No Country for Old Men

The book was originally written as a screenplay, evident in McCarthy's restrained prose allowing for action and story to take center stage. The story itself is basic, stripping down the genre conventions down to its basic tropes and its archetypes (the psychopath after the money, the old cop, and the action survivor) but playing them straight, deconstructing them by taking them to their logical extreme when placed in a real world. It depicts senseless violence and nihilism so bleak and extreme that it becomes a critique of the genre as a whole. No matter what their intentions may be, they cannot escape their fates. Anybody could die, and McCarthy finds a way to balance the macabre as to not make it gratuitous; every death means something upon analyzing the text. There is more nuance to the story than what appears on the surface; every character acts as a symbol commenting on McCarthy's worldview of society.

What really stood out to me was the way that McCarthy wrote: seldom any run-on sentences, with as little as punctuation as he can fit. It does make for slightly confusing reading as when it pertains to dialogue, but it works as for what he is going for: restraint. It imbues a sense of urgency to every sentence, as he starts incredibly late in the story - within pages of introducing Moss, he finds the money that everyone is after; Chigurh immediately is committing murder; Bell, though the slowest, finds the crime almost as soon as the plot happens. It calls for a style that enhances the urgency of the plot, no time should be made to distract with prose or descriptions of scenery. The style of minimalist sentences enhances the suspense, making use of dramatic irony and relying on only bits of information given.

However, my only complaint pertains to something outside the book: the adaptation, in which in my own personal case, I believe does it better. The movie is doggedly faithful to the book, translating seamlessly to the medium without much compromise. But what the Coens excise from the book actually serves it better, less being more. Especially true in the ending, where the book just drags that while the film wraps up as neatly as it could.

In my experience of watching the film first, I couldn't help but compare throughout my reading; I should judge it by its own merits, but my brain is a jerk like that. It only slightly lessened my enjoyment. No Country for Old Men is still a masterpiece nonetheless, brilliant in its subtle critique of the world and being a masterclass in suspense.