. Why do you think your reading changed? Why do you think your thoughts about it changed?
Hunter [00:13:52] I think a lot of things. One is that I did not grow up with a dad. I don't really understand father- son relationship, [Inaudible]. And that's actually the reason why my friend Bernie loves this book. That's the reason why I loved the book. So I never really had that connection, but you and I talked about this that I am at a point now where I do want kids and I'm starting to have that baby fever kind of feeling. And so for the first time in reading this book, I did not picture myself as the child. I pictured myself as the father. And that was a big difference in it. And it makes a big difference in who you decide to attach yourself to, right?
Annie Jones [00:14:37] Yeah, absolutely.
Hunter [00:14:39] Yeah. And I also think in some weird way, there's a book that came out this year, Clean Air by Sarah Blake, and it's about a mother who has a young child during kind of a post-apocalyptic type thing and they're similar in some smaller ways. And I think that that book also kind of helped me because that book was kind of the first thing that kind of put it in my mind this idea of being the parent. And then The Road kind of cemented that. And I really just think that for the first time having that and then slowing down and thinking, I really want to take my time with this because I want to see what do other people love about this book. And I wanted to give it my time because whenever I talk with you, I want to make sure that I'm really putting forth more effort. And about 50 pages in, I was a little bit teary eyed and I was like, oh my gosh, this is a truly beautiful book, and I cannot believe that it's the first time I'm seeing it.
Annie Jones [00:15:36] Okay. I also want to acknowledge a bias that I think I went into this book having and I think I just assumed-- gah, and I don't like saying this because I really like to give everything a fair shake. But I kind of felt like old white man book. A little bit with that negative lens. Which is funny because I like a lot of books written by old white men. I like crossing to safety. But for some reason I think I thought, ah, the text is going to be sparse. I'm probably not going to like this like this writing style. This book is incredibly beautiful. But the writing in this book is stunning. I don't know what I was expecting, but it was not this. I think the comparison I thought, oh, well, this is like Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. This book is beautiful.
Hunter [00:16:28] Yeah. Well, it's funny because I've been reading a lot of books by poets recently, and something I noticed is that poets have such a more deeply embedded understanding of structure in a way that benefits and creates more like poetry just in the how paragraphs can form and how you can deliver information in specific ways. And I think that in a way, this book does kind of read as this-- it kind of feels like a classic. Like epic poems.
Annie Jones [00:16:57] Yes, absolutely. It does feels like The Odyssey or something like that. Will you do what you have done so many times and give us a quick synopsis of this book?
Hunter [00:17:07] I'll try. It's a post-apocalyptic drama following a father and son as they, I guess, search for something, just try to exist in this world making their way down-- I can't remember. Oh, gosh, this is so bad. I get so caught up in [Inaudible] I can't remember anything.
Annie Jones [00:17:29] They're headed south. That's all we know.
Hunter [00:17:30] Yes. I think that's all you really need to know going into it.
Annie Jones [00:17:36] Yes. Well, and really Cormac McCarthy doesn't give you much. That's one of the things I was struck by. So you open this book and it's almost like I'm picturing a movie that opens in the middle of a conversation or something like that. You open this book and the action has already started. It's a Cormac McCarthy's credit. You immediately know right where you are even though you're kind of being thrown into what feels like the middle of their journey. And the pacing and the storytelling, I think is nearly perfect. Where you kind of are thrown into this situation, but you immediately get your bearings. You are not really lost. You immediately understand, oh, this is a story of survival. You never know the name of the man and his child. I think you can kind of figure out the age of the boy. You can kind of figure out the circumstances all within just a few pages and really sparse details. I think at one point I thought, oh, we're in Tennessee because there was a reference to Rock City. And then at some point they're at the coast, but you don't know where. But I assumed, oh, it must be the Carolinas because it's cold and it's never cold. Although, that's the other thing that I think sets it apart from some other post-apocalyptic fiction. You never really know what the earth is like. You don't really know the inciting incident. So the water is cold. And there was part of me that thought, oh, well, this must mean they're in the Carolinas. And then I'm like, well, I don't know, what does climate change look like? The world is covered in ash, what happened? And you never are given those answers, and it never bothered me that I was never given those answers. That was not the point.
Hunter [00:19:30] Right.
Annie Jones [00:19:31] I do want to talk about the structure a little bit, aside from opening in the middle. So I started this book. I had a reading lunch. Do you ever do this? I took myself out to lunch at Hopkins Eatery, which is my favorite restaurant, and I plopped myself down in my little table and I read by myself. It's the most delightful.
Hunter [00:19:50] Yeah, I love that.
[00:19:52] So, anyway, so I started reading it and at first page one or two I thought, oh, no apostrophes. Interesting. And then I was like, no, wait a minute, there are some apostrophes. And then I was like, wish I was in an English class because why does he use some apostrophes and not other apostrophes? Don't and doesn't don't have apostrophes, but all the personal pronouns have apostrophes. Anyway, my brain got stuck on that for a second. And then I thought, oh, no quotation marks.[Inaudible] Oh, no chapter breaks. All of these things which normally if you were to ask me, Annie, do you need quotation marks when you read? Yes, absolutely. There are things that I think we think as readers we need. And I hear it all the time when I sell books. People are, like, "I need short chapters." Olivia And I say it on the podcast all the time. We like short chapters. We need quotation marks. We need appropriate punctuation. I think I even pitched a fit several years ago about that book Ducks at Newburyport or whatever the name of that.
Hunter [00:20:52] Yeah.
Annie Jones [00:20:54] Ducks at Newburyport. And I was kind of rude about it honestly, because I was like, how dare? How dare they? And now I'm like, maybe I should try that because I had not a single problem with no quotation marks, no chapter breaks. And I'm so glad I wasn't so stubborn as to think, no, I'm not going to read this because there's no chapter breaks.
Hunter [00:21:19] Well, I always think back to there's two different people who I love who don't use quotation marks in some of their books. Alexander Chee, I talked to him at one point about quotation marks, I think he's even said this before in another interview, but he did not use quotation marks for Edinburgh and he said the reason why was because it always felt like people shouting. It felt like he wanted it be more quiet in the text. [Inaudible]. So in a way there's something more intimate and how it actually works for the text. And I also think about how Mary Karr says that after her first book, she stopped using quotation marks because she didn't want people to think that she was like saying this is exactly what was said. It's just this is the gist of the conversation.
Annie Jones [00:22:14] Oh, I love her. I need to read more.
Hunter [00:22:17] I know.
Annie Jones [00:22:20] I love the Alexander Chee quote because to me the lack of quotation marks in this book makes the dialog feel, on the one hand, extremely intimate. You feel like a lot of the book like you're leaning in, like you're leaning in to hear what they're saying more. Look, I'm a grammar queen. I love American grammar. I love diagramming sentences as a child. Super weird thing to say. But it almost feels like the dialog is more conversational. Like it's more rat-a-tat-tat. It almost feels like the quotation marks break it up a little bit, and that's not what real conversations are like. Between a father and son, a son who's asking a lot of questions and maybe sometimes that feels pestering, or maybe sometimes it feels like, oh, I can't keep up with all the things my son is asking. All of that back and forth felt so much more real.
Hunter [00:23:19] Yeah.
Annie Jones [00:23:20] Because of the lack of quotation marks-- which sounds strange, but that's how I felt.
Hunter [00:23:24] Yeah. What I think a lot about too, I think when you have children, I almost feel like-- and this is not a slight towards children. But I feel like sometimes their conversations feels like an interruption or an intrusion. And especially when your whole thing is survival. I'm just thinking of survival. And you want to say, like, please shut up. I'm trying so hard right now to keep us alive. But you can't do that because you have to remain tenderhearted towards your children, and give them the love they need and the gentleness. And so I do feel like in a way the dialog does feel like it's an interruption in the actual story, but in a way that feels authentic to the reality of what how children are.
Annie Jones [00:24:10] So speaking of children, we never learn the boy's name. We never learn the man's name. But I became so attached to these characters. I felt everything they felt. There were moments in this book where I felt like, oh, Annie, breath! I literally felt myself holding my breath. I was so deeply concerned for them. I was so concerned for their safety. And I think it takes real skill because I also believe naming is important and the act of naming and giving people or characters names, I find to be really important. But I think it takes serious writerly skill to be able to create an attachment or an intimacy with characters who are never named. And that was something that I kept. There's only one character named ever in the book, and we learned later that it's not even his real name. But I thought, I feel like I know these characters and I care so much for them, but I know almost nothing about them. We were given throughout the book little snippets. We know the man was married, we know the woman was pregnant. Or if not married, that they were partners and that she was pregnant. As though it felt like the world was perhaps on the cusp of changing and ending. And we know that she leaves. But then I'm, like, does she leave or does she commit suicide?
Hunter [00:25:42] Well, that's the thing. Because the son is talking and says, "I want to go where mom went." And then the dad thinks and he's like, "You mean like you want to die?" And the boy says yes.
Annie Jones [00:25:59] It goes back to that, just like you said, children can occasionally feel like an interruption. Children are also-- I mean, I tell Jordan all the time in my line of work, I prefer children so much to adults because they just tell it like it is. They do not hold back. They are brutally honest. And this dad, the whole time, you can tell is trying to maintain some modicum of protection and superiority. And yet he and his child are both nothing more than survivors. There is no more expertise. The dad is no more an expert at survival than his son. And you can just see this child just putting so matter of factly-- and it's very humorous to me when he does. Only occasionally do either of them speak in metaphor or idiom. And the dad always calls attention to it, like, where did you hear that? And the son is like, oh, I heard it from you. But mostly what they are sharing back and forth is so blunt. And so, yeah, I want to die. Like things you would not expect to hear out of a child's. And so they kind of jar you and bring you into the reality of this world that Cormac McCarthy has created.
Hunter [00:27:17] Yeah. It's so funny because I've been thinking a lot about how there's like a criticism that's kind of going around for the past couple of years about how fiction is so homogenous now, always kind of the same. And it's so funny because I think a lot about how something I've noticed recently. So I worked as an editor at one point. I sent some of my pages from something and he said, "These are great sentences but you do too much handholding, it's like you over explain things." And I thought a lot about this when reading The Road, is that he has so much respect for the reader because he never like extends the branch too far. It's just what you need to get from one to the next.
Annie Jones [00:28:01] I'm a fast reader. I think you are, too. And sometimes that's to my detriment, right? It helps in certain ways in my line of work. But I found myself having to stop, reread certain sections of dialog.There were a couple of paragraphs where I thought, that is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read, but I've got to go read it. And I'd read it three times. I like that Cormac McCarthy expects more out of me as a reader. Do you know what I mean? It feels like he expects me to engage with this text as a reader. I don't read a lot of books like that right now. I read some, I mean, we talk about them. We talk about them here. And I'm absolutely 100% not going to be down on modern literature, of which this is, by the way. This was out in 2006. I think I went into this thinking this was from the seventies, which is just my own naivety and ignorance. This is from 2006, but it reads like you said, like a classic epic poem or something like that. One of the unexpected things that I did not anticipate finding so beautiful in this book and I know you know what I'm going to say, but I just love books that talk about morality and goodness and faith. And I did not expect this out of this book. And then there it was. And I just thought in particular the child's obsession with goodness. And over and over again, after certain situations or certain encounters that he and his dad experience, I can like picture him tugging on his dad's shirt tails and saying, "Are we still the good guys?" And at first I thought, oh, yes, how childlike, how innocent. And then the more I read, almost every time he asked that, I started to cry. Like, are we the dead guys? Please tell me we're still good. Even though we're doing things that even this child who had never lived in a "normal world", this child knew there were certain rules we were supposed to abide by and they weren't abiding by them anymore. And so I just kind of wanted to talk about this concept of goodness in the book and this boy's obsession with being good and wondering what does good look like in a post-apocalyptic world. Like, not to get too deep, but Jordan and I like to talk about is humanity good. This is a conversation we have in our home. And that's what I kept thinking as I read this book. What is good? What lasts? What does goodness look like when you're just trying to survive?
Hunter [00:30:47] It's so funny because I also think that you and I talk about this a lot. I always think back to this line from the song from Into the Woods where it says "Nice isn't always good and good isn't always nice."
Annie Jones [00:30:59] Yes.
Hunter [00:30:59] And I do think there is a difference between-- and I think a lot about kindness and I think about you can be kind and you can be nice and those can be two different things.
Annie Jones [00:31:08] Yes, absolutely.
Hunter [00:31:09] Yeah.The other day a somebody called me kind and she's, like, I wouldn't call you kind. And I thought I was I was like, well, I wouldn't call me nice. But I would hope to be kind. I think that we should all strive for kindness. But I do think that if you're living in a post-apocalyptic world where is that line between sacrificing yourself. I mean, that's a tough line to kind of have.
Annie Jones [00:31:39] Yeah, because they're experiencing and that is one of the things I found so interesting. So there's this moment on The Road where the little boy thinks he sees another little boy and he is just completely getting his father's attention. Like, what can we do? I think I saw a little boy. We need to take him. We need to take care of him. And of course, the father is like absolutely not. We are a two person show so that we can get to the South, so that we can get down to where it's warmer. We don't even know what he's looking for down there, but we just know they're on this road and this dad has like a one track mind. And over and over again, the boy is struck by this older man that he sees in The Road. Like, we need to give him food. And honestly, I think there are modern examples of that where children are paying a lot more attention than grown ups about people who live among us. And I was just struck by that. And then there's also multiple points in the novel where-- I can think of two specifically where all of a sudden you immediately know what the bad guys look like. And you immediately know that even in a post-apocalyptic landscape, the enslavement of other people is wrong. We as humanity reverted back to it. I found that really striking in a few post-apocalyptic novels I've read recently. But we see a group walking along The Road with people in chains that they have chained. And then we see there's a couple of really gruesome things, but in one of the more gruesome scenes in the book, there are people chained in a basement to be eaten by other people. And they leave them and the boy is traumatized. Absolutely traumatized. Like, we're leaving them. We could have saved them. But then he even realizes we had to leave so we wouldn't get eaten. Right, Dad? You can just hear the child logic making sense of it, but also trying to figure out, okay, what is good, what is bad, where do we categorize these things? What makes us the good guys? It's such an innocent question. And the more bad that happens to these people, the less innocent that question feels, the more feels like, oh, no, are we good? Are we bad? And these are questions I feel like many of us are asking all the time, right? Am I good? I'm I bad? Yeah, I was really struck by it.
Hunter [00:34:29] It's funny to think about reading this book, like, three previous times and not finding it. Like, I literally could have cared less at every other point. And then, like, when I was reading it this time, I really was. There were so many times where I was like openly weeping because I was, like, this is devastating and so tender. There's such a beautiful way that this father and son love each other. It's like so complicated too because it's like-- I think a lot about that Room, Emma Donoghue.
Annie Jones [00:35:04] Yes, yes, yes.
Hunter [00:35:07] I always think about that scene where she's just trying to get him to understand that they're in room for the first time and he's so resistant. But it's because when you're a kid, you just know what you know.
Annie Jones [00:35:22] Right. And you know what you've been told and what you've experienced, which is a little.
Hunter [00:35:26] And I think it says a lot. Because this kid has clearly been taught what it's good, so it's clear that his father wanted him to be a good person. And now his father is having to ask himself, like, am I going to go against everything that I believe in and what I've taught my child to save him?
Annie Jones [00:35:47] Again, we try to mostly be spoiler free. I am going to talk about the end of The Road, so I don't know what to tell you. You can fast forward or you can skip.
Hunter [00:35:57] I don't think this is towards the end, there's the baby.
Annie Jones [00:36:04] That is the other brutal part.
Hunter [00:36:07] That part, I'm not going to lie, I just has completely forgotten about it. I literally gasped out loud and was looking around for another witness to this.
Annie Jones [00:36:19] To this horror.
Hunter [00:36:20] Yeah.
Annie Jones [00:36:22] Actually, before we talk about the end, that's a good point because that image is horrifying. The people chained in this basement of this home, they're being starved and they're going to be eaten. It's horrifying. I pictured it. You pictured it. It's very visceral writing. But what I was struck by and what I find interesting is those images will undoubtedly remain with me. Like they are a brutal, gruesome parts of this book. But you, I think, put it pretty perfectly. It's a tender book. I didn't finish this book thinking that was brutal-- even though it was. The image of that baby is horrific. But the horror of this book is not what remains for me. What remains is the beauty with which Cormac McCarthy writes and then the tenderness of the father-son relationship. So that is really striking to me. There is violence in this book. There are striking horrible images of brutality, but that's not what I left most impacted by.
Hunter [00:37:50] We'll talk about it in a second, but I do think that how he chooses to end this book really I think it is why you can leave this world he's created with all these horrors and still have that hope and still have that possibility for love and and kindness.
Annie Jones [00:38:11] So throughout the book, as we look toward the end, we really are led to understand the father has a pistol and it has two bullets. It has three at the start of the book, and by the end he's got two. And he doesn't want to use any more than he has to. And as you read, you realize and you know, that that's so he can, if necessary, kill them both. Gah, I hope I don't cry while talking about this book.
Hunter [00:38:38] I know.
Annie Jones [00:38:42] So this dad has been faced with this horrible decision of I've got to save two bullets because if it comes down to it and I have to protect my son from scavengers, from rapists, from murderers, I will kill my son and myself. And that's like the plan the whole time. And you kind of as a reader get to realize that that's the plan. And of course, I don't know, probably 50 pages in the father develops a cough, he starts coughing up blood. We know-- oh, gosh. How does this end? And the boy-- oh, gosh, the boy's realization that no matter how much his father is trying to protect him, his father tries not to cough in front of him. His father tries to suppress his own bodily urges, but the son knows. I think that's one of the things he's in terror of most, is I think he knows my father is going to die. And they frequently talk about, do you know how to use the pistol? Do you know what to do when I do this or when this happens to me? And then at the end of the book, the father is on his deathbed. He is ill. He cannot move. He cannot travel any further and he can't do it. He can't. He looks at his son, he's like, "Here's the pistol. You have to keep going. You have the fire. We can't go through with the original plan." Gah, this act of love, which was what the original act was also going to be. He wasn't going to murder his son. He was going to preserve his son by killing his son. That was the thought.mAnd now, despite the bleakness of the worlds, he wants his son to keep going. I just couldn't get over it. I thought it was one of the most beautiful. And despite the fact that I kind of knew where the father's ending was going to be, I could not have predicted this ending. I did not see this outcome.
Hunter [00:40:53] I know. Like you said, it's like the whole idea of the good guys. Let me tell you, I even have goosebumps all over now. And do you know what's interesting to think about too, is that I can always tell whenever people were raised in church because I always think about that story. What is that story? It's that the man who [Inaudible].
Annie Jones [00:41:16] Abraham and Isaac?
Hunter [00:41:18] That's the father son with the whole...
Annie Jones [00:41:19] Yeah.
Hunter [00:41:20] Okay. Yeah I will stick with that because it's interesting to think about how something similar happens in Beloved. Spoiler alert for Beloved. Sethe kills her infant daughter to protect her from enslavement. It's so funny to think we have this idea of I could never hurt my child. But the reality is that there are times where we're really hurting or harming your child is the one thing that is going to protect them from the worst outcome. And that's devastating to think about.
Annie Jones [00:41:55] Yeah. Like I said, there were moments of breathlessness throughout the book where you could feel the father's nervousness any time they encountered another being or another group of people, which so much of this book is just the son and the father. But every so often they encounter these people. And there is just intense fear there because you are led to realize like there aren't many children running around. And we live in a world that diminishes children and that even in a post-apocalyptic landscape that is true and children are worth nothing. And so he knows his son is at risk. There are a Couple points in the novel you're not sure how much more you can take, right?
Hunter [00:42:43] Yeah.
Annie Jones [00:42:44] There's this really lovely little section where they discover an underground bunker. God bless all the preppers of the world. Like, they discover this underground bunker and it's full of food. And it's almost like that scene in A Little Princess where they open up the Feast of Food. And I love that slight bit of hope in the book. He got to eat a biscuit and he got to drink a Coke and all of these l joyful things that we really kind of needed in the middle of this book. But I wasn't sure how he was going to end it because they meet very few people along The Road and very few people of the few people they meet-- if no one, they really didn't meet anyone who appeared to be one of the good guys.
Hunter [00:43:33] Right.
Annie Jones [00:43:34] And so I thought, oh, my gosh, this father has decided he cannot kill his son. He's letting his son, who clearly is quite young-- we don't know how old, but he feels quite young. His commanding his son, take the gun and keep walking. And you know how hard it's been to find food. You know how hard it's been to find shelter. And there's part of you that's, like, what is this dad thinking? He needs to stick to the original plan, but he can't. He can't do it. He thought he could. He did all the work he thought he could prepare to do it. And there is nothing that could prepare you to do such a horrific thing. And so he can't do it. And the relief when the boy encounters someone who is good-- we're not given much. We're just given like a couple of lines. I was filled with such relief because I just didn't know. They just had not encountered many good people. It's quite different. I wanted to talk about this a little bit. It's quite different from Station 11. I think the two are comparable, belong on a shelf together. But Station 11 is all about what remains and the good that remains. And The Road feels like, no, this is what it really be like.
Hunter [00:44:53] Right. Yeah.
Annie Jones [00:44:53] This is what it really be like. It'd be awful and yet there is still good and there are still good. It feels less hopeful of a novel than station 11. But it's still there. And I was grateful for the way that he chose to end it. Okay. We ask this kind of at the end of every Backlist Book Club. So we've already mentioned a few. I think the post-apocalyptic genre is filled with titles, but what are some other books you would kind of put on a shelf or in a book flight with The Road?
Hunter [00:45:29] I would definitely do Clean Air because I do think that if you like the kind of dystopian type of thing and you like the parent-child dynamic, especially if you want something that is like a lot of these things but is a lot lighter, I think that's a good option. I think your suggestion for Station 11 is really good. I know there's a ton, but those are the three that I would...
Annie Jones [00:45:54] I think your suggestion of Room is really spot in. I also thought did you ever read the End We Start From by Megan Hunter?
Hunter [00:46:02] No.
Annie Jones [00:46:03] It's a little novela.
Hunter [00:46:06] Yes. I did.
Annie Jones [00:46:07] About a mother and son. And I thought that was a really beautiful, compact little book. I thought about . Umaann Alam's Leave the World Behind.
Hunter [00:46:16] Yeah.
Annie Jones [00:46:17] And then I also thought there's a new book, I think it came out just a couple of weeks ago, came out November 8th. I want to say The Revivalists by Christopher Hood. This is a new book and it's a post-apocalyptic novel that I really liked. It feels very modern and very relevant. He's a lot more clear about how the end of the world came. It's a pandemic. So he gives a lot more, perhaps, details than Cormac McCarthy does. But it's a road trip novel, so it goes back to that kind of epic feel where the father and mother are traveling to go kind of rescue their daughter. And I loved it because, again, it fills you with a lot of questions of is humanity good or evil? Who are we at our core? What will we do when the world ends? Like, what will it look like? What will people do? It doesn't feel eerie, I think some readers might find it so. It feels like a very realistic portrayal of what might happen. So that's a recent new release that I think would be good. Okay. Very quickly, I do want to talk about, did you like Backlist Book Club? Which books were your favorite of our readings this year-? We read four, I Want to say. And then you've been reading a ton of National Book Award finalists. I want to pretend we're taking an Internet quiz. Which book awards are you? Are you a National Book Award? Are you a Booker or you're a Pulitzer? Like, which one do you think most aligns with your reading tastes?
Hunter [00:47:51] I think, for me, the past 10 years have really been like National Book Award centric for the most part. This year it was not. But for all the years prior to that, I loved all of the National Book books. I always think that they're just very much my taste. But my friend Bernie, he's very into the Booker Prize. And I'm not going to lie, I've been reading a lot of Booker books, and I feel like I'm having an affair, but those books are so good that I'm like, oh, wait, are these the books I like now?
Annie Jones [00:48:22] Oh, okay. Because I would definitely-- obviously partly because of your book project, but even before, you're the person on Instagram who talks about the National Book Award and you get us all excited. And so I definitely affiliate you with the National Book Award. And I feel very similarly to you in that over the last few years it felt like my reading tastes frequently aligned with National Book Award, at least the longlist. If not the shortlist, the longlist. But after this year, I would have to look at like a list-- a full list. But every single one of these books was delightful to me. Every one of these Pulitzer winners, I thought, Yep, love this. And they were all quite different. I mean, Beloved and The Road have some similarities, interestingly, but Less was very different and I loved that. I loved my reading experience. And partly, yes, it's because I'm biased, but I really do love talking about books with you.That I think is part of these reading experiences, but I'm starting to wonder if I'm a Pulitzer person.
Hunter [00:49:28] Oh, I think you are. Because I know also that To Kill a Mockingbird was a Pulitzer winner. Gilead, The Nickel Boys.
Annie Jones [00:49:40] That's right.
Hunter [00:49:41] I'm trying to figure out. Less. The Underground Railroad. You liked All the Light We Cannot See, right?
Annie Jones [00:49:47] Loved it.
Hunter [00:49:48] Yeah. The Goldfinch.
Annie Jones [00:49:49] Oh, I'm a Pulitzer.
Hunter [00:49:51] Yeah, well, you are. You are.
Annie Jones [00:49:53] Oh, I'm so relieved to know this, because these books were such a joy to me this year. I don't know. Maybe I need to take on a book project like you and read Pulitzer winners. I just loved this.
Hunter [00:50:07] Okay. You should wait because after I do finish this National Book Award project, my next project is the Pulitzer.
Annie Jones [00:50:14] Wouldn't it be fun? You know how our Erik Thomas does this wonderful newsletters? What if we did, like, a joint newsletter that was like reading the Pulitzer winners and like debating, do you know what I mean? Like, dealing with an oral history back and forth, like, just taking it all up. Wouldn't that be fun?
Hunter [00:50:31] Oh, I would love that!
Annie Jones [00:50:34] Okay. I would love that, too.
Hunter [00:50:35] I think it would be really fun.
Annie Jones [00:50:37] Okay, let's think about that. I really like that idea. I think that would be fun. Hunter, this is our last Backlist Book Club of the year. I do think we are talking about what we want to do in 2023, how we want to incorporate Backlist Book Club into the podcast. I know we talked about Booker. Clearly, I would love to do a Pulitzer, but I'd also love to do National Book Award. I think we should keep doing Backlist Book Club. It brings a lot of joy to my life thing.
Hunter [00:51:03] Same!
Annie Jones [00:51:03] This week, what I'm reading is brought to you by visit Thomasville. Everyone loves the holiday season in Thomasville, Georgia! When it's time to get away, our small town has exactly what you need. Find romance, explore historical sites, dine out, shop, and make time to relax and unwind. There's no better holiday getaway than a Thomasville getaway.
[00:51:22] Friends, now is the time to start planning your trip to Thomasville for Christmas. Victorian Christmas in Thomasville is one of the highlights for all of us. It's December 8th and 9th in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia. It looks like a Hallmark movie. You heard my mom last week compare downtown Thomasville at the holiday season to the inside of a snow globe, which is entirely accurate, minus the snow. And Victorian Christmas is a huge part of this. This is one of our biggest festivals of the year. You've heard me talk about Road Show, which is a big festival we host every year in April. Victorian Christmas is the equivalent of Road Show, but it takes place during the holiday season. There are events, food vendors, Santa Claus, live reindeer, all kinds of things in downtown. And a lot of our shops and restaurants stay open late. We the bookshop stay open until nine on Victorian Christmas nights. We have our Polar Express storytime and we are not the only store that does something really special for Victorian Christmas. I also want to encourage you, if you start to feel like, oh no, I've waited too late, hotels have booked up, Airbnbs are no longer available, December 8th and 9th are totally full, what am I going to do?
[00:52:29] Sippin shops in Thomasville are a great option where we are staying open late on Fridays and Saturdays in December. And by we, I mean most of our downtown merchants. And so if you want the feel of Victorian Christmas, but you just can't make it in time, I would encourage you to check out our SIP and shops on the Friday and Saturday nights in December. We would love to see you there. A lot of folks talk about Sunday hours and how we have a very quaint small downtown that is often closed on Sundays, but in December, that is not the case. On Sundays, in December, most of our downtown shops and many of our restaurants are open, so any weekend in December would make a great holiday weekend for your visit to Thomasville.
[00:53:09] This week I'm reading Have I Told You This Already by Lauren Graham. Hunter, what are you reading?
Hunter [00:53:15] I'm reading it The Hero of This book by Elizabeth McCracken.
Annie Jones [00:53:19] Thank you again to our sponsor, Visit Thomasville. To find out more about how you can visit Thomasville, go to Thomasvillega.com.
[00:53:24] From the Front Porch is a weekly podcast production of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in Thomasville, Georgia. You can follow The Bookshelf’s daily happenings on Instagram @bookshelftville and all the books from today's episode can be purchased online through our store website: Bookshelfthomasville.com. A full transcript of today's episode can be found at Fromthefrontporchpodcast.com.
[00:53:49] Special thanks to Studio D Podcast Production for production of From the Front Porch and for our theme music which sets the perfect, warm and friendly tone for our Thursday conversations. Our executive producers of today's episode are Donna Hechler, Cami Tidwell, Chantalle C.
Executive Producers (Read their own names) [00:54:04] Nicole Marsee. Wendy Jenkins. Laurie Johnson. Kate Johnston Tucker.
[00:54:10] Thank you all for your support of From the Front Porch. If you'd like to support From the Front Porch, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Your input helps us make the show even better and reach new listeners. All you have to do is open up the podcast app on your phone, look for From the Front Porch, scroll down until you see, 'Write a Review' and tell us what you think.
[00:54:29] Or, if you're so inclined, you can support us over on Patreon, where we have three levels of support. Front Porch Friends, Book Club Companions and Bookshelf Benefactors. Each level has an amazing number of benefits, like bonus content, access to live events, discounts and giveaways. Just go to Patreon.com/fromthefrontporch. We're so grateful for you and we look forward to meeting back here next week.