No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men

by Cormac McCarthy

Knopf, 306 pp., $24.95

Cormac McCarthy's first book since the conclusion of his highly acclaimed Border Trilogy seven years ago returns to the rugged frontier of far West Texas. It's a mythical landscape whose desolate timelessness cannot, however, forestall an unrelentingly changing world. Those novels saw young, post-WWII cowboys facing the encroachment of modernity on their way of life. Roughly three decades later, in a far more sinister time, this stark, brutal tale finds a dedicated veteran lawman suddenly having to confront a country he only sensed was changing for the worst, one now bereft of the common social and ethical mores he's taken for granted his entire life. Drug trafficking has turned the land into a killing field. "This county has not had an unsolved homicide in forty-one years, now we got nine of em in one week." The aftermath of a drug deal gone bad, a local hunter's subsequent greed, and then his misguided act of compassion initially develops as a suspenseful cat-and-mouse crime novel of sorts. In the wake of a phantom psychopathic assassin who roams the countryside, the plainspoken Sheriff Bell is forced to come to terms with his own long suppressed demons. And while these two adversaries may represent polar extremes, it's not so easy to view them in absolute, black-and-white terms, particularly when one's badge of pride is the other's source of torment. Virtually absent is the splendid and intricate detail of physical locale and terrain that has so lusciously enriched McCarthy's work of the past 20 years. In its place is a far leaner prose, one more overtly dependent on conversation to propel the narrative. McCarthy has refined and mastered the laconic syntax and dry wit of a cast of characters that inhabit a similarly spare environment, albeit one with a long, blood-soaked history. It is through these increasingly lengthy verbal interactions and recollections that he conveys the crux of what is ultimately a thought-provoking mediation on the nature of fate, destiny, honor, and family ties. Whether the author's intent, one is prone at times to view this story through the resonance of a post-9/11 prism where unimaginable malevolence lurks, death rides on the toss of a coin, and actions can spawn unintended consequences. "He knew that fear of an enemy can often blind men to other hazards, not least the shape which they themselves make in the world." A world, we now know, that changes all too relentlessly.