No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

I really wish I had read this book before I saw the movie, so that I could have been a better judge of the writing. As it was, I "saw" every scene in my head as I was reading, and the scenes came from the movie, which was powerful and (evidently) memorable. In particular, the actor who played the psychotic killer Chigurh was constantly in my mind's eye, because he so totally captured the essence conveyed in the novel of an amoral force of retribution.

The surface story is simple: Llewelyn, an amiable young welder, goes hunting and happens upon the scene of a drug deal gone wrong in the middle of the West-Texas badlands. With dead bodies everywhere, he discovers the money, over $2 million. He decides to keep it. Bad decision.

Now everyone is after Llewelyn--the drug suppliers, the drug buyers, and the conscientious Sheriff Bell, who realizes Llewelyn's danger and feels duty-bound to try to help him. The mysterious Chigurh becomes the hand of fate, dispensing "justice" as he sees it. Sheriff Bell is his opposite, as he attempts to dispense "mercy."

No Country for Old Men operates on so many levels. It is a first-rate crime thriller, in the Raymond Chandler style. It is an examination of the life-consequences of decisions. It is a meditation on aging and on changing culture. Even the title can be viewed from different perspectives. It is the first line of a poem by Yeats, in which he uses a voyage to Byzantium to symbolize a late-life quest to examine his own soul. The title can also be understood to reflect the inability of Sheriff Bell to comprehend and defeat modern evils.

After I read a Cormac McCarthy novel, I always vow to myself never to read another one. He is depressing; he is ultra-violent. But he is so good, so powerful. His novels can be read on so many levels. They stay in your mind.