Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

To Live and Die in Texas

By KIT REED
Published July 17, 2005

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

By Cormac McCarthy

Random House, $24.95, 320 pp

Reviewed by KIT REED

As writers age, their characters become thoughtful. Nothing's as easy as it used to be. Time is rushing by. There are too many memories. There is, however, a payoff. For the aging writer's aging characters the long march may be hard, but it leads to a new level of understanding.

In his first novel since his widely acclaimed Border Trilogy, Cormac McCarthy explores questions of guilt and responsibility, love and moral ambiguity. Although this Texas adventure opens with young Llewelyn Moss front and center, and pits him against Chigurh, a savage, amoral young murderer, it isn't really about the adventure.

At 72, the novelist is also looking at the way memory informs us. His central character is easygoing Sheriff Bell, a seasoned old-timer. The sheriff represents the law in these parts, and the changing times make him reflective:

"I read the papers ever mornin. Mostly I suppose just to try and figure out what might be headed this way. Not that I've done all that good a job of headin it off. It keeps gettin harder."

Ordinarily, the sheriff deals with small-town dailiness: "Mrs. Downie I believe he'll come down directly. . . . Mrs. Downie I haven't seen that many dead cats in trees. . . . You call me back in a little bit, you hear?"

Called to a crime scene, Bell finds what looks like a drug transaction gone wrong in which SUVs are trashed and the killer or killers have left a trail of corpses. Bell can't know that genial Lew Moss was out hunting antelope when he stumbled onto the scene. Lew left the stash of controlled substances untouched, but on his way out through the hills he found another corpse carrying the payoff bag and took the money.

"Ugly feeling out here," Lew thinks in the wonderfully flat McCarthy style, uncluttered by quotation marks or apostrophes. "A trespasser among the dead. Dont get weird on me, he said. You aint one of them. Not yet."

Naturally, there are people looking for Lew. Some are nameless and mysteriously faceless, like film noir crooks seen only in deep shadow. Who are they? Who are they working for? Killers glide past like figures in a shooting gallery, but as corpses pile up, Chigurh breaks out of jail and takes out after Lew. Unlike the others, Chigurh is a highly visible character. "The man looked at Chigurh's eyes for the first time. Blue as lapis. At once glistening and opaque. Like wet stones."

Stopping a car in a stolen police cruiser, Chigurh makes the driver get out before he kills him. "I didn't want to get blood on the seats."

Every drug operation seems to have a Mr. Big, and this Mr. Big sends a hired gun out looking for Chigurh, who like everybody else is looking for Lew and the money.

"The man tapped his knuckles on the desk. He looked up. I'd just like to know your opinion of him. In general. The invincible Mr. Chigurh.

Nobody's invincible.

Somebody is.

Why do you say that?

Somewhere in the world is the most invincible man. Just as somewhere is the most vulnerable."

In the end, as Sheriff Bell discovers, nobody is invincible. And it isn't just villains whose lives are morally ambiguous. From Bell to Lew's girlfriend to assorted colorful walk-ons who more often than not end up dead, McCarthy's characters drive the story.

As do Bell's existential questions:

"You ain't turned infidel have you Uncle Ellis?

No. No. Nothin like that.

Do you think God knows what's happenin?

I expect he does.

You think he can stop it?

No I dont."

No plot summary will do this novel justice. There is plenty of action. Readers may need a flow chart to keep track, but the mystery is more than enough to keep any reader panting. Some of the spare, swift dialog is profound and some is wonderfully comic. And the resolution? No spoilers here. The best part of the questions the author raises is the business of looking for the answers.

- Kit Reed's novel Thinner Than Thou, winner of an A.L.A. Alex award, is available in paperback.

[Last modified July 15, 2005, 12:13:02]