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God, bloggers are hard to kill!
Much of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men is about the decay of modern society. McCarthy’s novel begins with ageing sheriff Ed Tom Bell on the verge of retirement, reminiscing about the old days and the not-so-old days, making observations on the present and his expectations and premonitions of a worse future for America than the one he is currently experiencing – one he feels he, or anyone for that matter, is incapable of dealing with.
The storyline itself is very simple: Psychotic sociopath and free-agent mercenary, Anton Chigurh, relentlessly pursues local Texan hick, Llewelyn Moss, in order to recover stolen money from a drug-exchange gone bad near the Mexican border, and kill the man who has “inconvenienced” him, and whomever it is he is working for. This bad drug deal happens in Sheriff Bell’s county.
Throughout the novel, Sheriff Bell frequently interrupts the simple storyline to make a point about this or that.
I’ve read a lot of reviews on the novel. Certain reviewers dislike Sheriff Bell’s “interruptions” or monologues, and think the novel would be better without them. I don’t . I like them. They make the novel what it is - a novel.
The novel itself is set in 1980. We know this because Chigurh places a coin on the counter of a Sheffield filling station, and refers to it by saying to the gas station owner: It’s nineteen fifty-eight. It’s been travelling twenty-two years to get here.
There’s so much in McCarthy’s novel above-and-beyond the decay of modern society. Coin tosses feature prominently. It’s as though he’s questioning: Is life decided on a coin toss? But that’s a subject for another post.
In Chapter 7 (pp 196-197), Sheriff Bell talks about how much society has degenerated in less than 40 years since WWII, and he finishes one of his many monologues by narrating the following incident:
Here a year or two back me and Loretta [Sheriff Bell’s wife] went to a conference in Corpus Christi and I got set next to this woman, she was the wife of somebody or other. And she kept talking about the right wing this and the right wing that. I aint ever sure what she meant by it. The people I know are mostly just common people. Common as dirt, as the sayin goes. I told her that and she looked at me funny. She thought I was sayin smoethin bad about em, but of course that’s a high compliment in my part of the world. She kept on, kept on. Finally told me, said: I don’t like the way this country is headed. I want my granddaughter to be able to have an abortion. And I said well mam I don’t think you got any worries about the way the country is headed. The way I see it goin I dont have much doubt but what she’ll be able to have an abortion. I’m goin to say that not only will she be able to have an abortion, she’ll be able to have you put to sleep. Which pretty much ended the conversation. – McCarthy, C. (2007) No Country For Old Men. 2nd Edition. London; Picador.
Sheriff Bell’s anecdote is omitted from the Cohen Bros film No Country For Old Men. But then, much of Sheriff Bell’s narration is excluded due to the film being an adaptation of the book, not the entire book being turned into a Thespian dramatisation of McCarthy’s novel.
It is, however, an interesting anecdote in relation to the theme of the book. The Cohen Bros film is a very faithful adaptation of the novel, but the novel contains extra bits, as novels usually do. Extra bits that don’t necessarily make the novel better than the film, but make you appreciate the film more.
I found Sheriff Bell's conversation with the woman interesting in relation to how bloggers interact. If you can call what bloggers do interacting, rather than warring, that is: It begins with the subject of a real war (WWII) turns into a conversation about abortion, then turns into a short verbal war. Then ends. Abruptly.
Just like the film does.
And just like euthenasia does. Perhaps Blogging is no information superhighway for old men?
I’m BobB. And you wish you were.
Hi, I’m BobB and I’m going to write about films. I don’t want to review films in the sense of what I write being seen as a review. I just want to write about films. What I like. What I don’t like.
And things about films that interest me. Like the books some of them are based on. And the authors of the books.
I’ve just finished reading Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men
It’s not surprising he’d write a film about old men. He’s getting old himself. As he said to the Cohen Bros in Time Magazine, “A friend of mine, who’s slightly older than me told me, ‘I don’t even buy green bananas any more.’ I’m not quite there yet, but I understood what he was saying.”
Really Long Link
I love the film. For lots of reasons. I just love the book more. So I’m going to write about the book first.
It’s very clear what the book is going to be about from the opening two pages. It’s going to explore changing morality in the modern world. It’s going to question the big questions. It’s not going to give any definitive answers. It’s just going to pose the questions and tell a story that might offer the reader some answers, but might not. But it’s going to give the reader a lot to think about. It’s the type of book I like. One that captivates me from page 1.
The book opens with the narrator, Sheriff Bell, an ageing man verging on retirement, shooting the breeze, chewing the cud. His morality is old-fashioned American bible-belt type morality. He believes in the soul and right and wrong. He believes in God and hell and Satan. He believes in the law, justice and all those things Americans have prided themselves on for centuries.
Up until a certain time, and certainly during the majority of his time as a law-enforcer, he believed even criminals had a moral compass of some sort. An unwrtitten code of ethics. But due to the experience of having a disturbing conversation with a young murderer he arrested shortly before the man was executed, Sheriff Bell suspects there is ‘some new kind’ (p3) of criminal out there now – the soulless man. And he doubts if he has the capacity or wherewithal to deal with this new breed. Or the willingness.
‘And I think a man would have to put his soul at hazard. And I won’t do that,’ he says (p4). In fact, the Sheriff makes it clear this book is going to be about an even worse type of criminal than the soulless man, when he says, ‘But he wasn’t nothing compared to what was coming down the pike.’ (p3).
So already by page 2, I wanted to know what is worse than a soulless man. It sure kept me reading.
I wondered about the title. I don’t think it’s the country or landscape itself that is not for old men. It’s the new breed of criminal taking over the countryside. The title of the book is taken from the opening line of a Yeats’ poem, Sailing to Byzantium.
So the film is based on a book which is based on a poem. And that’s the type of things I’ll be talking about in regard to film. All the things the reviewers don’t get into much because they’re busy writing reviews. I’ll try to avoid words like seminal.
I’m BobB. And you wish you were.
On June 11, 1963, Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk from Vietnam, burned himself to death at a busy intersection in downtown Saigon. He did this to bring attention to the repressive policies of the Catholic Diem regime that controlled the South Vietnamese government at the time and imposed strict religious bans on Buddhist monks and nuns, including preventing the flying of the traditional Buddhist flag.
While burning Thich Quang Duc never moved a muscle.
Malcolm Browne won a Pulitzer Prize for this photo. David Halberstam for his written account.
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Robert Doisneau was famous for his "street photography" which documented life in the suburbs of Paris.
Although this photo was posed many people came forward in later years claiming to be the subjects of the 'spontaneous' shot.
This widely reproduced photograph, which has become known as "Migrant Mother" is one of a series of photographs taken by Dorothea Lange, of Florence Owens Thompson and her children in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California. Lange was travelling around California photographing migratory farm labour for the Resettlement Administration.
Accompanying notes stated "Migrant agricultural worker's family. Seven hungry children. Mother aged 32, the father is a native Californian. Destitute in a pea pickers camp, because of the failure of the early pea crop. These people had just sold their tent in order to buy food. Most of the 2,500 people in this camp were destitute."
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Elvis Presley wrote a letter requesting a meeting with Nixon. The letter began:
First, I would like to introduce myself. I am Elvis Presley and admire you and have great respect for your office. I talked to Vice President Agnew in Palm Springs three weeks ago and expressed my concern for our country. The drug culture, the hippie elements, the SDS, Black Panthers, etc. do NOT consider me as their enemy or as they call it The Establishment. I call it America and I love it. Sir, I can and will be of any service that I can to help The Country out. I have no concern or Motives other than helping the country out.
Eddie Adams' Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of the execution of a Vietcong. The shooter was later identified as Lt. Colonel Nguyen Ngoc Loan, police chief of South Vietnam. The stories surrounding the victim in Eddie Adams' execution photo differed. Lt. Colonel Loan had said that the man had killed many South Vietnamese and even Americans. Vietnamese photographers said that he was a traitor, working for both sides - the Vietcong and the South Vietnamese police. Others said he was a small-time Vietcong who had put on a fresh shirt hoping to slip away.
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Comment by BobB
on Michael Jackson was the world's favourite paedophile.
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