Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" won this year's Pulitzer Prize for fiction and is already regarded by many as an American classic. This grim tale of a father and son's journey along the road of America's post-nuclear apocalypse wasteland is fiction, but it is not science fiction. It is fiction as prophesy, not fiction as fantasy, a colorless story of the logical conclusion to nuclear armaments in the world. That "The Road" takes place in America—the world's leading proponent and possessor of the largest stockpile of nuclear weap-ons (currently somewhere around 10,000, down from the nearly 32,000 of 1966, which apologists for insanity and the nuclear industry consider to be a good sign) and the only nation to use (twice) nuclear weaponry against defenseless people—is fitting.
Who is not defenseless against a nuclear bomb? Who innocent or wise enough to drop one?
"The Road," despite its poignant depiction of a fa-ther's primordial love for his son and a child's deluded hope for a better life on a denuded earth and "good guys" to share it with, is a dark, dark tale of the bleak end of a road without hope—where history is lost, the present is joyless and the future meaningless. Though it is written with an astonishing, even unreasonable and beautiful mastery of language, there is nothing astonishing, unreasonable or beautiful about the world it describes. And the prospect of that described world has been nestled somewhere deep in the human psyche since Aug. 6, 1945, when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. It is worth pondering the pessimism and detachment from the meaning of words and the consequence of what they describe in the name of the Hiroshima bomb: "Little Boy."
Little Boy? Aren't little boys supposed to be playing games and preparing themselves to do and be a little (or a lot) better than their parents? If the cynicism that named Little Boy in 1945 is the role model, then the little boy's world described in the winner of this year's Pulitzer for fiction is completely understandable.
"The Road" is a cautionary tale told by a master storyteller about the inevitable trajectory of civiliza-tions that confuse security with the possession of thou-sands of nuclear weapons, and building more all the time. It is a book to recommend to anyone interested in fine literature as well as to anyone wishing to contem-plate the aftermath of a nuclear bluff being called, if, for instance, a world leader was ever actually disre-spectful, deluded, arrogant and stupid enough to say something like "Bring 'em on" to his enemies, and they did.
It is difficult to imagine any person dim-witted enough to say something like that ever rising to a posi-tion of responsibility and world power, just as it is dif-ficult to imagine the wasteland of post-nuclear-apocalypse Earth; but, regrettably, only difficult, not impossible.
But it is not difficult to imagine "The Road" as sign-age for those disaffected, rebellious, questioning citi-zens of the world for whom "security" and 10,000 nu-clear weapons scattered around the countryside of just one nation (the United States) are an impossible con-tradiction, a cultural-wide double bind of the largest dimensions and true apocalyptic consequences. Sign-age for our times.
Fifty years ago another work of fiction of a similar title, "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac, became signage for those disaffected, rebellious, questioning citizens of America for whom the culture itself was an impossible contradiction and a personal double bind. Even 50 years ago there was nestled somewhere in the psyches of Jack Kerouac and his readers (and his critics) an awareness of Little Boy and his three-day-younger brother, Fat Man, dropped on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945. The two main characters, Sal Paradise and Dean Mori-arity (who closely resemble the real-life Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady), have rejected the impossible con-tradictions of the ideology and materialism of the American dream as secured with nuclear weaponry, and are on the road around America to seek a better life, a higher purpose and good guys to share them with. Sal Paradise describes those people as "...the only people for me are the mad ones. The ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved."
Mad has several meanings.
In Kerouac's "On the Road," he describes people who are mad with passion—passion to live, to talk, to be saved—madly rushing around America in pursuit of their personal dreams that are filled with possibility and joy and a future.
One wonders whether it was coincidence or if McCarthy, who is not known for comedy, was indulg-ing in some fey humor in choosing a title so similar to "On the Road" for his end of the world masterpiece in which the characters are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved—mad as in insane—in a world where his-tory is lost, where there is no joy, where the future is meaningless.
In both books, written by two of America's most significant writers more than 50 years apart, nuclear weaponry is never mentioned but implicitly serves as a backdrop, in "On the Road" as capability, in "The Road" as consequence.
Literature is not the real world, but good literature can bring into focus aspects of that world that for rea-sons of deception, denial or delusion are but poorly perceived. America right now has approximately 10,000 nuclear weapons on hand. The rest of the world has approximately another 10,000. Precise numbers are impossible to determine, but even if those numbers are high (and they might be low) by 50 percent that is a real, not literary, backdrop to real life on our real, vul-nerable Earth.
