December 14, 2014
Way back when I vowed to read 1000 books, I considered checking out this very one from the temporary library that had been set up in the west side mall (the permanent library has been up and running for over a year now, and that old mall is almost completely torn down, besides a couple of anchor stores), but I hesitated. At the time I had a weird prejudice against books that had been made into movies. I've obviously gotten over that.
What's funny is that on my search for this book in the elibrary, another book about how it was translated into film was also available. And after reading this, I think a whole book explaining it would be unnecessary. It seemed like, the way McCarthy wrote it, that it would very easily translate to film. I've only seen snippets of the movie but intend to watch it in full rather soon.
McCarthy doesn't delve a lot into the backgrounds or feelings of his characters. A lot must be inferred by the dialogue and their actions. I loved it; I felt like the characters reveal so much, and yet the writing wasn't overly complex. I haven't read a lot of Hemingway, but I couldn't help but consider him; so much being said in not too many words.
I've mentioned before that my own writing style tends to be overly explanatory. This book reminded me that often, less is more, and I will challenge myself to apply this to my own writing.
The plot made me think of a sort of modern day Western. In a Texas border town, a guy named Llewelyn Moss, out hunting, comes across the grisley site of a massacre. It was a trade-off, drugs for money, that went wrong...or so it seems.
I still have no clue what happened to the drugs. Moss himself found the money, and when he goes back to the scene, to help the sole survivor, he finds that guy dead and has psychotic Anton Chigurh on his tail.
Moss and Chigurh's adventures are exciting enough, but the heart of the story is Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. Bell has been sheriff, off and on, for a long time. He's always done his best, considering the increase in drug-related crimes and violence in his jurisdiction. But by the late '70s early '80s, things had gotten bad. And the whole situation with Chigurh is unlike anything he's ever encountered.
There are some interesting conversations in this book between various characters. The story is, for the most part, exciting. Having been published within the last decade, I think that the conditions that Bell reflects on have gotten better and worse in some ways, as far as social issues. I know drug smuggling and violence haven't gotten better, and the cartel are infamous. Bell says that things really have gone downhill, that there really had been good days but they were gone. Maybe he's right, but who knows? He gave up on trying to fix the problems that he had too much goodness to understand.
Bell was a pretty sharp investigator, I think. He was never too far behind Moss or Chigurh, but he never caught up to them in time. In the end, Chigurh, evil, gets away. Bell retires not long after the case wraps up.
This is the first McCarthy that I read. A number of his novels are acclaimed. He's definitely a "masculine" author, but I believe that I'll read more of his work. I'm curious about Blood Meridian; I heard a fellow English teacher say that this was a "hard" book for high schoolers. I wouldn't consider No Country for Old Men to be a "hard" book, but it definitely requires a lot of reading between the lines.
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