No Country for Old Men is a 2005 novel by Cormac McCarthy (which was turned into a kick-ass 2007 film by the Coen Brothers). A thriller of sorts, the novel follows three interweaving character arcs which all stem from a central plot event, a botched drug deal near the Texas/Mexico border. It should be noted that the 2007 film version of No Country for Old Men was very faithful to the original novel, with only some minor variations and additions. McCarthy's writing style is somewhat more accessible in this novel, as compared to The Road, with less poetic language overall and with punctuation only suffering in the dialogue portions. Rating: 90%
(Image from interstellaroverdrive.wordpress.com)
Posts
13 comments:
This may be a stupid question, but how does a novel have more or less overall prose?
It has less prose when you don't really know what prose means. What I was trying to get across, is that NCFOM is a lot more straight forward than The Road. The narration in NCFOM is not written from any of the individual character's perspectives, so it's a bit more digestible.
EDIT: Now with less poorly chosen adjectives.
I read this novel the very first night I was alone in Houston. I thought the movie was pretty damn good, but the Coen Brothers are always good.
I guess we can forgive them for Burn After Reading. That movie was fucking awful.
I wouldn't call it awful. It was weaker than a lot of their other work, but it wasn't nearly as bad as The Ladykillers. Still, a weak Coen Brothers film is still better than most!
To each his own, I guess. I thought it was a stupid, glib, and pointless waste of an ensemble cast and 2 hours of my life.
The dildo chair was the perfect symbol for the whole movie. It was a mechanistic, sterile, masturbatory and pointless, and it could've worked but it didn't.
(I'm not trying to push the point, I just thought the metaphor was apt. Diff'rent Strokes for different folks.)
(minus the misplaced indefinite article)
I like the Coen Brothers, but I didn't care for Burn After Reading either. I've also been putting off watching The Ladykillers, just because I have yet to hear anything positive about that flick.
i saw lady killer on tnt one time and it looked aweful
I think this book is important because it sorta marks the end of McCarthy's cowboy stuff (I know a guy who argues The Road is actually his last western--that the desolation of it is sort of a western taken to the extreme). McCarthy's like 78 now, so I'm waiting for his next book patiently (I hear it might be titled Chicken-and-Dead-Baby Soup for the Godless and Blasted Soul).
@Viking Andrew
I'm looking forward to whatever McCarthy publishes next, whether it be a cowboy book or not.
Post a Comment