No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road comes a "profoundly disturbing and gorgeously rendered" novel (The Washington Post) that returns to the Texas-Mexico border, setting of the famed Border Trilogy.

The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones. One day, a good old boy named Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a bodyguard of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law—in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell—can contain.

As Moss tries to evade his pursuers—in particular a mysterious mastermind who flips coins for human lives—McCarthy simultaneously strips down the American crime novel and broadens its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as bloodily contemporary as this morning’s headlines.


No Country for Old Men is a triumph.

Why I Picked It Up

Thanks for reading Words Like Silver! Subscribe for free to support my work.

Subscribe Now

placeholder

I’ve read a decent bit of McCarthy at this point, but have plenty more to go. In my head, the predictability of his work (said in a non-disparaging way) makes each read of his fly by at this point; you know what you're getting, for the most part, but will be surprised by the execution. One review I saw midway through No Country for Old Men mentioned that this one feels like the most accessible of his works, and that makes complete sense to me. I'd agree for sure.

The setting, dialogue, characters, etc. are grounded, and he reigns in some of the more overwhelming stylistic touches that form his signature. The man still loves a run-on sentence, but the characters no longer go nameless. Italicized vignettes between chapters are easier to follow than in Outer Dark; the futility of avoiding judgment from Blood Meridian imbues the narrative with plenty of violence that hints at a nihilistic view of redemption and personal morality.

Of course, the cowboy-esque desperado energy aligns with All the Pretty Horses in a way that reminds me of all those "darlin', pack the car and let's go on the run"-type songs (usually my favorites) and that particular flavor is surprisingly tender—for McCarthy. It's either this one or John Grady that wins for me; I can't decide. Time will tell. Either way, this is a hall of famer for me.

About the Book

In terms of feel, No Country for Old Men is absolutely the most traditional in narrative structure. The story begins with a clear catalyst: Moss finding a suitcase abandoned after a clear no-winners shootout between drug dealers. Inside is a life-altering amount of money, cuing him to consider what exactly he's willing to do to keep ahold of that kind of freedom. (Also, an existential crisis ensuing: symbolically, whether that sort of amount is ultimate freedom or damnation—a constant crucible for dear ol' Cormac!)

Bounty hunters and the sheriff both tear off after him as he tries and fails to cover his tracks, inviting consequences for him and everyone he's interacted with (another thematic through-thread for McCarthy: being dragged into others' mess. What all of your fate you have control over.)

I flashed back to the types of shows my dad likes: spies, assassins, lawyers, cops outside the law. Classic "dad show" cat-and-mouse chases with morally gray figures. Fans of that particular sense of lawlessness and autonomy will vibe with No Country for Old Men.

This year, I've maybe-accidentally also read a lot about guilt and staining and what you can run away from versus what you ultimately answer for (and who you answer to.) Some of this can be comforting in the East of Eden way in that nobody punishes you like you do yourself, and some can be cyclical in the Grecian "you often meet your fate on the path you take to avoid it" prophetic vein.

“You should admit your situation. There would be more dignity in it.”

Deservedness is a constant curiosity of mine, and McCarthy seems to align often with an idea of deism—the concept that God initially created the world, but ultimately left it alone. Deism is such a specific worldview, and its influence is so precise.

“People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they don't deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things.”

This book—a later release of his—does have a good bit of hindsight baked into it. You can tell his thoughts have settled in a more grounded way: content with his questioning, or perhaps more accepting of life's lot. It still pokes and prods at your thoughts, but without the aura of restlessness I associate with some of his more...philosophically climactic?...works. Probably for thoughts like this that he articulates (hedonistic treadmill, for those of y'all who, like me, love the psychological match in various themes.) You feel the age in it.

“I think by the time you're grown you're as happy as you're goin to be. You'll have good times and bad times, but in the end you'll be about as happy as you was before. Or as unhappy. I've knowed people that just never did get the hang of it.”

“One of the things you realize about gettin older is that not everbody is going to get older with you.”

All in all, the book was easier to follow than McCarthy's others. It had clearer, thrilling slices of action and reflection that made it feel excellently paced in contrast to his other works. I like reading McCarthy because I'm a philosophical gal, but there are plenty of books of his I wouldn't recommend to those who prefer more of a can't-put-it-down plot. No Country for Old Men gets closer to that story-forward desire rather than relying solely on allegory.

Musings on moral authorities, wartime, and shame bubble up in the cracks, along with a weariness towards a contemporary culture of corruption that was a dead ringer for the corruption and exhaustion present in The Winter of Our Discontent; I align more with Steinbeck than McCarthy, but the two have plenty of similarity in what most compels them. You'll have to draw your conclusions about luck vs. fate and who is responsible for what.

I also have certain moments I'm dying to book club; while more straightforward, there are of course still plenty of layers wrapped up in single, zippy moments of dialogue posing questions about God or what type of person someone is or your responsibility to others. He likes to say that you never start fresh. You pick the stories you tell yourself, which means that beginnings and endings can be startlingly arbitrary. You never fully start over; you never run away from your mistakes.

It's your choice what you carry and what you don't, or else others will pick your beginnings and endings for you. And you can throw your weight behind the optimistic or pessimistic take of that: you can actively detach from the past, or you can incorporate it in your later choices. As he repeatedly emphasizes, what's happening now is all there is. It didn't happen a different way. That can provoke despair ("I would have done it differently") or hope (because each day is a new chance to be accountable to it or fix it.) You don't get to start over, which means either fate decides or you do. To him, it's all the same. The result is there, and so the intention doesn't make it to reality unless the action does.

(For that reason, I also appreciate that some of his endings—narrative threads or characters, pick your poison—are abrupt or surprising.)

Quotes I Loved

“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”

“You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday don't count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothin else.”

“I think that when the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be there yet. It dont move about from place to place and it dont change from time to time. You cant corrupt it any more than you can salt salt.”

Perpetually going back and forth on relativism vs. essentialism.

“Best way to live in California is to be from somewheres else.”

“Point bein some people will actually tell you what it is they aim to do to you and whenever they do you might want to listen.”

“What was it that he had faith in? It wasnt that nothin would change.”

“She smiled. Well, she said, past a certain age I dont guess there is any such thing as good change.”

“It's a life work to see yourself for what you really are and even then you might be wrong.”

“My daddy always told me to just do the best you knew how and tell the truth. He said there was nothin to set a man’s mind at ease like wakin up in the morning and not havin to decide who you were. And if you done somethin wrong just stand up and say you done it and say you’re sorry and get on with it.”

“I thought after so many years it would go away. I dont know why I thought that. Then I thought that maybe I could make up for it and I reckon that's what I have tried to do.”

“We dedicate ourselves anew daily.”

For fans of

The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck; Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy; Faulkner; A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor; etc.

My Cormac Playlist, as a Treat