No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

Compared to anything else I've read by McCarthy, this novel is a page-turner. I'm going to say first that this is no Blood Meridian (in spite of a good deal of senseless violence....). When I read Blood Meridian, and even Suttree, I thought, man, I'm into something here. In No Country for Old Men, characters get killed off throughout the book by a nasty guy named Anton Chigurh. Life or Death could be a matter of a coin flip. Sheriff Bell wants to do good work for the people who pay his ticket, but we know he is no hero. Moss has scooped up a couple of million bucks of drug money, and that doesn't sit well with the nasties who considered it theirs. Crime, in this case the drug trade, is beyond the ability of the community to do anything about, so it becomes an irritant that is accepted for lack of choice.

This novel is beautifully written. The stark prose, simple, graphic, readable, is none-the-less McCarthy prose. Mike suggested it was written as if for a screenplay, and maybe that is the case. Who knows. It is difficult to talk about it in a way, because it isn't Blood Meridian - kind of like being Bob Dylan after Like a Rolling Stone. Anything McCarthy writes will be compared to Blood Meridian. I'm sure he wishes it would just go away for a while. I think that for McCarthy, America is in spin. There is still some fundamental good - in this case, we see it in the marriage the Sheriff's marriage - but it is out of control. The only character in control is Chigurh, who's function in the book is cold and calculating murder. And even he is subject to random violence, as his car is smashed broadside by a couple guys driving way too fast.

This is a nasty little book, but worth reading for sure.