For the past few months, I’ve developed a fascination towards the works of Cormac McCarthy. I had heard of Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men, of course, but I didn’t truly appreciate McCarthy’s writing until I read it for myself. Some things need to be experienced to be understood, and McCarthy’s unique books are one of those things.

My copy of No Country for Old Men by the Polirom Press was translated into Romanian by Radu Pavel Gheo, who has done an excellent job. It is a story that begins in Texas, featuring three main characters who are in a chase: Sheriff Bell, who is trying to catch up to the assassin Anton Chigurh, who is, in turn, hunting down Llewelyn Moss, who is trying to make it out alive after a stealing a briefcase with 2 million dollars from drug dealers. These three men took me on a suspenseful journey across the border to Mexico. Despite never interacting with each other directly, their intertwined destinies make for a captivating novel.

No Country for Old Men is structured as such: at the beginning of each chapter there is a narration by Sheriff Bell in first person, recalling events from his past as an agent of the law, followed by the story proper in the third person.

McCarthy’s unique writing style is on full display. Simple and matter-of-fact statements are blended with some of the most beautiful turns of phrase I ever read.

My personal favourite was in the first part of the novel when Moss is precariously hiding from gangsters with only the rocks of the mountain between him and certain death, the flashlight’s beam ominously searching around him:

The spotlight kept rowing back and forth across the face of the ridge. Methodically. Bright shuttle, dark loom.

Reflectorul continuă să măture înainte și înapoi întinderea dealului. Metodic. O suveică luminoasă, un război de țesut întunecat.

If you’ve read McCarthy before, then you’ll know that no quotation marks are used when people speak, and rarely are there indicators as to who is speaking. The characterisation is so strong you immediately know who it is.

Rarely is it directly stated what characters think or feel, but you know through little details of their behaviour that McCarthy expertly describes. The best example is Moss, who puts on a tough act, cracks sarcastic jokes at others and himself, all to disguise his fear of the terrifying predicament he has put himself in. His reaction when he discovers the aftermath of the shootout at the beginning of the novel, his silent pauses as he stares at the money, his dismissive replies to his wife while literally bleeding from a gunshot wound, all paint an image of a man who has bitten off far more than he can chew, but who bravely (or stubbornly) refuses to surrender.

The most memorable character in No Country for Old Men is, no doubt, Anton Chigurh. While Moss’ sections of the story are full of humanity and even relatable, Chigurh’s scenes are always eerie. He is introduced by brutally murdering a deputy who arrested him and escaping with very little effort. All of his subsequent interactions with other people maintain this feeling that he is an unstoppable force who may end anybody’s life by the next line. Everybody who crosses paths with him is left either dead, or baffled.

Along with being highly intelligent, hyper-competent, scary and intimidating, Chigurh is weird. Even the way McCarthy writes in Chigurh’s sections is noticeably different. Short and curt sentences, few details: we have absolutely no clue what Chigurh thinks or feels. The movements of his body are clinically detailed, and his spoken words are either direct, cut-to-the-chase, or bizarrely philosophical. He calls out and even mocks his victims when they are scared of death, of the inevitable, of him, when they try to go against their fate of dying at his hands.

Last, but not least, is Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, the character that, to my surprise, intrigued me the most. Within this setting of a modern cowboy story, with charming rugged men and outlaws, Sheriff Bell should be the stand-in for The Law, for Justice which prevails despite all odds. However, he is not.

While in the story he is a very serious and dedicated officer, doing whatever he can to find Moss before Chigurh, it can be inferred from his first-person recollections at the beginning of each chapter that Bell suffers from inadequacy. His speech is insecure, repetitive, trying to understand his own emotions and the oddities he has seen. Regardless of the many years he spent working as a sheriff, the world continues to shock him and people continue to do shocking things.

Bell strikes me as a Don Quixote figure, living in a world that is not fit for him, for his role. When it is time to act as a representative of Justice, he is severely outpaced not just by criminals, but the world itself. He is often afraid and confused by what he has to witness on the job, by how people are capable of hurting each other. Not even in old age, after many years in such a line of work, is he accustomed to it. The world keeps finding new ways to disturb him. He tells himself he should do better, do his duty, put on a brave face and put himself in danger to save others. But what is somebody like Bell to do against somebody of Chigurh’s calibre?

As mentioned before, there are many small scenes that speak a thousand words. Such as when Sheriff Bell is driving to the police station and stops to pull a dead hawk off of the road so its corpse doesn’t get crushed by a car. Perhaps he feels a kinship with the hunter bird that can’t hunt anymore.

The title No Country for Old Men comes from the poem ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ by William Butler Yeats:

• That is no country for old men. The young
• In one another's arms, birds in the trees,
• —Those dying generations—at their song,
• The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
• Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
• Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
• Caught in that sensual music all neglect
• Monuments of unageing intellect.

It is a direct allusion to Sheriff Bell, who opens and ends the novel with his vulnerable thoughts of justice, humanity, good and evil, and his place within the world. There is no country for an old man like him.

These three characters, combined with McCarthy’s writing, evoke something in me that few authors can. I feel I could spend hours analysing each moment, each line. Reading No Country for Old Men feels like I am reading a painting. It feels as though I am reading about events that indeed happened, and an American mythology at the same time. I could write thousands more words, trying to articulate myself, but at the same time none are enough to properly convey what I have felt. Therefore, I recommend you read it for yourself.

I can’t write a review of No Country for Old Men without at least mentioning the 2007 movie by the Coen brothers, which is indeed an amazing adaptation. I dare say it’s the best book-to-movie adaptation out there. But I think it’s a very different experience compared to reading the original book, since some parts have been cut out for brevity and to achieve a neater, more linear narrative. Again, there is something very special about McCarthy’s writing that you rarely see, a “painting with words”, that I think everyone should experience.