I never heard of the book and had to google it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road

This load of depressing garbage won a Pulitzer prize? For what?

This isn't a story. It's a longwinded attempt at one. I'm also willing to bet that the author suffers some sort of depression. Wait. Let me google that.

I attempted to read this from 'The Road.' What a load of purple prose. Why do people think this is good writing?

https://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/read-an-excerpt-from-the-road-by-cormac-mccarthy/all

I also found this quote in wiki.

"In one of his few interviews, McCarthy revealed that he respects only authors who "deal with issues of life and death", citing Henry James and Marcel Proust as examples of writers who do not. "I don't understand them ... To me, that's not literature."

That says it all. Literary writing is writing about the emotional despair of human beings and the evil that human beings do.

I don't particularly think the writers who write these things are any good at writing. It's more that the academics who study these things are depressed human beings. And reading this kind of garbage makes them feel more normal.

Over the last 5 or so years, literary publishers have begun to look at the facts - literary fiction might win prizes, but it doesn't make money. Normal people are not taken in by this pretentious clap trap.

And, sorry to shock you, but I'ma strong enough intellectual to speak out when I see the emperor has no clothing.