There's No Such Thing as Easy Money

 I haven't seen the movie, "No Country for Old Men," by Cormac McCarthy but I have a love/hate relationship with the McCarthy's writing.  I love his dialogue, well drawn characterization, and themes.  It's his stories I hate.  I just can't relate; they're just not in my frame of reference.

      For example, there are more guns and I don't mean hand guns in this story than in military arsenals.  I haven't read many Cormac McCarthy books but the few I've read, remind me of Flannery O'Conner's characters.  I guess psychopaths and sociopaths make for thrilling plots.

      "No Country for Old Men" starts with Moss coming across a drug deal gone bad.  He takes their money.  Why not?  Who's going to report it missing?  

      The drug overlords, that's who. Well, they don't report it, they track it down to hell and back.

      Moss is hunted by a psychopath.  The novel becomes a thrilling page turner here.  But the story isn't about Moss.  It's about Bell, the sheriff.  Of course, he's after the bad guys.  During the course of the chase, we learn about Bell and will empathize with him that this is no country for old men.

Carrying the Fire

 Cormac McCarthy's The Road is an end of time novel.  It is an easy read about a father and son trying to survive some sort of apocalyptic event.  Seemingly everything is burnt.  The father and son wear masks to keep out the ash.  They are traveling south hoping to get to a warm place, hopefully a better place.  The father tries to keep up his son's spirits.  He tells him that they are the good guys--the carriers of the fire.

They come across shady, bad guys, cannibals, thieves and other desperate people.  It's desolate.  The boy keeps his father humane.  The boy is the carrier of the fire.  The reader can see that the boy is the future and it will be good. 

The Cowboy

 All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy is a cowboy novel. It's fairly modern in its setting though because radios, cars, and trains are referenced. The hero, however, John Grady Cole is an anachronism. He would have been more at ease a hundred years earlier. He also would have fit in a more chivalrous era. He's a cowboy's cowboy, always doing the correct thing and damn the consequences.

John Grady and a friend leave home and travel south to Mexico. The two teenagers meet another teen, Blevins, and they become a threesome. Although, the last kid causes a tragedy. He is afraid of lightning and leaves his horse and runs off and hides. The horse runs off, too. Someone picks up the horse and when Blevins finds it, he is accused of horse stealing and shot for it.
Grady and his friend, Rawlins work as rancheros. On the ranch, Grady falls in love. But it doesn't work out. His heart is broken. The girl's father has them arrested because they were involved with the horse thief. They end up in a Mexican prison. They barely survive.

Life goes on. Doesn't it always and anyways?