Bibliomusings: No Country For Old Men--Cormac McCarthy

Thursday, August 7, 2008

No Country For Old Men--Cormac McCarthy

Genre: Fiction

Year Published: 2005

Pages: 309

Rating: 4.5/5

A gripping crime-scene thriller plus more, which takes us through a series of murders in the small border town of an older, dedicated sheriff trying to police in a world that has changed, where the bad guys sometimes win. Suspenseful and charged with a hope-ridden hopelessness, and peppered with bleak yet fascinating characters, this was one of my favorite reads of the year. The violence was enough to make me shudder, but I couldn't put it down--even though I knew where it was going.

Someone told me that it was impossible to say whether the book or movie was better--both were that good. I disagree. While the movie was fabulous, the book was better. McCarthy's prose is too good to overlook, and many details were left out of the movie, like the relationship between Llewellyn and the girl at the motel, and the thoughts of the killer and the victims at the moments of their deaths. I also had a hard time envisioning Woody Harrelson as Wells. But Tommy Lee Jones as Sheriff Bell was more than perfect.

I really like Cormac McCarthy.

Challenge/s: None

Book-a-week #: 30

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Great Quotes

"The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience." (Atticus, To Kill a Mockingbird; Harper Lee)

"But maybe the last part of the symphony was the music she loved the best--glad and like the greatest people in the world running and springing up in a hard, free way. Wonderful music like this was the worst hurt there could be. The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen." (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers)

"Dark of the invisible moon. The nights now only slightly less black. By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp." (The Road; Cormac McCarthy)

"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened." (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe; Douglas Adams)

"I ought not to have listened to her," he confided to me one day. "One never ought to listen to the flowers. One should simply look at them and breathe their fragrance. Mine perfumed all my planet. But I did not know how to take pleasure in all her grace. This tale of claws, which disturbed me so much, should only have filled my heart with tenderness and pity."

And he continued his confidences: "The fact is that I did not know how to understand anything! I ought to have judged by deeds and not by words. She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her... I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little strategems. Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her..." (The Little Prince; Anton de Saint-Exupery)

Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead. (Betting on the Muse; Charles Bukowski)

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business. (Tom Robbins)

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears. (The Prophet; Kahlil Gibran)

You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body. (C.S. Lewis)

"For in a swift radiance of illumination he saw a glimpse of human struggle and of valor. Of the endless fluid passage of humanity through endless time. And of those who labor and of those who--one word--love." (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers)