Cormac McCarthy

A big problem with maintaining a blog is that you get the unintended consequence of highlighting your ignorance. I'd like to think I'm fifty-fifty on the ignorance to insight ratio but that might be overoptimistic.

Last April, I watched a great movie, No Country for Old Men. I wrote about it at length, including how much I liked the story and the dialogue.

I never once mentioned Cormac McCarthy.

Turns out McCarthy wrote the novel from which the Cohens made their movie. I realized this little nugget of trivia while in Minneapolis last week. I was bored and had some brief access to the Internet. I searched new book releases and stumbled upon the 2007 Pulitzer prize winning book, The Road. I noted the author's name, a one Cormac McCarthy, but it didn't register any meaning with me. I read the book's synopsis, a post-apocalyptic tale about a father and son's journey through a devastated landscape and I committed myself to reading it (despite the Oprah Book Club endorsement). I scanned a bit farther down, where Amazon often lists related titles, especially ones written by the author, and saw . . . you guessed it, No Country for Old Men. And All the Pretty Horses.

I was flabbergasted. Embarrassed. How the hell could I have not realized No Country had been written by a celebrated American author? The movie had good dialogue? Well yeah, Cormac McCarthy wrote it! I might as well credit Roman Polanski for directing some great dialogue and tragic themes in Macbeth, without once mentioning Bill as the source. Thankfully, I don't think I've quite hit that rock bottom. Yet.

The next day, I drug the family to Barnes & Noble and picked up The Road and No Country. I read The Road that day. The whole thing. It's that good. I'm mostly finished with No Country. Equally stunning piece of work. The latter is especially interesting because the Cohens largely kept their screenplay true to McCarthy's book. Because of this, the book and movie are equals to each other, though I have to give a slight nod to the book because it's the source material. No Country is one of those rare cases where I don't think it really matters what order you read the book or see the movie. I'm wracking my brain and I can't think of another instance where I would sanction someone to watch before they read.

I recommend you run, not walk, to your local bookstore and pick up both titles. McCarthy writes prose like a poet. You'll reread his sentences not because you didn't understand what he wrote but because he strings words together unlike anyone else on the planet. This is never more readily apparant than in The Road, which mananges a constant exchange between the uplifting and the darkness. It's storytelling like Jack London, Earnest Hemingway, or William Faulkner used to spin, only McCarthy is writing right now. For us. He's 74, but I'm claiming him as my generation's writer.

I just hope that if someone makes a movie from The Road, I remember to reference the author.