No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy

"He could think of no reason for the transponder sending unit to be in the hotel. He ruled out Moss because he thought Moss was almost certainly dead. That left the police. Or some agent of the Matacumbe Petroleum Group. Who must think that he thought that they thought that he thought they were very dumb. He thought about that."

This time through I was struck by the subtlety of Chigurh's mind and the falling-away of Bell. One of the terrifying things about Chigurh is the clarity of thought, and subsequent action, he seems to demonstrate. Rarely is he tripped-up or caught off-guard. This gives him an apparent single purpose to his actions. Bell, as he admits time and again, feels overmatched by what is coming. Ellis tells him that cannot be stopped, that you cannot get back what was lost. Bell's self-described story is one of failure. As narrator he may hold that the country has changed. Ellis suggests it has not. Its always been hard on people. We are left wondering if Bell, who seemed to model himself after his grandfather, would not have been better off paying closer heed to his father's example - who we hear little about. Perhaps. There are no clear answers.

"I knew he was goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there is all that dark and all that cold and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up."

Suttree - Cormac McCarthy

Continuing my march through McCarthy's works. Suttree is surely the funniest of those I have yet read. In particular Harrogate's antics stand out - he bears similarities to Jimmy Blevins from All the Pretty Horses. Whether he is cadging change from payphones, dynamiting his way into a bank vault, or causing a small-scale prison riot, Harrogate brings a lightness and foolishness to Suttree's life which may be a tad self-important. McCarthy captures the mood of the river and the people who inhabit the margins of Knoxville. The characters come fully-formed, at once real and absurd. In this earlier work it feels like McCarthy is piloting techniques that are honed and refined in, for example, Blood Meridian and The Crossing. The book reads as episodic and its a bit unclear how each event contributes to a changing Suttree. But maybe that is the point, as a raft drifts in the river, so does Suttree drift. One of McCarthy's most enjoyable.