No Country For Old Men (book)
by Cormac McCarthy
I was looking forward to seeing this movie, since people only had good things to say about it, but then I discovered that the book came first. And when that’s the case, I always read the book before I see the movie. Though I’d never read Cormac McCarthy’s work, I didn’t think I’d like it because I had the impression that his stories are all set in the Old West, which doesn’t interest me. But since I knew the movie is set more recently then that, I gave it a whirl and I’m glad I did!
To absorb all the nuances, I read this book twice — partly because it wasn’t until about halfway through that I was able to understand McCarthy’s narrative style. His use of dialogue reflects the speech patterns of that part of Texas, which is more extreme than say, a Houston accent, which I only know because I lived in that city for a year. McCarthy writes almost phonetically, so I had trouble understanding some of what was being said. For example, he’d write “kindly” when what the character actually means is “kind of.” In addition, McCarthy rarely, if ever, uses quotation marks throughout, so sometimes it was hard to know who was saying what until you got to know the characters. The second read helped a lot.
The narrative is sparse, yet includes so much detail. He makes your imagination work hard! Seeing the movie first would have ruined the aesthetic experience for me. Each chapter begins with a first-person narrative that reads almost like a journal entry, and is what the story is really about. It only took me about 2/3 of the way through the book to figure it out, though!
I’m very excited about seeing the movie — just bought the DVD. It’s bound to be as great as everyone says, considering it’s a Coen brothers film.
I would love to read that book, the movie was beyond phenomenal.
June 11, 2008 1:18 pm
I’m really looking forward to watching the movie. When we were at Borders a few weeks back we planned on buying it then, but I saw the book on the table, so of course I wanted to read it first!
I highly recommend the book, but it’s kind of rough going at first. Maybe having seen the movie first will help, but you know how scenes always get changed around and stuff. Anyway, it’s a pretty short book, which made it easier to read twice!
June 11, 2008 1:26 pm
I didn’t know there was a book. I may have to get it. Roscoe rented the movie for us, I would never have picked it in a million years, and I loved it.
June 12, 2008 6:36 pm
I know! I didn’t either ’til that day we were at Borders, about to buy the DVD! Cormac McCarthy’s supposed to be one of the “greatest living writers today” one of the newspapers said, you know, on the first few pages. I just wasn’t interested in his style until I read this.
Another movie I want to see was Atonement, which I found out was also a book first that same day at Borders! Hopefully I’ll get around to reading that soon.
Fridays are usually DVD nights, but Brian just finished reading No Country last night, so we might watch it tonight, except that we’ve been planning to go see the new Indiana Jones!
June 14, 2008 11:25 am