Law and Disorder

Cormac McCarthy Returns with a Devastating and Compelling Novel

There's spare prose, and then there's Cormac McCarthy's latest novel. No Country for Old Men is a stripped-down book packed to the rafters with laconic officers of the law, contract killers, and everymen, and McCarthy's writing does them complete justice. With simple, straightforward sentences and a completely bare minimum of punctuation marks -- I don't think there's an apostrophe or a quotation mark in the whole work -- he manages to convey an enormous amount of information and feeling. What on the surface appears to be a standard, plot-driven thriller swiftly reveals itself to be a moving meditation on justice, fate, and redemption.

Set in 1980, the book tells the story of three characters: Moss, a 36-year-old welder who stumbles upon the aftermath of a busted drug deal along the Texas border and makes off with 2.4 million bucks; Chigurh, a remorseless mercenary in pursuit of the money; and Bell, an aging sheriff who has spent decades uneasily watching his world change around him, while still wrestling with a choice he made as a young and scared soldier stationed in Germany during World War II.

No County for Old Men is filled with jarring violence, and McCarthy raises several significant and necessary questions without offering easy answers to any of them. You don't finish the book feeling especially good about much of anything. Don't let that dissuade you from his terrific, shattering stomach punch of a novel. This is American fiction writing at its finest.

Rating: **** (of 5)

Comments

[Iain]

Although I've got about a dozen book waiting to be read, this sounds like one I need to add to my list.

[The Zoner]

OK, I was super excited to read Blood Meridian. Read all about how it is an American classic, etc. I found it to be to dense and frankly, unenjoyable. I quit after about 100 pages.

I have also read though that this new book is not written in the same style, bu tthen you mentioned little to no punctuation. It is dense or does it flow?

[Tom Durso]

Actually, Zoner, I thought it was a pretty quick, though not unsubstantial, read. I'm not a big fan of "creative" punctuation (or lack thereof), but I found it to be not at all distracting in this book.

[The Zoner]

I checked it out the other day at the bookstore--not half as dense as Blood Meridian. I'm going to give it a whirl.

BTW, if you have not read The Celebrant by Eric Rolfe Greenberg or Universal Baseball Assoc. By Coover, you have to check them out. Must reads for baseball fans.

[Michell Sharpe]

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