No Country For Old Men: One (Presumably Youngish) Man Speaks

Someone got ahold of an uncorrected proof of McCarthy's forthcoming No Country for Old Men and posted some of his impressions over at the Cormac McCarthy Society forums.  Here's part of what he had to say:

First off: it's a terrific read. I suspect the non-academic reader will find it the most obsessive page-turner of all of his novels so far. It's paced beautifully, builds tension to the breaking point on multiple occasions. By the time you've finished the first five pages, you'll be nervous and uneasy, and you'll be exhausted and looking for a manicure by the time you've finished it.

Next, it is as graphically violent as Blood Meridian. If I wanted to stretch the point, I might also say that it contains Judge Holden's latterday incarnation but with this caveat: a number of classical myths posit a "golden age" of whose heroes and demigods our contemporary heroes and villans are the bronze simulacrums, operating at a diminished remove. Ergo, this character is proper to an ideological age rather than to a philosophical one, as if the Judge had retired and entrusted the management of his functions to one of the gang members (or perhaps some of his eloquence to the leader of the murderous trio in Outer Dark). Double-ergo, the amelioration of violence made possible by the Clockwork Orange style choreography and vatic narrative voice of Blood Meridian is replaced by a much grittier tone here. It is, once again, pretty unnerving.

Third, if the saving grace of Blood Meridian was the beauty of its King James language, this one is saved by the common decency of one of its narrative voices (yep, it's polyphonic in the manner of Child of God, or perhaps more akin to Outer Dark) and a couple of its characters. The violence is acute but not gratuitous, and it strips away a catalogue of pretensions. There is also a lot of very very bleak humor here...though I suspect no one will be very surprised about that.

Oboy!  Sounds pretty good.

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