McCarthy made his famous dismissal of Proust and Henry James in the NYT in 1992 and in the Oprah interview, on the grounds those writers didn't deal with deep issues of life and death. But from all that has been revealed about his personal library, including this Bernhard book, one wonders if that was a put-on.

From Amazon:

Customers say

Customers have mixed reactions to the book's content, with one finding it mesmerizing while another describes it as excruciatingly tedious.

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I like Bernhard. I also recommend The Lime Works and wittgenstein’s nephew if you like correction. I found Bernhard through Thomas Ligotti. For Ligotti I recommend teatro grottesco and if you want to dive off the deep end the conspiracy against the human race.

> how grim is the the Road?

Not all that grim, at least compared to some of his others. Grimmer than No Country for Old Men, less so than Blood Meridian or Outer Dark. There is at least one very grim scene, though, and maybe some others I'm not thinking of at the moment. Been a pretty long time since I read it.

Grimness aside, I'd rank it simpler, at the level of reading difficulty, than some of his others.

It's a good book but personally, I don't think it's among his best.

I read it when it came out in a day or two.

Then I tried to read it again a few years later but my boy was about that age and I could not put myself through what reading it was taking out of me.

It's a very grim book, but it's also fundamentally about the goodness of people. The setting and the plot are bleak, but its outlook is, in a way, hopeful.

At least that's my takeaway. If someone else found it purely depressing I would understand, but I feel differently.

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Not that grim. As a dad it brought me to tears. It’s so good.

Bleaker than bleak is an accurate description but it actually ends on what I would consider to be a hopeful note, a moment of true kindness. Worth the read.

It’s been a decade but from what I remember, it is very dark. It was my first McCarthy book and have been hooked since.

As grim as it gets, with rare glimpses of light.