No Country for Old Men

The writing adage, "Show, don't tell," must have escaped McCarthy and his editors. Several passages were 'this and then he did this, then this, and then this, etc.'. There was so much in some of the sentences that it was easy to get lost. The only plus to this is that I sometimes do this very thing when I write (and I quickly edit myself because it drives me crazy),...more

The writing adage, "Show, don't tell," must have escaped McCarthy and his editors. Several passages were 'this and then he did this, then this, and then this, etc.'. There was so much in some of the sentences that it was easy to get lost. The only plus to this is that I sometimes do this very thing when I write (and I quickly edit myself because it drives me crazy), so maybe it's not as bad as I thought it was since this guy has won several awards. I will definitely re-read it in t...more The writing adage, "Show, don't tell," must have escaped McCarthy and his editors. Several passages were 'this and then he did this, then this, and then this, etc.'. There was so much in some of the sentences that it was easy to get lost. The only plus to this is that I sometimes do this very thing when I write (and I quickly edit myself because it drives me crazy), so maybe it's not as bad as I thought it was since this guy has won several awards. I will definitely re-read it in the near future. I think it's one of those books that you'll get a lot more out of with a second read. Overall, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a thriller and is fascinated by the human condition.   hide

The best book I have ever read depicting the clash of two world views. The "hero" sheriff, a post-Christian world deist tries to track down a clearly nihilistic psychopathic killer. The sheriff laments of older days when morals were clear and children were well behaved. Ultimately, the sheriff misses the ultimate cause of the countries demise, but has many monologues that vividly...more

The best book I have ever read depicting the clash of two world views. The "hero" sheriff, a post-Christian world deist tries to track down a clearly nihilistic psychopathic killer. The sheriff laments of older days when morals were clear and children were well behaved. Ultimately, the sheriff misses the ultimate cause of the countries demise, but has many monologues that vividly depict his lamentations. My favorite was the following: "Me and Loretta…got set next to this woman, she was the wife of somebody or other. And she kept talkin about the right wing this and the right wing that. I ain’t even sure what she meant by it. The people I know are mostly just common people. Common as dirt, as the sayin goes. I told her that and she looked at me funny. She thought I was sayin somethin bad about em, but of course that’s a high compliment in my part of the world. She kept on, kept on. Finally told me, said: I don’t like the way this country is headed. I want my granddaughter to be able to have an abortion. And I said well mam I don’t think you got any worries about the way the country is headed. The way I see it goin I dont have much doubt but what she’ll be able to have an abortion. I’m goin to say that not only will she be able to have an abortion, she’ll be able to have you put to sleep. Which pretty much ended the conversation."   hide

A good book that will probably turn into a great book if read it a second time. But, since I am not a person known to read books twice over, a one time reading shall have to do. The book certainly has good thematic elements to it. The most powerful one being the utter hopelessness good men, like Sheriff Bell, feel when confronted with overwhelming and, often, senseless evil, as embodied in...more

A good book that will probably turn into a great book if read it a second time. But, since I am not a person known to read books twice over, a one time reading shall have to do. The book certainly has good thematic elements to it. The most powerful one being the utter hopelessness good men, like Sheriff Bell, feel when confronted with overwhelming and, often, senseless evil, as embodied in Anton Chigurh. In fact, if Sheriff Bell is, as I believe him to be, the protagonist in this story, then Chigurh is certainly the antagonist and his direct opposite with his completely disregard for any sort of legal or moral code. Llewlyn Moss is just the greedy man caught in the middle of forces he doesn't understand. Moss's greed, arrogance and ignorance ultimately lead to his downfall. Despite the utter hopelessness McCarthy sees in the world, I can't help but disagree with his resolution to it. Bell loses all hope and quits. Despite his own personal baggage, had I been in Bell's shoes, I would have redoubled my efforts to be a good sheriff in a world going hell in a handbasket. There are many other facets of this book that I could go on about, such as Chigurh's use of a cattle gun as a symbol of his belief in himself as an agent of fate, but that would take a lot more writing than I am fully prepared to do right now.   hide

I was looking forward to seeing this movie, since people only had good things to say about it, but then I discovered that the book came first. And when that's the case, I always read the book before I see the movie. Though I'd never read Cormac McCarthy's work, I didn't think I'd like it because I had the impression that his stories are all set in the Old West, which...more

I was looking forward to seeing this movie, since people only had good things to say about it, but then I discovered that the book came first. And when that's the case, I always read the book before I see the movie. Though I'd never read Cormac McCarthy's work, I didn't think I'd like it because I had the impression that his stories are all set in the Old West, which doesn't interest me. But since I knew the movie is set more recently then that, I gave it a whirl and I'm glad I did! To absorb all the nuances, I read this book twice -- partly because it wasn't until about halfway through that I was able to understand McCarthy's narrative style. His use of dialogue reflects the speech patterns of that part of Texas, which is more extreme than say, a Houston accent, which I only know because I lived in that city for a year. McCarthy writes almost phonetically, so I had trouble understanding some of what was being said. For example, he'd write "kindly" when what the character actually means is "kind of." In addition, McCarthy rarely, if ever, uses quotation marks throughout, so sometimes it was hard to know who was saying what until you got to know the characters. The second read helped a lot. The narrative is sparse, yet includes so much detail. He makes your imagination work hard! Seeing the movie first would have ruined the aesthetic experience for me. Each chapter begins with a first-person narrative that reads almost like a journal entry, and is what the story is really about. It only took me about 2/3 of the way through the book to figure it out, though! I'm very excited about seeing the movie -- just bought the DVD last night. It's bound to be as great as everyone says, considering it's a Coen brothers film.   hide

Wow. wow. this Mccarthy author guy has a future. I finished it, and wanted to read it again, immediately. But I took time to ruminate over its philosophical and theological genius, sometimes easier to discern than others, which come often in brief chapters of the protagonist's internal dialogue. This would be the Sheriff, Tommy Lee Jones in film; sadly, the film didn't have time to...more

Wow. wow. this Mccarthy author guy has a future. I finished it, and wanted to read it again, immediately. But I took time to ruminate over its philosophical and theological genius, sometimes easier to discern than others, which come often in brief chapters of the protagonist's internal dialogue. This would be the Sheriff, Tommy Lee Jones in film; sadly, the film didn't have time to accommodate these incredible internal reflections. These first-person chapters appeared intermittently with the main story, of a psychopathic hunter and the hunted, over a bag of money. Read the essay on Mccarthy's books by James Wood in the New Yorker, some time in 2005 (I think). Wood's not a fan, and thinks Mccarthy uses stale pulp formulae and fails in his effort to squeeze some ethics out of excessive horrific violence in his books. But I being a bear of small brain find Mccarthy's dialogue and characters quite stimulating, thank you, regarding man's nature, and good and evil in us.   hide

It's hard for me to review this book without recalling the Coen brothers' pseudo-masterpiece Best Picture Oscar winner; it's the reason I decided to read it in the first place, given my antipathy for Mr. McCarthy's stylistic conceit of eschewing quotation marks. The movie was so powerful, yet the denouement was lukewarm and confusing; I thought for sure the book would provide insight into the...more

It's hard for me to review this book without recalling the Coen brothers' pseudo-masterpiece Best Picture Oscar winner; it's the reason I decided to read it in the first place, given my antipathy for Mr. McCarthy's stylistic conceit of eschewing quotation marks. The movie was so powerful, yet the denouement was lukewarm and confusing; I thought for sure the book would provide insight into the vision the Coens were trying for. Well, yeah, kinda. The movie tried to be faithful to the source material, and the source material, much like the movie, is indelible and haunting (and as often is the case for books, even more haunting than the movie). The book conveys with spare, spartan sentences the awful realities of the plot: A drug transaction goes bad in south Texas, a man stumbles upon the aftermath, steals the money, is pursued by the Mexican Mafia AND Anton Chigurh (a hit man whose evil knows no bounds). Where the book falters a little bit (a little less so than the movie, but still...) is when Mr. McCarthy takes the leap from creating a sensational lurid potboiler of a novel and tries to transform it into a thought piece extemporizing about evil and the world's declining morals. He's not totally successful, but it's a noble attempt. In my opinion, this is McCarthy's best book by far, WAY better than "The Road", 2008's Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction. If only someone would buy the guy a word processor with QUOTATION MARKS. ("AAARRGGHHHH")   hide

In No Country for Old Men we are met with brute violence and no happy endings. A far cry from what we are usually fed by our feel-good stories lining the fiction bookshelves at the local library. I think in some senses it is closer to reality than most of us would like to admit. The theme of good vs. evil is presented, but deciding who falls into these categories is no easy feat due to the...more

In No Country for Old Men we are met with brute violence and no happy endings. A far cry from what we are usually fed by our feel-good stories lining the fiction bookshelves at the local library. I think in some senses it is closer to reality than most of us would like to admit. The theme of good vs. evil is presented, but deciding who falls into these categories is no easy feat due to the ambiguity of the novels flawed characters. Chigurh can be seen as loyal and honest, just as Bell can be seen as cowardly and misleading. Moss is greedy and ruthless, yet caring and brave. What's clear is that every person has the ability to vacillate between the two sides, and that when all is said and done, survival of the fittest dictates the last man standing. And on the flip side, sometimes people get lucky, cowards included. My favourite message was ultimately, that control is an illusion. Both Chigurh with his coin toss and Moss with his advice to the runaway help to convey this truth. We have no ability to control the course of our fate except by the benign, good, and/or bad choices that we make. Every step that we take has an effect on our future, and the past can never be erased because of its meaning in relation to our lives eventual outcomes. Many will feel frustrated and cheated by the novels ending, and I will admit it did put me in to a bit of a tizzy, however it forced me to stop and think about the characters motivations and take some time to further analyze what I had read instead of quickly moving on to the next book. Check out more of my reviews at BookSnakeReviews   hide

It's very rare that I found a book awesome, but No country for old men is a amazing piece of literature. It tells simple but in another way very complicated story about a drug deal gone wrong and show spiritual view into the new world, full of greed, violence and lack of moral values. For me the best part of the book are well written and realistic dialogs of tired sheriff Bell who is trying...more

It's very rare that I found a book awesome, but No country for old men is a amazing piece of literature. It tells simple but in another way very complicated story about a drug deal gone wrong and show spiritual view into the new world, full of greed, violence and lack of moral values. For me the best part of the book are well written and realistic dialogs of tired sheriff Bell who is trying to understand the world around him, where people are dying and living in the chaos. This is the book nobody should miss! The best book I've ever read.   hide

Love love love McCarthy's writing. His words are sparse but somehow crafted so well that any more than he gives you would ruin it. The writing evokes such atmosphere and fully emerses you in the world it creates. He doesn't explicitly give you much knowledge as to what a character is thinking before they say something or do something, but somehow it's in there anyway. Anyway, this, as with...more

Love love love McCarthy's writing. His words are sparse but somehow crafted so well that any more than he gives you would ruin it. The writing evokes such atmosphere and fully emerses you in the world it creates. He doesn't explicitly give you much knowledge as to what a character is thinking before they say something or do something, but somehow it's in there anyway. Anyway, this, as with the other books of his I've read, is thoroughly engrossing and thought-provoking. Highly, highly recommend it!   hide