Cormac McCarthy – Literary Fictions

No Country for Old Men
~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp ~

Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel, No Country for Old Men, is set in Texas around 1980.

There are three principal characters in No Country for Old Men:

Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, sheriff of Terrell County, Texas. He represents the old America where people said “sir” and “ma’am” and were polite to each other. He is approaching the end of his career as a lawman. He has little patience for, or understanding of, the modern world.
Anton Chigurh, a psychopathic killer with a philosophical bent. He kills, not so much because he enjoys killing, but because he believes it is what he is supposed to do. He has no sympathy or empathy for any of his victims. In reading the book, I eventually lost track of how much many people he kills.
Llewellyn Moss is the “everyman” character. He is thirty-six years old, a decent and ordinary fellow who works as a welder, lives in a trailer and has a pretty, nineteen-year-old wife named Carla Jean.

Out in an isolated spot in the Texas desert, Llewellyn Moss inadvertently stumbles across a scene of carnage: a drug deal gone wrong. There are several vehicles and eight dead bodies. It’s apparent there has been a shootout. After Llewellyn does a little snooping, he comes across a case containing over two million dollars. What does he do? Does he alert the police? No, he takes the case home with him. He may be unsophisticated, but he’s not stupid. He knows that somebody will be coming after him to get the money back and, even if they do get the money back, they will still kill him.

It’s up to traditional Texas lawman Ed Tom Bell to solve the drug-shootout crime in the desert, since it happened in his jurisdiction. Besides eight dead bodies and some shot-up vehicles, he doesn’t have much to go on. Llewellyn Moss knows that as long as he has the two million dollars in his possession, he is in deadly peril. He sends Carla Jean to her mama in Odessa and goes on the run. He comes to realize after a while that, in with the money, is a “transponder” sending a signal of his whereabouts to a receiver. This does not bode well for him.

It’s up to murderer Anton Chigurh to locate the money and get it back, inflicting pain, death, and mayhem with his every move. He might be thought of as the physical incarnation of Satan.

No Country for Old Men is a sort of modern-day western. It might just as easily have taken place in 1880 as 1980. There’s a crime committed and then the crime’s aftermath. There’s the hunter and the hunted. There are good men and bad. There are surprising twists and turns in the plot. There is much death, much violence. Cormac McCarthy turns it all on its ear.

March 1, 2022March 1, 2022 by allen0997

The Road
~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp ~

A cataclysmic event has occurred. Planet Earth is dying and can no longer support life. Plant life is dying. Trees are toppling over, no longer able to hold themselves upright by their roots. Cities are burned to the ground. There is perpetual ash in the air. The landscape is littered with dead bodies in various stages of decay. Earth has become a living vision of hell.

This didn’t just happen yesterday or last week; it has been going on for years. Most of the people in the world have already died. The people remaining have a horrible life, trying to find enough to eat to keep themselves alive. The “good guys” have to work awfully hard to keep from being killed and eaten by the “bad guys.” The good guys refuse to stoop to eating other people. They have maintained a semblance of humanity; they “carry the fire within them.”

There are two principal characters in The Road, both unnamed: a man and a young boy, his son, about nine years old. They are referred throughout the novel as “the man” and “the boy.” They have left their home and are headed for some unnamed destination south of them. They are seeking more than safety, shelter, or food. As important as those things are, they seek something more profound. The man is driven by the desire to save the boy, his son. He believes God has given him the special task of delivering the boy to another place.

The Road is not a “doomsday thriller,” nor is it another diatribe about saving the environment. It is a simple human story about survival and the hope that there might be something on the other side of death. It is eerie, haunting, profound and memorable. Some readers might see a “God-Christ” metaphor in the “man-boy.”

I’ve read The Road by Cormac McCarthy twice, years apart, and was tremendously impressed both times. It is one the rare novels you will read in your lifetime that advances the art of fiction, that takes the reader to a place he has never been before. It makes you happy that a book can be that good.

February 16, 2022February 17, 2022 by allen0997

No Country for Old Men ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp ~

The Road ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp ~

No Country for Old Men
~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp ~

The Road
~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp ~