esrosedotblog

OLD MEN

I finished the new Cormac McCarthy novel

No Country for Old Men.

I was disappointed.

The first part is true to his famous style. I was held by the views of the desert and the landscape. This was the glue that held all his earlier novels together and I enjoyed them. Savory reading.

Somehow this one stops dead with the color about a third of the way in.

It is very violent. There is a point to it. Not the plot point which is sort of undecided and incomplete. No one is caught. No one pays for the carnage.

Which is the reason it is not a country for old men. In this case the old man is a sheriff in Texas who watches all this shit happen and is helpless against it.

Dope wars.

And so on.

A lot of the action and talk is laid out Elmore Leonard like along the page. There is no redeeming humor either.

I liked the old man and his soliloquys.

Spotty.

Maybe the old sheriff is not the only old man who doesn't have a country anymore.

And, oh yes, it is written almost perfectly as a film scenario.