NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN BY CORMAC MCCARTHY

Posted on November 9, 2009 by Jeffrey Newman

After reading THE ROAD, I went back to the library to find another book by Cormac McCarthy. I found NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. That’s how I seem to find books. This process is too haphazard, devoid of creativity in my choice of reading but it is what I do and I expect others do the same. In any case, I thought it would be hard to find a darker, more brooding book than THE ROAD, but this one is it. Without giving too much away, no matter what happened to the characters in THE ROAD, McCarthy still left me with hope for their future. Not so here. It doesn’t lessen the experience though. In NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, we get a glimpse into the mind of a true sociopath–the kind of person we all know exist in the shadows in every city and town and who will kill as easily as sipping their morning coffee. McCarthy tells the truth in his fiction and you just know it is the truth about people. For example you know some people kill for no reason and if you happen to get on their radar screen you had better be lucky or fast to get away from them. Also, his words are hypnotic and the beat of his narrative is impossible to turn away from. The thing I like the best about his writing is that McCarthy takes his time. He builds his characters and his characters take time in their own life to look around and ponder things. It is Cormac’s patient details that make the difference…the banter before murder showing the bizzare logic of the killer; the old cop’s taking time to buy cups of hot coffee from the diner before driving off; one man standing and watching the sun before fleeing danger . The book draws out those mystical in between moments which have come to enrich my own life. The lines in the grocery store, early morning coffee; the quiet of 2 am. McCarthy carefully points up the connections between people in their banter. So give yourself a gift. You can take McCarthy’s characters carry them with you during the day, like marbles in your pocket waiting to be pulled out one by one as a reminder to stop the frenetic life and to remember what’s really important. The magic.