In order for you to prepare for potential futures you might face, you need to be able to imagine yourself in that future. I am not sure most of us could let our imaginations go quite that far.

Fiction might push you a lot further down that road of imagination than you intended. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road took my breath away. The stark dialogue between father and son and the stark choices they made to survive their reality make so much of what we do seem irrelevant. Yet, the love and devotion shines even in this context as the child learns to be “one of the good guys,” the ones “carrying the fire.”

Reviews

• “Apocalypse Now,” Washington Post, October 1, 2006.
• “The Road through Hell, Paved with Desperation,” New York Times, September 25, 2006.
• “This is the End,” Pop Matters, September 18, 2006.
• “End of the Line,” Village Voice, August 31, 2006.