 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another book review. Today's book review is a request from a user whose comment I can't find again. I've been trying to find it. I can't remember what video you commented on, so I apologize. But they asked for a Cormac McCarthy review, so we're going to do one. This is going to be a retro review. I have not read a Cormac McCarthy book in a while, but I plan to read his What Is It? The Plains trilogy pretty soon. I have a couple copies of those, paperback and hardcover. I've just been finding Cormac McCarthy Summit everywhere. But today we are talking about no country for old men, and I'm going to try not to reference the amazing film version of this. In fact, I watched the film version beforehand. But a couple things on Cormac McCarthy, if you're not familiar with him before we go into this. First off, I love this book. So the TLDR, even though you're not reading, you're watching, the TLDR for Cormac McCarthy is I absolutely love the way he writes. It is a very stripped down, simplistic, it's not simplistic. It's a deceptively simplistic way of writing. He does not use quotation marks. He does not use superfluous punctuation whatsoever. It's usually just periods and a comma here and there. He doesn't use parenthetical statements. He doesn't use m dashes. He doesn't use any of that stuff. If he does, it is super rare. I watched an interview with him and he talks about the reason why he does it. It's not to confuse people on who's talking and what's narrative and what's dialogue. It's to make it clearer to get rid of all the bits and bobs like the quotation marks. Now that can confuse some people. But for me, it actually, it works for me. It clarifies for me. And if it wasn't for the fact that taking away the quotation marks is so utterly offensive to some people and just confuses the absolute hell out of them, I would do it myself. Because when I read Cormac McCarthy, it is very, very clear who is speaking and when they are speaking. Another thing about Cormac McCarthy is he's brilliant and he is brutal. He's one of the best authors when it comes to literary brutality. There's few people who can do brutality and still have that literary flair. It tends to devolve into either disgusting gore or and I'm even talking about Stephen King here. Stephen King has a tendency to go down the disgust and the gross out side of things especially in his middle years. He would do that not so much at the beginning, not so much now. He's far more literary now. But with Cormac McCarthy and Victor Laval's like this too, they really have a way of pulling you in to the darkness and really disturbing you. There is a sense of dread throughout all of Cormac McCarthy's work, especially if you've read him before, because of that. Because you know something bad is going to happen. In this one, I do not remember a whole lot about the plot, but I do remember the villain. Anton Shagur, whatever. But let's see here. I don't know if it'll actually tell me on the back. I don't think it does. But there's a person who comes across this scene of carnage that has been a shootout and I believe he steals some money and he runs off and this hit man, Anton, I believe it's Anton. Anton Shagur shows up in this town trying to find out who took the money. And the way the story unfolds to me is actually brilliant. And I think that the ending is utterly amazing. I think one of the things that I need to also say about Cormac McCarthy is he's a very believable author. There's nothing truly, even though he's brutal, there's nothing truly over the top about his stuff. When you read his stuff, even his post-apocalyptic fiction like The Road or Blood Meridian or The Red in the West or whatever it's called, I can't remember what the other title for it is. But The Evening Redness in the West. Is that right? Let me know down there in the doobly-doo. I gotta find a stone to grab it. But with this one, it's especially, it's like he steals his stories direct from the headlines of the newspaper or from the 10 o'clock news. You hear about something terrible happening and you're like, wow, that's pretty horrendous, that's pretty horrific. And that's what I feel like when I'm reading a Cormac McCarthy book. As far as the story is concerned, I feel like I'm reading nonfiction. And that, to me, is impressive. It feels like a Truman Capote's in cold blood. It feels like a helter-skelter. It feels like, well, maybe it's less technical than a helter-skelter, but it feels that way. That you're reading about something that actually happened. And I think all of this comes down to the way that McCarthy writes. He writes in that stripped-down, straight-to-the-point style that you pretty much get from any good journalistic venture. Whether it be newspaper or the news or whatever. And I'm talking about good. I know we're not talking about stormy weather. The weather report guy. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about good journalism. I was thinking going back to Gore Vidal's days, even though he wasn't a journalist. I'm thinking about those kind of days. But anyways, I could talk about Cormac McCarthy all day long, but I am not going to sit here and tell you that I understand all of his themes. There are very heavy themes in this one. I was going to do Blood Meridian, but I don't completely understand that book. So I'm going to be doing more research. I'll probably reread it here eventually. It is one of my favorite books of all time, easily in my top 100, if not in my top 20. I keep wanting to put it there. But this one is a great one. If you want an in-road, if you want to experience Cormac McCarthy and maybe you don't want more of a horror or a western or post-apocalyptic or whatever, if you want a very accessible Cormac McCarthy, this is the one to go for. No country for old men. So let me know down there in the doobly-doo whether or not you have read No Country for Old Men. Let me know if you liked it, if you disliked it. The only thing I really will just ignore is people complaining about, like I said at the beginning of this video, is him not using a whole lot of punctuation. Everybody talks about that. I wanted to get that out there. It will be the last time that I discuss it myself, especially if I go back and do the Plain Strology or if I do Blood Meridian Reviews. This is the last time I'm going to mention it. I think that it works. It works for me. And if it works for me, I don't see why it doesn't work for anyone else. If you're confused by it, that's fine. I just don't see a need in complaining about it when that's pretty much the main complaint when people read this. So if you have something about the plot line, if you have something about the characters, any of that stuff, let me know down there in the doobly-doo. But until next time, I have been E, you have been U, this has been another book review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye!