Further On (Up the Road)

I used to be a voracious reader. Then I stopped teaching and started coding, and my tastes changed. Gone was fiction, that which was artifice and not real, replaced with coding manuals and reference guides. Since that day, I can probably count the novels I've finished on both hands (and maybe my feet)... I've started probably well over a hundred, but very few grabbed me enough to complete the task (and it had become work [ironically, when it was part of my work (prepping for classes), it was a joy; when it became a pastime, something mutated and it became a chore].

A few have stood out in that time: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (though I could never get through his related Baroque Cycle). L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy. The Harry Potter series by JK Rowling (though especially The Prisoner of Azkaban... I still remember getting choked up while reading its ending aloud to Kyle).

But I usually need to be prodded. As I was this past month.

Kyle, in preparation for Rio Mesa's Honors English class, was assigned to read and annotate Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. So Kyle, Pa, Lisa and I all read the book together so we could discuss it. Lucky (or unlucky?) Kyle: he was able to talk through the book with a teacher who had read it before (Lisa's favorite book of all time), a teacher who hadn't (so sue me), and one of the greatest voracious readers of all time (Pa).

It truly is an incredible book. It is almost perfect, a combination of coming-of-age, social commentary, historical document, comedy, and love story (one for Harper Lee's father if the legend is correct). What a great book to teach the elements of fiction. And annotating it and discussing it made the experience all the better.

Then as that experience was ending, Entertainment Weekly came out with its "New Classics" list (and I had read many of the Top Ten: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Beloved [Toni Morrison, the author of MY favorite novel of all time, Song of Solomon], Mystic River [Dennis Lehane, the author of many of Lisa's and Pa's latestr readings], Maus [Art Spiegelman]). But the lists top novel of the last 25 year was Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I had never read any of his books (though I had been tempted to pick up No Country for Old Men after seeing the great Coen brothers film... and I'll need to discuss that later). The blurb was interesting, and Lisa (always looking after my literary [lack of] appetite) had the book in my hands within days.

And I started to read it. Slowly at first. Unsure of where it was taking me... though completely sure of the sense of absolute dread with which it was taking me. A story of a father and a son walking down the road, heading south, toward the ocean, after some unnamed, unexplained apocalypse. Hope and hopelessness, kindness and cruelty, love and fear. For the first several dozens of pages, nothing much happens. In fact, nothing much happens at all. But once pulled into this world, it's tough to get out. That was it for me as a reader, just as it was for the characters themselves.

Much foreshadowing about the ultimate fate of the father and son. The pistol the father carries has only one bullet, and much is cryptically made of their arrangement for the end of their lives' journey. As the novel moves on, layer upon layer of physicality and emotion is added. And at the end SPOILER ALERT

when the father dies, and the son goes back to mourn over his body

I wept.

Scratch that. I sobbed.

I cried harder than at any time since the funeral of my mom. Uncontrollable sobs, heaving, shaking. So much so, that I had to close the bathroom door (I was reading the final pages in the upstairs bath during breaks from work), in fear that Kyle might hear me from his room.

I don't know how long I was there, only that much blowing of nose, wiping of eyes, and deep inhalings to regulate my breath happened before I could leave the sanctuary of the bathroom.

And so instead of getting back to coding, I come back to the computer to key this in.

And I think of the Springsteen song, the title of which is the title of this post:

Where the road is dark and the seed is sowed
Where the gun is cocked and the bullet's cold
Where the miles are marked in the blood and gold
I'll meet you further on up the road

Got on my dead man's suit and my smilin' skull ring
My lucky graveyard boots and song to sing
I got a song to sing, keep me out of the cold
And I'll meet you further on up the road.

Further on up the road
Further on up the road
Where the way dark and the night is cold
One sunny mornin' we'll rise I know
And I'll meet you further on up the road.

Now I been out in the desert, just doin' my time
Searchin' through the dust, lookin' for a sign
If there's a light up ahead well brother I don't know
But I got this fever burnin' in my soul
So let's take the good times as they go
And I'll meet you further on up the road

Further on up the road
Further on up the road
Further on up the road
Further on up the road

One sunny mornin' we'll rise I know
And I'll meet you further on up the road
One sunny mornin' we'll rise I know
And I'll meet you further on up the road.

And I always thought the song was ultimately hopeful... is further on UP the road, not down... and yes, that makes a difference.

----------------------------------------

Oh, yeah, and about that Old Country... I know many hated the movie, or at least hated the last 20 minutes (after the fade to black, and the death of our protagonist), with its disjointedness and seemingly senselessness.

Lisa and I saw the movie with another couple, and the three of them were not happy campers when walking out of the theater... a collective WTF was sounded. But not me. Eighteen months earlier, I would have been right there with them. But in December of 07, I "got" the ending. After seeing all this death, the sheriff (the Tommy Lee Jones character) could no longer make sense of the world, nothing seemed to fit. After mom died in Dec of 06, I felt the same way (and still do if the 3x a day anti-depressants are any proof). There were many times in the year between Mom's passing and seeing Old Men when nothing made sense to me.

I got it. May you never get it.

Cormac McCarthy, you bloody brilliant bastard.