No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

McCarthy does Elmore Leonard

Few American authors garnered as much critical acclaim over the last half century as Cormac McCarthy (1933–2023). He published his first novel in 1965, but it wasn’t until about 30 years later that he achieved any commercial success. I rarely quote Wikipedia, but this was too good to pass up: “As of 1991, none of McCarthy’s novels had sold more than 5,000 hardcover copies, and for most of his career, he did not even have an agent.” He hit it big in 1992 with All the Pretty Horses and has since become a household name. Not only the appeal, but the style of his work seemed to get more commercial in his latter years. He started out as the new William Faulkner, but by the time he died, it seems he had discovered an affinity for pulp fiction. McCarthy’s novel No Country for Old Men was published in 1992. The film version, made 15 years later, won the Oscar for Best Picture. This book is a crime novel, similar in style and subject matter to Elmore Leonard’s work, but as he did before with Blood Meridian, McCarthy instills this gritty, violent story with the deep thoughts of highbrow literature.

In the borderlands of Southern Texas, Llewelyn Moss is out hunting antelope when he spots a group of trucks parked out in the middle of nowhere. Upon closer inspection, he finds the site littered with dead bodies. In an apparent drug deal gone bad, it seems that both sides have massacred each other. As is often the case in such scenes, there’s a briefcase full of money on site. Moss absconds with what he estimates to be 2.4 million dollars. The drug cartel naturally wants its money back, so it sends men after Moss. Among those hunting him down is a mystery man named Anton Chigurh, a cold-blooded assassin who uses an unusual weapon to make his kills, though he’s pretty good with a shotgun as well. One way to get to Moss is through his wife, so she has to go on the run as well. Ed Tom Bell, the local sheriff, considers it is duty to serve and protect the citizens of his county, including Mr. and Mrs. Moss. He sets out investigating the case, hoping to catch up with Moss before the killers find him.

Much of the plot takes place in motel rooms and highway diners on Texas desert roads, where gunfights frequently ensue. There are two aspects of the book that elevate this novel from a genre thriller to a great work of American literature. First is the character of Chigurh, a force of nature when it comes to dealing death, but also a philosopher when it comes to dealing dialogue. Second are the monologues of Ed Tom Bell that are interspersed in italics throughout the primary third-person narrative. These monologues alone could constitute a book worthy of a Pulitzer. Bell contemplates his mortality, old age, marriage, his regrets as a law enforcement officer, a former soldier, and a man, and how the world has changed for the worse on his watch.

Similar to Leonard’s writing, No Country for Old Men is written in curt, choppy prose—sometimes so curt and choppy that it’s a little tough to figure out what’s going on. It reads like an exercise in using as few words as possible. There are no visual or biographical descriptions of the characters, you just have to figure out who they are by what they say. The dialogue is brilliantly written, again calling to mind Leonard, but without so much overt humor. The manner of speech employed by the characters, intelligently rendered in authentically down-home diction, is also reminiscent of Charles Portis’s great Western novel True Grit.

Most literary critics don’t consider No Country for Old Men to be McCarthy at his best because it doesn’t have the Faulknerian profundity of his earlier novels. For that same reason, it may be his most accessible book to an audience of general readers raised on crime films and Westerns. This is definitely not a conventional thriller, but I was riveted to every page. I’ve liked McCarthy’s books in the past, and I like Leonard, so to me this novel was the best of both worlds.