No Country For Old Men:
A review of Cormac McCarthy's new book

(Christian Gallery News Service, July 31, 2005)  Cormac McCarthy has long been my favorite living American author because life and, more often, death was never far from sight when he wrote.

In a novel like Sutree, he displayed skill with words that invite comparison to the most highly skilled manly vocations like Matadors and Duelists and tight rope walkers where life and death matters are at hand and only the best survive.

I read everything he wrote, not because I expected we would end up together at the end, but because I knew he was gnawing to get to the marrow of the truth.  And I admired him for that.  No matter where he ended up.

And book after book--The Orchard Keeper, Child of God, Sutree, the Plains Trilogy, on and on--he marched relentlessly and ruthlessly toward some kind of final denouement that promised to make sense of, if not life, then surely death.

Then he wrote No Country For Old Men.  And he found what he was looking for.

Turns out he ended up standing right where I am standing now.  I still can't fathom what all that means.  I just know it is perhaps the most encouraging thing that has happened to me in decades.

I don't expect Cormac McCarthy will write anything else.  No Country For Old Men says what he was trying to figure out.  And unless the Lord Jesus Christ just up and grabs Cormac and puts him to preaching, his pen will likely remain silent.  So if you want to hear truth told like you've never heard it told before, go get Cormac McCarthy's latest book and find out why this is no country for old men.

UPDATE: March 29, 2007. I was wrong about McCarthy; he did write something else. A book call The Road. I'm doing everything I can think of to keep that book from being prophetic. I just read today where Oprah chose The Road as one of her book club selections. The news story also said that McCarthy is going to be interviewed on her program, maybe his third interview in 40 years. Looks like I'm not the only one who wants to keep Cormac McCarthy from being a prophet.

If you read The Road you will understand that Oprah's picking it is a very significant event that speaks volumes about the level of ominous fear of imminent catastrophe that is growing among the females in this nation. Of course, now that I've told you this news, if you don't read The Road it will speak volumes about the ostrich fear management technique that most Christians are perfecting in these presently united States of America.

If you want to do something constructive to reduce the fear factor, go to The Creator's Rights Party and join us. Otherwise prepare to boil in your own juices. Wait! That's right: there's no way to prepare for something like that just like there is no way to prepare to be burned at the stake. So that leaves the join us solution. No alternative.

Neal Horsley