For Sale: Cormac McCarthy. The Road. NYC: Knopf, 2006.

Description

Here’s something you might not know about this book: its bleak, post-apocalyptic vision was partially inspired by a trip McCarthy took to El Paso, Texas, with his young son. During the trip, McCarthy imagined what the world might look like in the distant future if civilization were to collapse. He later said that while sitting in a hotel room, staring out the window at the desolate landscape, he began drafting what would become the opening lines of the novel.

The novel’s intense emotional core—especially the father-son relationship—was directly inspired by McCarthy’s own relationship with his young son, John Francis McCarthy, to whom the book is dedicated. The intimate portrayal of parental love in such a brutal environment is part of what made the novel so haunting and widely celebrated.