No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy (2008-01-04)

the edition i bought was in great shape and shipped promptly. mccarthy is fantastic and i consider this novel a must-read for those who already know his work and for those who need an introduction to this most important voice in contemporary american fiction.

Bought here on friday, received today (monday). I like many others, saw the movie first but I like the country tone/horrible english grammar of the narration, like it was told by good old country folk. The book has much more details and answered many questions I had with the movie, but of course, if you are a big fan of the movie, I highly recommend reading this.

I own the imfamous Border trilogy, but to be honest have only read, "All the Pretty Horses'. I remember liking it, although I struggled, especially with the lack of punctuation. That exists in this as well, but it didn't bother me in the least. In fact it seemed to aid in the relentless pace that gets set right from the get go. It seems so pretentious to call a book a 'literary thriller' but between bouts of bloodshed are passages about the nature of man, this ailing country, and where it's all headed, that I suspect won't be found in the pages of a James Patterson book. It's violent, tautly written and thought provoking. Quite a good book.

Fantastic author and a good read. Read after I watched the film, which is always a dumb thing to do. Not so much in this instance because both are very close and well-crafted, however, I pictured all of the characters in the book as the actors that portrayed them in the film.

This author seems overrated to me. Actually I think proper punctuation would make it more readable. Quotation marks serve a purpose. The Life reflections at the start of each chapter and at the end of the book got tiresome. A good editor would call it too much "telling". I kind of skipped through the end of the book as it sort of petered out. Some crucial actions went unseen and the reader finds out afterward. More telling. Just see the movie - it's better than the book.

First off, the title for this book comes from the first line of the Yeats poem "Sailing to Byzantium." I haven't read any other review that bothers to mention this rather, it would seem, significant fact. -So, there it is.-One might do well to read or reread that poem before embarking on this book.

The above beng mentioned, I simply can't recommend this book to anyone in search of literature. - Fast-paced, page-turning action and sophomoric interior monologues? Then, it's for you. - Otherwise, this book is simply a pale shadow of Blood Meridian.

Chigurh, the "psychopathic" killer, is such an obvious, watered-down replacement for The Judge in Blood Meridian that he's much more than an embarassment in this novel. - He even uses the exact wording as does The Judge about the "right currrency" not being money. It's blood, of course. But Chigurh is no Judge. He's already boxed into this meaningless diagnosis of "psychopathic" near the beginning of the book; whereas the Judge is the moving philosophical protagonist in Blood Meridian and remains a Delphic figure to the end. Without The Judge, there would be no Blood Meridian.-If you don't buy all this, try thinking of Chigurh as Delphic, in that adjective's original sense. It quite obviously just won't do.

McCarthy should have ceased writing after Suttree, to my mind his greatest work, perhaps even the greatest postwar American novel of the Twentieth century. His books have diminished increasingly in quality since he found megastar success with The Border Trilogy. I am constantly reminded when contemplating McCarthy's downward spiral of the poem penned by Malcolm Lowry after he succeeded in publishing his 20th Century masterpiece, Under The Volcano:

Success is like some horrible disaster...

Destroying the house of the soul, exposing that you have worked for only this.

O, that I had never suffered this treacherous kiss, and been left in darkness to countinually founder and fail.

Perhaps I should give Mcarthy the benefit of the doubt, as the novel was originally 600 pages before cutting. Who knows what lurks in those cuts? His current agent, Amanda Urban, and her agency, ICM, brook no long, meandering works of art. Trust me: I have a letter from her in re my first novel (still unpublished) informing me that I am a "great writer" but that my work is "unmarketable."

But I don't have the 600 pages. All I have is what got the imprimatur here, and it simply isn't worth the read. All I can say, sadly, is to return to those books for which McCarthy will be remembered: Blood Meridian and Suttree.

What an incredible read. This is my first McCarthy book and will definitely not be my last. I saw the movie first and it instantly became one of my favorite stories and group of characters. Had to read this book, glad I did.

One of my favorites. Simple characters in extraordinary circumstances. Cormac McCathy's meditative writing style takes you on a journey of fear and bravery and why we make decisions that don't always make sense. This book enraptured my soul for the time I was reading it.

And the first question everyone asks is how close are they. Remarkably close. For the first half of the book I felt as though the screenwriter followed the book word for word. Granted, the movie scene where the dog chases Moss into the river is not in the book, but there is a lengthy chase of Moss by the two guys in the truck through the desert. In the second half of the book there is quite a bit more ruminating by Sheriff Bell, and as I read those pages I thought this was a big miss by the movie people. It really would have set up the highly criticized ending of the movie (the kitchen scene with Bell and wife Loretta) so much better, making the ending more palatable. I have one other major comment, and it is a spoiler for those who have neither read the book nor seen the movie....Even after seeing the movie X times, I never felt I understood the shooting of Moss, who did it, how did they know where he was, who got the money. The book does this very nicely, and I feel that 10 more minutes of video would made the movie so much better. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I have read a few things by McCarthy and I feel that this was by far the best. I believe that it will be enjoyable for those that have seen the movie, but best if there has been a time gap since your last viewing and perhaps your recollection is a bit fuzzy. A different book review I guess but if you want something more traditional you can find hundreds of the usual stuff on the store and Library Thing.

If I ever decide to sneeze sawdust and spit nails, I might just have to change my name to Anton Chigurh and move my wife to the Texas-Mexico border. Of course, that assumes I own a cattle gun, determine fate through the flip of a coin, and have approximately $2.4M stuffed in my jeans. During my subsequent relocation, I’ll acquire a pair of recently shined ostrich boots and a white cloth for my boots and nose, not to be used successively without prior washing.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN caused me to jump at even the slightest noise, and I might have pried my eyes open with toothpicks to help me sleep at night. The journey nearly led to a forty mph drive by through a stop sign, and I might have run a red light during the completion of this novel. The prose popped my nose and jaw out of alignment, and I might have hugged the sidewalk for warmth and comfort and moral support. Had I owned a shotgun, I might have tossed it out of my bedroom window (unloaded of course) and buried the shells in my backyard.

The sparse prose rocked me more than the San Andreas, and I might have considered a four-wheeler purchase to aid my night travels. I’d remove the toothpicks from my eyes for the completion of this journey. The dialogue confused me at times, since I’m a simple man who prefers quotation marks and contractions with the aid of an apostrophe. But that could just be me. Who needs grammar rules if you have a Pulitzer swinging from your gun belt? I ask you. Since I own neither a Pulitzer (unless you count the one I stole from that bastard from Kentucky) nor a gun belt, I guess I’ll have to continue to use punctuation correctly. But when I do acquire my Pulitzer through legal means, you bastards better watch out.

If you like your world filled with reprehensible characters and you want to watch as the world gets blown to smithereens, or maybe just the backseat of a Jeep, then this novel might just make you feel all warm and cuddly inside.

Robert Downs
Author of Falling Immortality: Casey Holden, Private Investigator

Wanted to read the novel after seeing the movie and Bardin's, Tommy Lee's and Brolin's Exc. performances. Carmack's stark description can mesmerize and its dark humor, I could see, appealed to the Coen Brothers' taste.
What startled me about the book was the horrible drug war scenario and changes placed upon the settler's descendants of that south Texas country. The author did his research and captured the ambiance and nature. I couldn't help but think of the border patrol agent's description of the drug situation there, "If this is a war, we're losing it!"
And for the grizzled folks in that arid land. The writer's theme, "you don't now what's comin' next."
A tip of the Stetson to the author!

Just like "Blood Meridian", NCFOM is a book of atmospheres, more than a straight-out plot-driven novel. There is a plot, of course, but it's fairly banal and, in different hands, it would read as a generic thriller about a man who finds some drug money and takes it, only to be chased-down by a contract hit man.
McCarthy's terse dialogues, together with the beautiful description of the landscapes (with its gothic, almost mythological vibe) add a lyrical, otherworldly dimension to the whole book.
NCFOM turns out to be a novel about the Zeitgeist, about our deeply corrupted moral (or so the author seem to imply), about the dawn (or maybe the spread) of a new, soulless, man (which Anton Chigurh embodies).
It's an unsettling, deeply pessimistic novel, punctuated by the considerations of the "old man" of the title, who might be an alter-ego of McCarthy himself and who seems to regret a time long gone.

that it catches your breath. As an inveterate McCarthy reader, I was surprised at how spare this novel is. The first hundred pages or so are unsettling but compelling. At least he doesn't explain why Moss steals the money and allows us to come to this understanding. It's a delight to have a writer treat readers respectfully. When asked if he was sorry to have become a criminal, Moss' response was that he was sorry he hadn't started earlier.

Two sections...Chigurh and Wells and later with Chigurh and Carla Jean run on too long and tend to meander and that is my only criticism.

Sheriff Bell's story and comments especially his WWII guilt morally anchor the novel and provide juxtaposition for Wells, Chigurh and Moss.

This book is an excellent commentary on the degradation of our society and demonstrates the utter violence and savagery we see every morning on the news. Most of it is a result of the drug culture and the resulting violence it brings. Also contributing is a total disregard of the moral and ethical values that our grandparents grew up with. The book is almost an exact replica of the movie and could have been used for the movie script itself. I enjoyed both the movie and the book immensely. The movie is probably the BEST movie of 2007. The book is highly recommended, along with the movie. Both have a message that we all need to think about.

This is a story that explores the inner daydream of everyman. People in general always have a little premise in their mind that "if I could only find a big bag of money, all my problems would go away". In this book, the Author runs down that trail with a soft easy Texas dialect, using minimal punctuation. The language of the book is wide open and simple, chock full of salty cowboyisms. The main protagonist is pursued by a man who employs a dark and pure morality, which he prosecutes with severe prejudice. The Arc of this tale is an interesting swell of violent death, desperation, and accountability, interspersed with the quiet narration from the mind of a country sheriff. I highly recommend this book to anyone who needs an easy, fun read. I felt like I was in Texas the entire time I read this book..

Stunning beauty painted with the Texas language, complex intertwined themes of life and death, and more existentialism than most of us can grapple with in the Potemkin Land of Tweets. The sheer might of McCarthy's gift at times is staggering. Own this. Dive deep. As an itinerate writer, I was staggered over and over at the speed of the tale, the graceful pacing of a trio of hunters, the sparkling river of rivet-precision details, the near Malick level of visionary quiet reverence and ageless respect for nature and always - the spiritual war correspondent in the battlefields, internal and external in the brutal massacres, witnessing the wartug between good and evil. A flip of a coin? Not on your life. This is one man's investment of his time and life spirit in creating a jawdropping work of American Texan Grit-literature and adorned and festooned throughout with the stark charm of not simply West Texas wry colloquialisms but more than that: dialogues and inner monologues armed with the philosophies of creeping regret, hardwood honor, and haywire murder prophesying. It's not just blood sport but a hunt for true and external meaning amongst the bleeding near the borderline. Never thought I'd see the like of Hemingway reveal himself in parts again but maybe I did. And plucking a line from the Coens in their reverent and effective adaptation: I previsioned it. Get this book.

McCarthy's novel came highly recommended, but left me somewhat disappointed. For starters, there's the absence of quotation marks from the dialogue, which I found annoying. It might also surprise some McCarthy readers to learn that not all Texans speak as if illiterate. Some can and do use proper English grammar on occasion.

There's an inconsistency in the plot. If Anton Chigurh was able to locate Llewellyn Moss for the second time, apparently through the use of a second transponder hidden in the satchel of drug money Moss carried, then why didn't Chigurh (or someone) just locate the satchel after Moss temporarily dumped it in a cane brake near the river in Eagle Pass? That would have made for a very short novel, but at least it would have been consistent.

Chigurh's character, not to mention his weapon of choice, is implausible. He's the boogeyman from a children's story. He has no motivations that make sense. I was surprised to find such a character in such a highly acclaimed novel. Perhaps the movie's better.

This is an interesting story enhanced by good story telling and good use of language. The characters are well observed developed and believable. There is a nice mixture of plain speaking sensible country folk and the cruel world of ruthless killers. Very entertaining.

"No Country for Old Men" is a unique book. Utilizing a staccato and direct writing style, Cormac McCarthy covers many weighty topics under the umbrella of a disarmingly direct and powerful storyline.

Topics such as life and death, good and evil and choice versus chance are all touched upon over the course of this novel. Beneath the veneer of this action-driven story lie many questions of significant scale and scope. The combination of "big questions" and parsimonious verse make this an engaging and thought-provoking book.

Not in the normal style of Cormac McCarthy writing. This seems to be a screenplay conversion to a novel.
Reads just like the movie plays with some parts that were not included in the film and a couple of diversions from the plot. The film is one of my favorites but the book does not do it justice.

Cormac McCarthy has a style as unique as Hemingway's was in his day. His sparse dialogue and down-home punctuations only distract for the first few pages of any of his writings...and then draws you in. No Country For Old Men has the same trademark prose as The Road, and leaves you with a solid grip on every character.

"It starts when you begin to overlook bad manners. Any time you quit hearin Sir and Mam the end is pretty much in sight."

So does the character of Sheriff Bell think in this absolutely tense novel, and anyone who has ever felt the dischordant strum of disrespect against their eardrums would nod their heads in understanding of what he sees ahead. And although this book is not deliberately a prelude to The Road, you sense that the Sheriff glimpses the destruction of that path.

I read The Road first...and wish I'd read it after reading No Country For Old Men, because the events in this book made me see, perhaps, what could have lead up to the dispair of The Road. In No Country For Old Men, Mr. McCarthy paints as fine a detail about what is evil in our world, and what is good--and what makes one's own character mean something.

Set in our present time along the badland border between the U.S. and Mexico, it is a tale of more than just criminals. Drug smuggling, brutal and violent deaths, apparant (good) fortune and the flip of a coin play out in this novel of the harsh reality of our nation's afflicted collective consciousness. One man, hunting, comes across carnage in a desolate place, and finds a fortune in cash. Llewelyn Moss does what perhaps many of us would do--and starts a chain of events that spirals out of control so quickly that it just might change your mind about what you might do, given the same circumstances.

Sheriff Ed Tom Bell is a character who "rings true", representing the moral fibre of men and women as we remember them to be, knowing pretty much the difference between right and wrong, black and white, no matter how weak we perceive ourselves to be in that department.

This is no ordinary cops-and-robbers book...No Country For Old Men, like The Road, is about carrying the torch of Truth in your heart. Where The Road is bleak and nearly hopeless, No Country For Old Men is about real life, real death, and the decisions that we make along the path of our lives.

We realize that even Evil might be flipping a coin out there.

Amazing. The main characters are all so layered. You come to understand the things motivating each man in this complex game of cat-and-mouse. Lots of great perspectives from the various characters on life and the cruelty of fate. It's a great book that I'd highly recommend.