Sunday, 20 September 2015

No Country for Old Men – Cormac McCarthy



This was the first novel by McCarthy that I read, and I did so a few months after the movie came out. I read it on one of my trips to the US to visit my then-girlfriend-now-wife as she was studying in Pennsylvania (not at UPenn like most people think, but still at a pretty good college, by the way, and on a massive scholarship – so take that).

I remember not being impressed, and having a fierce discussion about this with a friend of a friend I was visiting in Princeton. He essentially told me I was an idiot and that No Country for Old Men was far from being one of McCarthy’s best works and that I had no right to speak cause I hadn't read any of his other books. He was partially right. He was also a massive jerk (funny how those specimen often seem to congregate at great universities).

I guess I just didn’t see much of a point in the book. The deep reflections of the sheriff are just a bit stale for me. And Chigurh is just a bit (?!?) much. On the way back from that trip I tried watching the Coen brothers’ movie. Granted I was on a plane and purists will say that’s no way to watch a movie, but I lasted until Chigurh stole the car in the first 15 minutes of the film before deciding it was better to stop it and to snooze for a while trying to prevent jet-lag (something which I fully knew you can’t really do anyway).

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