No Country For Old Men: A Good Story and a Bad Book

In No Country For Old Men, author Cormac McCarthy, delivers a tale that seems to be contradictory to its title. McCarthy, who published the novel in his early seventies, seems to know all about the time and place. He tells a tale that follows one man as he makes a moral error and his action sends the entire border between Texas and Mexico into a state of brutality and chaos. The variety of characters described in the novel range from a ruthless bounty hunter to a humble police officer. The strength of the story comes from McCarthy’s ability to be withdrawn from the fate of the characters. You can detect no favoritism toward any characters from the author as the seemingly good and bad alike all perish. It is a story told that is not particularly sad or happy, just one told. McCarthy takes no sides and simply recounts the story.
In a way, McCarthy’s detachment proves to be the novel’s greatest failure. By rendering this story, McCarthy completely abandons the chance to showcase his writing. He is unable to validate his past comparisons to Faulkner because he tells his story in the simplest language possible. No Country For Old Men, while a western at its heart, is merely a legend like any other. It could have been told by anyone at anytime. Other than McCarthy’s knowledge of the subjects, his influence on the novel seems minimal. Almost entirely written in the third person, the novel reads like a screenplay, as it is primarily made up of dialogues and physical actions. In the few excerpts of first person, the reader can see the author knows the subject with which he is dealing. These captivating moments are cut short as McCarthy quickly switches back to the third person and resumes telling the story which, though very dramatic, is just a story.
No Country for Old Men is definitely not a tale for the faint of heart. From the first pages, McCarthy’s obsession with gore is obvious. “He was gurgling and bleeding from the mouth. He was strangling on his own blood. Chigurh only hauled the harder. The nickelplated cuffs bit to the bone. The deputy’s right carotid artery burst and a jet of blood shot across the room and hit the wall and ran down it.” Scenes like these give the novel its harsh undertones and depict the tense situations at the border. Violence is a key element of McCarthy’s writing as he is known for being able to articulate the most gruesome deaths.
McCarthy’s work is a great story but a bad book. When reading it, one is captivated but not in the usual ways of McCarthy’s works. His knowledge of institutions in the southwest is shown in his knowledge of the cities and terrain but his attention to detail is minute in comparison to his past works. He does not tangent off on the setting or the personal struggles of his characters and leaves these up to the reader’s imagination. With great acting and directing, this makes for a great movie. Without such a visual aid, the reader is left in the dark. Reading No Country for Old Men after reading All the Pretty Horses left me very confused. All the Pretty Horses proved to be the complete opposite as it was a bad story saved by strong writing. I was thoroughly impressed with McCarthy’s descriptions of the desolate Mexican landscape but very unimpressed with the contents of the story. I noticed the novel translated to the big screen very easily and I was suspicious that the novel had been written with the hopes of becoming a movie. With No Country for Old Men, I have few doubts. The novel was published in 2005 and there is already a movie in local theaters after opening at the Cannes Film Festival. I have not yet seen the movie although I would be very surprised if I did not know what happened in every scene. I can watch the trailers of the film and see a character walking and I know exactly where in the novel it occurs. When I see characters conversing in a heated dialogue, not only do I know exactly how the conflict will end, I can account their entire interaction verbatim. This would make the entirety of the movie very anticlimactic. I enjoyed reading the novel because it was a very easy read, but upon further review, this is not something I want from an author as acclaimed as McCarthy. I want to have to look up every other word just as other readers had to when they his first novel, Blood Meridian. Without these elements, it just is not McCarthy’s work. I do not care about the story. I want to hear the author’s voice as I do through the first-person of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. I want to hear the characters reflect why the border between Texas and Mexico is “no place for old men.”

TIMMAY