The Road, Reading Blog #10 - A Lucky Little Gamble

"You always have this hope that, today, I'm going to do something better than I've ever done." - Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy kind of annoys me, but I don't want to talk about that. No, I want to talk about McCarthy, and how his personality, or the bits I've seen, relates to his books, or the one I've read, anyway. He seems like a reasonably happy, trusting person, who believes the world will help him and he'll do well. He says this outright, later in the interview, commenting that he "always believed that everything would work out, one way or another" and that, by and large, they did. Now some of this can be attributed to his talent, some to his social class, some to luck -- and, interestingly, some of it can be seen in his novel. The father in the story (whom McCarthy sees as similar to himself) shares some of this trust, some of this entitlement. Of course, he doesn't think the world he lives in is safe, anymore, not by any stretch of the imagination. But he certainly has a remarkable ability to find safe places, and to leave them, with the expectation of finding more later. One could argue that his departures are more suicidal than trusting, but I don't think so, as he cares too deeply for his son to ever let him die. The only explanation for his repeated journeys -- against his son's wishes, I might add, as he doesn't seem to share his father's entitlement -- is that he, like McCarthy, believes that his beleaguered world will always provide.
McCarthy believes in this almost supernatural luck not just for himself, but for everyone in the world. Indeed, he goes so far as to speculate that some people -- market analysts, for example -- do their jobs not on the basis of algorithms or extrapolation but on the basis of luck. Now, I think that market analysts are very talented, and that his stories of luck are more confirmation bias than anything else, and that his fiscal insouciance could easily have killed him -- but I said I didn't want to talk about how he annoyed me, and I won't. In the context of The Road, this naive belief in luck and fate is remarkably well placed, especially as there are no organized religions to provide an alternative. In the characters' lifestyle, there is little else to base decisions on, as they have so little knowledge of their surroundings and their possible future. They have no market analysts to analyze the costs and benefits of possible decisions -- they simply go with their instinct. McCarthy, living as he did, with few resources or responsibilities, has ample experience with this lifestyle. He remarks that he tries to appreciate everything, as "life is pretty damn good, even when it looks bad" just as the characters appreciate everything, even just a few sweet pears and some clear water; he's been lucky, he thinks, and wants his characters to see themselves as lucky, too. "You should be thankful for what you have." Are you lucky, reader?