What the Thunder Said

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think

Ah, T. S. Eliot.

I thought this little snippet seemed apposite to the nearing premiere of "The Road".

I'm disinclined to really expound on the movie/book, because I hate it when people talk about plots. Well I don't hate it, but it seems irresponsible. Anyhow, I'll instead talk about the reasons I like it. If that reveals things, so be it.

It's no secret that the story takes place in some reality where all of civilization is inexplicably burned to ashes. McCarthy limits our perspective to the immediate present of the main protagonist, with only brief interludes. I don't know why, but I really, really enjoy apocalyptic scenarios.

A note: when I say apocalyptic, I only mean a scenario wherein civilization as we know it is obliterated. For some reason, I've never found this depressing. I think I'd be horribly depressed were I in that scenario, but as a literary device, I think the idiom is infinitely illuminating. I would also like to specify that I don't prefer the setting categorically. Plenty more authors do the subject poorly then do it well.

Though I've just taken the time to provide my own definition, I think the word apocalypse, properly defined, might well explain my preference for it. The "zombie apocalypse" has become a functional synonym for an unlikely and unrealistically terrible event. But the more etymological definition of apocalyptic is, "a prophetic revelation, esp. concerning a cataclysm in which the forces of good permanently triumph over the forces of evil." This obviously originated from a Judeo-Christian context and found its fullest expression in works like the book of Revelation.

Thus my preference for the genre. It is evil's high-water mark. Done well, it convincingly illustrates just how awful reality can be. It illustrates how awful reality can only be. And then how much stronger the other side is.

That's it in a nutshell, I suppose. There are plenty other tributaries to my preference- some large, others smaller. There's a certain eeriness in inhabiting such a world. A kind of dreaded suspense and uneasy calm. A sinking solitude that's like being at the top of a roller coaster's first hill. But unlike a roller coaster, there isn't an inherent sense of security. In a good apocalyptic story, the author asks for your trust until eventually, they have the power to truly bruise your heart. It's more like skydiving. You really hope your chute opens.

Looking back, I can crudely chart my interest in apocalyptic literature. There are strains of it in hard-boiled noir, dark alleys, big cities, winter, sunsets, roadtrips, the west, German forests. Lord of the Rings does it better than anything else I've encountered.

I want to emphasize it's not necessarily my favorite type of literature. I've just described many things that are in no way part of the genre. But for the reasons above, it contains a good many criteria for a preferred literature. I've always liked T. S. Eliot, though on repeated readings, I'm still finding reasons why.

In an expanded quote of Dante from the end of Eliot's "Wasteland" he sums up my thesis for this post well:

Ara vos prec per aquella valor

'que vos guida al som de l'escalina,

'sovegna vos a temp de ma dolor.'

Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina.

Love it.