Korean Job Discussion Forums

[gypsyfish]

I just finished No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy's most recent novel.

I tried to read All the Pretty Horses, several times, but could not slog through it. I just didn't get the story. I didn't like the run-on sentences and didn't find the dialog to be especially real. The fact that he didn't use punctuation (apostrophes and, especially, quotation marks) made it very hard to read. I felt like a clod because the book was well reviewed and a friend, whose opinion I value, raved about the it. I wanted to give him another try so I got NCFOM.

I was able to finish it and I thought that the dialog was well captured, though most of the characters sounded the same. It seemed like everyone used the word kindly instead of kind of, and, while that may be southwest Texas dialect, I doubt everyone would say it.

He still had run-on sentences (actually short sentences that he connected with and) which was annoying and redundant at times. I suspect that he did this to show the deliberateness of the action, but it reminded me of the way some of my ESL students write. As did the sentence fragments. Sometimes fragments are appropriate and effective, but often - not always - his seemed like he just remembered something, but going back and putting them in the previous sentence was too much trouble.

Another problem I had was when he killed off a main character 'off camera'. The character deserved a death scene, and the reader, after having gone through a lot (and maybe bonding) with him, deserved to see it. Maybe he did it that way to build suspense, but it wasn't that long before we found out who was killed.

And he still doesn't use punctuation marks. Maybe I'm thick, but, at times, it was hard to tell who was speaking. It seems like an affectation, at best; laziness, at worst. Or maybe, the other way 'round, I don't know.

I didn't so much write this as a review, as I did because I want to see what others think and to see if fans can explain what I don't see. I have read some of the reviews on amazon.com and most rave about the book, but don't really say why. That's what I'm looking for what's so great about McCarthy.

Don't get me wrong. There were some well written parts of the book. The two main charcters were interesting, though there were times it was hard to tell when the sheriff was talking because he sounded like so many other characters. Because several characters had four letter names, it took a while to sort them out. I'd like to have seen more of teh sheriff's wife, too.

After I finished NCFOM, I read the first chapter of James Lee Burke's newest book, Crusader's Cross, and felt that he was the master writer and McCarthy wasn't. It may be comparing apples and oranges (not necessarily - they're both crime novels), but Burke writes clearly, elegantly, and lyrically. It captures your interest and compels you to keep reading. And he uses puctuation marks.