And Now For Something Completely Different

I decided to read another "important" novel. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. So far, I'm not impressed. Overblown prose, a tedious plot, and, most irritating to me, an implausible seeming post-apocalypse.

It's early, and the novel is widely praised, so I figure I better give it another 50 pages or so, but back to the post-apocalypse. Some cataclysm has smoked the country, apparently killing off most plant and animal life, but leaving a number of humans - implausible. Worse, everything is covered with ash from the fires, and clouds of ash fill the atmosphere, five years post-A. Meanwhile it rains and snows frequently.

This, I think, is complete BS. Ash from fires disintegrated rapidly. Ash from volcano doesn't, but it doesn't park in the atmosphere for years either. It's very hard to conjure up a cataclysm that would char the soil everywhere so deeply that buried seeds would perish yet a substantial human population be spared.

Opinions by anyone who has read this - or even seen the movie - are welcome.

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