No Country for Old Men (Response #1)

“He stood there. Listening.
In the first vehicle there was a man slumped dead over the wheel. Beyond were two more bodies lying in the gaunt yellow grass. Dried blood black on the ground. He stopped and listened. Nothing. The drone of flies” (12).

Whoa! Twelve pages in and there’s already dead people all over the place. Awesome! When I first started reading this book, I definitely had trouble getting used to McCarthy’s writing style. I wanted to get out my red pen and start fixing his mistakes. The passage above really shows how much the writer likes fragments—which are usually saved just for something one really wants to emphasize. In this case, though, as I kept reading, I realized that it really works for this type of story. “He stood there. Listening.” The major break between “there” and “listening” is exactly how I would pause if I were telling the story aloud and trying to build suspense. It also reminds me of how Moss, the character in the scene, would be feeling when he was discovering this massacre in the middle of a Texas desert. Heart racing, sweat dripping down into his eyes, the guy would have to be completely freaking out. I think the writing recreates that very well. I was just the reader, and even I could feel that sense of urgency and anxiety Moss would be feeling.

I’m also loving McCarthy’s imagery. Phrases like “slumped dead over the wheel,” “Dried blood black on the ground,” and “The drone of flies” make me feel like I’m really there with the character. While I’ve (fortunately) never been a witness to an actual dead person, I’ve seen dead other things. Blood, normally a deep beautiful red, turns into something completely different—something completely and almost unnaturally dark—when it’s somewhere it shouldn’t be, like the ground. The buzzing “drone” of the flies also adds to that feeling of, well, kind of just a feeling of eww.

I think I’m going to like this book. Like I mentioned before, it took awhile to get used to his unconventional style, and since he doesn’t really come out and say who people are, I’ve had to go back and reread several sections to make sure I’m getting it. Despite all of that, it’s a real page-turner. I had trouble setting it down!