Upon Beginning No Country For Old Men

Well, I'm not too far in, only 37 pages, but I started No Country For Old Men and it's held my attention so far. It's very fast paced. Cormac McCarthy, the author, has a unique style that is almost like Mark Twain's, except not really. Now that I think about it, the only similarity is their heavy use of local color and language. I suppose that's a quasi-accurate comparison.

            The novel starts out with a first person narrative written in italics, like a journal. I picture it as like the opening narration in the movie, where someone with a deep, gravelly voice is giving an ominous foreshadowing of trouble to come. “Somewhere out there is a true and living prophet of destruction and I don’t want to confront him. I know he’s real and I have seen his work.” That was the section that stuck out to me. I had no idea what he was talking about, or who he is, but it made me want to read on and find out.

            After the first person narrative, the novel switches out of italic font and becomes a third person narration of an action scene involving a man named Chigurh. In the second paragraph, McCarthy uses the word Yessir three times. That immediately caught my attention. Generally I don’t really go for that sort of thing, bad grammar and all, but I read on and realized that it was just the author’s accurate portrayal of local language on the Texas-Mexico border. After the first 7 pages, Chigurh disappears. I’m only on page 37 now, but he hasn’t come up again after page 7. So I have to keep that passage in my head so I can connect the stories when the time comes.

            The main character is introduced on page 8, Llewellyn Moss. While hunting in the mountains, he somehow stumbles onto what appears to be a busted drug deal. There are three pickup trucks surrounded by dead men, and there are bags of powder in the backs of the trucks. There is also a case in one of the trucks. The case contains $2.4 million dollars. Llewellyn is all alone, and realizes the implications of something of this caliber, but takes the case anyway. He acts like nothing happened when he gets home to his trailer, then goes back out that night and trouble breaks loose. I’m not sure why he went back out to the site, but he did. Perhaps he went to return the money. But that didn’t happen. Regardless, it’s a fast, exciting read so far.