Cormac McCarthy again in The Road [New York: Random House, 2006]. I like his stuff, though I think this one and All the Pretty Horses are the best of the 5 or so I've read.
Here is the first sentence:
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.Here we go again. Those haunting, quasi-poetic lines, drawn into his complex, mysterious post-Apocalyptic world. Why was he always sleeping in the woods in the cold. Who is the boy and why are they together? We don't know at this point, but we're in.
I loved this novel. It's a terrible world he's writing about. Cold. Hostile. Threatening. Starvation everywhere. Death and destruction all over the place. Just the man and his son, the man dying we find out. Trying to survive and get somewhere. I couldn't put it down, but others react differently.
Still, I'd like just a hint of why the world is like it is. Was it a global ecological catastrophe? Nuclear attack? Why are there virtually no people around. A few, but most seemed to have picked up and left for somewhere else.
I could make a poem out of this:
He'd reach out to touch the child.
Nights dark beyond darkness.
Days more gray each one, like the
Onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world.
His words not mine.
What do you think? Do you have a favorite book or first sentence? Tell me. Post a comment. I'd like to know. And follow me on Twitter.com
Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for my ideas on writing and publishing, go to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com.
Ian Kearney, the director of the Kearney Music School, an elite musical training school in Philadelphia, dies after a fall from a balcony during a recital. World-famous cellist, Henry Harrier, recently forced from the faculty, returns to investigate Ian's death when his prized former student is arrested. Henry shows through his brilliant and single-minded pursuit of the truth that, as usual, they have it all wrong. This Sherlock Holmes-type mystery leads the reader through the world of classical music and lays bare the conflicts which dominate the lives of talented adolescents when placed under the pressure of studying for a demanding, stressful, and often elusive career as a classical music performer. Henry Harrier is part John Le Carre's George Smiley, part Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes, and part Orlando Cole the beloved teacher, renowned chamber musician, and until his own retirement, the premier cellist of the Curtis Institute.
Tim was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on January 30, 1946. In 1951 he moved with his family to Schenectady, New York, where he lived through high school. He attended Baldwin-Wallace College, Berea, Ohio, from 1964 to 1968. He graduated in 1968 with a B.A. in history and philosophy. He received his Ph. D. in history in U.S. history in 1980 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison after spending 2.5 years in the U. S. Army. Most of his army service was completed in Wuerzburg, Germany, from 1969-1971. In 1972 he returned to Madison to complete his doctoral study. His dissertation, Those Who Moved; Internal Migrants in American 1607-1840, combined the statistical analysis of genealogical and biographical data with the study of traditional literary diaries, letters, and journals.
