paulsavage's Full Review: Cormac McCarthy - No Country for Old Men: Movie-ti...
The style of No Country For Old Men is a significant departure from the other McCarthy novels I have read. For Delillo fans, it is like the shift from Underworld to The Hand Artist or Cosmopolis. In both cases, the author's brilliance is evident, but the style that made them what they are is all but missing.
The main character in No Country For Old Men responds like this to the comment that a particular situation is a mess: "It will do until a real mess comes along." That is the idea I get for this novel--it will do until a better one comes along.
The story is actually pretty simple. An otherwise honest man stumbles on some drug money left at the site of a minor massacre; he decides to take the money and this starts a pretty predictable string of events. He runs and others chase him. On this armiture, McCarthy gives us back back stories for the main characters and some tantalizing tidbits about other major characters whom he keeps shrouded in the darkness created by a lack of information. I cannot say more without giving away too much of the plot--though this is not really a plot driven novel.
McCarthy's earlier novels are Faulknerian. They contain large sections of introspection or observation with a focus on the right and many words necessary to paint the picture fully and artfully. This is what turns many off of authors like Faulkner and McCarthy, but it is what draws others to them.
No Country For Old Men is far more sparse than all but perhaps Child of God. Rather than comparing it to Faulkner (though there are moments of As I Lay Dying), the style is much closer to Hemingway. Where in earlier novels McCarthy would spend his time on the lay of the land or the internal reflections of his character, he spends the time on a step by step recording of actions. It is said that if you read Hemingway, you have an instruction manual for catching, cleaning, gutting, cooking, and eating river fish. No Country For Old Men gives you a step by step manual for hiding money, running from hunters, skirting the law.
As in earlier novels, however, McCarthy shows that he cares deeply for the characters that populate this novel. There is large amounts of violence, but it neither rises to the level of Blood Meridian nor to the microscopic fascination of that extremely violent work.
The fact that he can depart so markedly from his normal style but still create a work that is enjoyable shows McCarthy as one of the best novelists this country has produced.
If you read McCarthy for his similarities to Faulkner and his mind-stretching vocabulary, then No Country For Old Men will be a little disappointing. If you haven't read McCarthy because of the above, then No Country For Old Men is a fantastic entre into the work of this important artist.
Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy ( All the Pretty Horses; The Crossing; Cities of the Plain ) was hailed as an American classic to stand with the fine...More at Barnes & Noble.com
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