Saturday, March 27, 2010

An Opening

I just started reading a new book. Many of you have probably read it. Here is the opening:

When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world. His hand rose and fell softly with each precious breath. He pushed away the plastic tarpaulin and raised himself in the stinking robes and blankets and looked toward the east for any light but there was none. In the dream from which he'd wakened he had wandered in a cave where the child led him by the hand. Their light playing over the wet flowstone walls. Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of the granitic beast. Deep stone flues where the water dripped and sang. Tolling in the silence the minutes of the earth and the hours and the days of it and the years without cease. Until they stood in a great stone room where lay a black and ancient lake. And on the far shore a creature that raised its dripping mouth from the rimstone pool and stared into the light with eyes dead white and sightless as the eggs of spiders. It swung its head low over the water as if to take the scent of what it could not see. Crouching there pale and naked and translucent, its alabaster bones cast up in shadow on the rocks behind it. Its bowels, its beating heart. The brain that pulsed in a dull glass bell. It swung its head from side to side and then gave out a low moan and turned and lurched away and loped soundlessly into the dark.

If you would indulge me, I like to know after reading that opening, would you want to read on (or if you have read the book, what made you want to read on)? Please state the reasons for and against.

The book is The Road by Cormac McCarthy, a #1 Bestseller/Pulitzer Prize winner.

6 comments:

  1. I actually haven't read it yet, but I definitely would, probably because I love classic lit so much. The style and poetry of it draws me in. However, on the con side, I would put it down if the story and plot never develops. If I can't see an end in site, it would turn me off. I'm not a lover of Steinbeck, if you know what I mean...

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  2. I stopped caring after the first few lines. I didn't care for the poetic feel. Get me into the action and get me hooked and then give me poetic descriptions. Until then I don't have the patience for it.

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  3. I actually haven't read that. I think I'd like to though.

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  4. I'd read it. Because like Lene I love a classic and the poetry and imagery draws me forward to see what the beast of the dream is and who the child is and why they are waking in the woods.

    No down side so far for me. I liked it.

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  5. I was curious because I had the same reaction as DJ and the reason I pushed on with it is because of its reputation.

    I'm starting to get more into it now. His style is very interesting. The man does not have a love for the comma.

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  6. I'm glad you could push through. I wonder if I could. :)

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