When "The Road" (Alfred A. Knopf) was published in hardcover in 2006, the author, Cormac McCarthy, who lives fairly close to Albuquerque, had already earned a reputation for powerful writing. To date, McCarthy has pu.jpg)
blished 10 novels. In order of publication, the others are:
The Orchard Keeper (1965)
Outer Dark (1968)
Child of God (1974)
Suttree (1979)
Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West (1985)
All the Pretty Horses (1992)
The Crossing (1994)
Cities of the Plain (1998)
No Country for Old Men (2005)
CORMAC McCARTHY
Derek Shapton, AP Photo/Knopf
After some delays the motion picture version of "The Road" (Vintage) has been released. Letting the 
film out around Thanksgiving 2009 had the fairly obvious intent of having viewers consider how thankful they should be for not yet having arrived at the situation portrayed in the movie. By all measures, it is pretty grim. Readers have been offered a preview of the apocalyptic film (movie trailer).
Motion picture listings for major cities show when The Road may be seen. It was tentatively scheduled in Albuquerque on Friday Nov. 27, according to online listings, but no specific times or locations were given.
The novel has attracted a broad range of readers (12 year-olds to seniors), and with the movie release is quite likely to penetrate even wider markets. The paperback release that's tied to the movie comes from Vintage (Random House owns both Knopf and Vintage).
Author William Kennedy first reviewed "The Road" for The New York Times in October 2006. He wrote, in part, that "Cormac McCarthy’s subject in his new novel is as big as it gets: the end of the civilized world, the dying of life on the planet and the spectacle of it all. He has written a visually stunning picture of how it looks at the end to two pilgrims on the road to nowhere. Color in the world -- except for fire and blood -- exists mainly in memory or dream. Fire and firestorms have consumed forests and cities, and from the fall of ashes and soot everything is gray, the river water black.
"Hydrangeas and wild orchids stand in the forest, sculptured by fire into 'ashen effigies' of themselves, waiting for the wind to blow them over into dust. Intense heat has melted and tipped a city’s buildings, and window glass hangs frozen down their walls. On the Interstate 'long lines of charred and rusting cars' are 'sitting in a stiff gray sludge of melted rubber. ... The incinerate corpses shrunk to the size of a child and propped on the bare springs of the seats. Ten thousand dreams ensepulchred within their crozzled hearts.'”
The novel earned the 2007 Pulitzer Prize, was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Awards, won the 2007 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the 2007 Quill Book Award.
The film version features actor Viggo Mortensen as the father and Kodi Smit-McPhee as the boy. Mortensen's interest in books extends beyond "The Road." He owns a publishing business (Perceval Press).
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