The difference between Real Wars and Internet Wars.
June 17th 2009 08:02
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.
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