{"id":409,"date":"2008-02-19T11:59:42","date_gmt":"2008-02-19T17:59:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/index.php\/2008\/02\/19\/no-country-for-old-dudes\/"},"modified":"2008-02-19T14:22:22","modified_gmt":"2008-02-19T20:22:22","slug":"no-country-for-old-dudes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/02\/no-country-for-old-dudes\/","title":{"rendered":"No Country for Old Dudes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”
\n— Uncle Ellis, No Country for Old Men,<\/em> Cormac McCarthy<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Book report: No Country for Old Men<\/a><\/em> by Cormac McCarthy.<\/p>\n

Yes, I read the book first, finishing it a few hours before the matinee.<\/p>\n

It’s a contender for the decade’s Great American Novel (2005). NCOM deals with Good and Evil, capitalized and in a largely Protestant sense of the concepts, with McCarthy’s can’t-put-it-down narrative skills. For me, 309 pages took three days.<\/p>\n

The big thoughts with interesting characters in a suspenseful format is the main qualification. It is a very good book and made a very good movie. Neither is for the squeamish. Previously Brick<\/strong> mocked<\/a> NCOM because write-ups indicated a high-concept slasher movie, with stopping the psycho at its heart.<\/p>\n

NCOM is more than that — raising it beyond the book and movie Silence of the Lambs, which were thrilling, with developing characters, but not deep. No Country for Old Men, the novel and the movie, are not quite Westerns, an American concept. The novel and less so the movie are not quite war epics, with Vietnam and World War II shaping the three characters’ (the welder and the hit man veterans of the former, the sheriff of the latter) motivations and actions, not to mention how the three picked up key-to-the-plot survival skills.<\/p>\n

Besides Good and Evil, NCOM deals with the two kinds of people who comprise most of the population of this country, with little beyond basic education and more pluck than luck. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell tries to do right all of the time, but in terms of job he’s becoming disillusioned. He’s the Good. Llewellyn Moss scrapes by, accustomed to disaster, but half-expecting a jackpot. The resigned-to-being-a-welder finds it, $2 million in cash, dropped in a bad drug deal. Anton Chigurh seems to be the clean-up man for either the buyer or the seller. He really likes his work. -30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.” — Uncle Ellis, No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy Book report: No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy. Yes, I read the book first, finishing it a few hours before the matinee. It’s a contender for the decade’s Great American […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mr-boo-klist"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":407,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/02\/we-ran-her-off-the-road\/","url_meta":{"origin":409,"position":0},"title":"We Ran Her Off the Road","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"February 18, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"You can't have a dope business without dopers.\" -- Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy Copyright 2008 Ben S. Pollock Proposed laws about paparazzi are worse-than-useless. There are already laws on stalking, creating a public nuisance and any number of other categories that would apply\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "American Culture"","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":404,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/02\/book-em-benno\/","url_meta":{"origin":409,"position":1},"title":"Book ’em, Benno","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"February 13, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Book 'em, Danno\" is a stick-in-your-brain phrase I've no memory for this. A book is mentioned and I'll remember if I've read it, and how long ago, and whether it was paper or audio, as I also \"read\" about 1 1\/2 books a month on CD while commuting. (There's no\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mr. Boo Klist"","block_context":{"text":"Mr. Boo Klist","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/mr-boo-klist\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":417,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/04\/judge-date-by-her-cover\/","url_meta":{"origin":409,"position":2},"title":"Judge Date by Her Cover","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"April 7, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Here are three articles claiming with scant evidence that women are fiction and men non-fiction. The earliest comes from the March 24, 2008, edition of The New Yorker, which started out as possibly a look at where the two literatures overlap in either memoir or false memoir. But near the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":556,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/08\/duma-me\/","url_meta":{"origin":409,"position":3},"title":"Duma Me","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"August 4, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Book report: Duma Key by Stephen King I can be a snob sometimes: I enjoyed most movies based on Stephen King novels but read nothing of his until seeing a short story or two early this decade in The New Yorker. The plan's not to catch up on everything he\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mr. Boo Klist"","block_context":{"text":"Mr. Boo Klist","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/mr-boo-klist\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3502,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2012\/02\/whodve-thunks\/","url_meta":{"origin":409,"position":4},"title":"Who’d’ve-Thunks","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"February 13, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2012 Ben S. Pollock I knew what to expect of The Artist, a \"silent\" film, meaning no talking, though it did have sound effects and music (and beforehand, ironically, the loudest-volume trailers since those running with Avatar). Still, the teenage box office cashier warned My Beloved and me, while\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "American Culture"","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":405,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/02\/eat-cancer-in-our-lifetime\/","url_meta":{"origin":409,"position":5},"title":"Eat Cancer in Our Lifetime","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"February 15, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2008 Ben S. Pollock One of the outcomes of a Democratic presidential victory come November likely will be national health care sooner not later. And one of the outcomes of national health care will be a sudden and welcome drop in pretentious fundraisers. Nearly nine years ago I wrote\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "American Culture"","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}