Well, that's enough of that.
Just got done reading "No Country for Old Men."
I think there's a lot of pontificating going on with the book. I don't know if it's the case with the McCarthy's other books. It wasn't unpleasant, although at times exhausting. Every piece of dialogue or bit of internal monologue made me think that I was being told something. There was something I was supposed to be thinking about.
Every single anecdote made me wonder how it tied to the central theme.
That's not a bad thing I don't think. I guess I'm not used to thinking this hard about a book. It was like half the book was a philosophy book a la Socrates or Plato and the other half was a suspense thriller novel about a group of men in pursuit of a bag of money.
What was the book about really though?
I thought perhaps it was about ownership and the subversion of greed but now I think it's a lot of death and (obviously) aging and about how much of your life is up to fate and how much of it is up to you and your choices.
Anton Chigurh has got to be one of the most fascinating villains I've read in a long time. I thought so when I saw the film but on the page he's even more so. There is something relentless about him. He lives his life with the kind of rigidity and conviction no other man in the book has. Although perhaps it's implied that the women do? Chigurh is the physical human representation of fate and of death itself. Death is black and white and it does not make exceptions for anyone. And every person in the book spends a certain amount of time running from death, treating with death, and ultimately realizing there is no way to escape it.
But if Chigurh represents inevitability then maybe Sheriff Bell represents choice. And how sometimes choice is helpless in the face of inevitability.
I don't think I like the implication of the book which is that all our choices were fated, that everything led up to a certain point. That at some point we just sit in a room waiting for the choices we made in the whole of our lives to catch up to us and come to a verdict on how our lives should end. If we didn't do "A" then "B" wouldn't have happened. But there's no point in thinking about that because "A" was the choice you made and now you'll spend your life facing the consequences of those actions.
There is a sense in the book that men have a greater difficulty accepting these consequences then women do. The men in the book spend its entire span raging against fate, against Chigurh, against defeat or inevitability or both. The women endure. They live. They continue with their lives unaffected until the day comes when it's time to accept whatever deal they're dealt. Then they have their tears and make their pleas and they take what they're given.
Is either better?
I can't decide if McCarthy implies strength one way or another for how to deal with these kinds of things. Do you just ignore it until it happens? Going about your life like it isn't pre-determined? Or do you continue to fight against it in hopes that one day your fate will change? It seems that the only difference is that one expels more energy and robs you of your enjoyment of life up to whatever point life decides to catch up with you.
There's some talk out there that the book is about consumerism but I think that misses the point of all of Bell's stories and of every encounter Chigurh has with his victims. It isn't about consumerism. It's about choice. Llewelyn's choice to take that money. Sheriff Bell's choices during the war. And what war was that anyway? WWII? Korea? It wasn't 'Nam. It's about fate and destiny and whether or not that's a thing.
The use of Chigurh would suggest McCarthy believes in inevitability but like this characters he doesn't want to. He wants to think he can avoid fate and change fate and be his own man despite his choices. It's like he's trying to talk himself out of something, or through something.
I'm not entirely clear on where McCarthy wants me to stand on the issue and where I stand myself. When I read books like this it's clear the author is trying to tell you something about their world views and how they see their life, what they think about life, what the world means to them. So then you read that and you think about whether or not you agree, and if you agree how much of it you agree with. So that's something I'll have to sleep on.
I think there's a lot of pontificating going on with the book. I don't know if it's the case with the McCarthy's other books. It wasn't unpleasant, although at times exhausting. Every piece of dialogue or bit of internal monologue made me think that I was being told something. There was something I was supposed to be thinking about.
Every single anecdote made me wonder how it tied to the central theme.
That's not a bad thing I don't think. I guess I'm not used to thinking this hard about a book. It was like half the book was a philosophy book a la Socrates or Plato and the other half was a suspense thriller novel about a group of men in pursuit of a bag of money.
What was the book about really though?
I thought perhaps it was about ownership and the subversion of greed but now I think it's a lot of death and (obviously) aging and about how much of your life is up to fate and how much of it is up to you and your choices.
Anton Chigurh has got to be one of the most fascinating villains I've read in a long time. I thought so when I saw the film but on the page he's even more so. There is something relentless about him. He lives his life with the kind of rigidity and conviction no other man in the book has. Although perhaps it's implied that the women do? Chigurh is the physical human representation of fate and of death itself. Death is black and white and it does not make exceptions for anyone. And every person in the book spends a certain amount of time running from death, treating with death, and ultimately realizing there is no way to escape it.
But if Chigurh represents inevitability then maybe Sheriff Bell represents choice. And how sometimes choice is helpless in the face of inevitability.
I don't think I like the implication of the book which is that all our choices were fated, that everything led up to a certain point. That at some point we just sit in a room waiting for the choices we made in the whole of our lives to catch up to us and come to a verdict on how our lives should end. If we didn't do "A" then "B" wouldn't have happened. But there's no point in thinking about that because "A" was the choice you made and now you'll spend your life facing the consequences of those actions.
There is a sense in the book that men have a greater difficulty accepting these consequences then women do. The men in the book spend its entire span raging against fate, against Chigurh, against defeat or inevitability or both. The women endure. They live. They continue with their lives unaffected until the day comes when it's time to accept whatever deal they're dealt. Then they have their tears and make their pleas and they take what they're given.
Is either better?
I can't decide if McCarthy implies strength one way or another for how to deal with these kinds of things. Do you just ignore it until it happens? Going about your life like it isn't pre-determined? Or do you continue to fight against it in hopes that one day your fate will change? It seems that the only difference is that one expels more energy and robs you of your enjoyment of life up to whatever point life decides to catch up with you.
There's some talk out there that the book is about consumerism but I think that misses the point of all of Bell's stories and of every encounter Chigurh has with his victims. It isn't about consumerism. It's about choice. Llewelyn's choice to take that money. Sheriff Bell's choices during the war. And what war was that anyway? WWII? Korea? It wasn't 'Nam. It's about fate and destiny and whether or not that's a thing.
The use of Chigurh would suggest McCarthy believes in inevitability but like this characters he doesn't want to. He wants to think he can avoid fate and change fate and be his own man despite his choices. It's like he's trying to talk himself out of something, or through something.
I'm not entirely clear on where McCarthy wants me to stand on the issue and where I stand myself. When I read books like this it's clear the author is trying to tell you something about their world views and how they see their life, what they think about life, what the world means to them. So then you read that and you think about whether or not you agree, and if you agree how much of it you agree with. So that's something I'll have to sleep on.