Reading Order
No Country for Old Men Reading Order
No Country for Old Men (2005) by Cormac McCarthy is the most accessible of his major novels and one of the most tightly constructed American crime novels ever written — the story of Llewelyn Moss, a Vietnam veteran who finds the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong in the Texas desert and takes the two million dollars in cash from it, and of Anton Chigurh, the hitman hired to recover the money, who becomes one of the most terrifying figures in American fiction. No Country for Old Men is McCarthy's most formally conventional novel (it has chapter breaks, it uses conventional punctuation), but it is no less philosophically serious than his more extreme work. The novel's title comes from Yeats, and its real subject is Sheriff Ed Tom Bell — an aging sheriff who has policed his county for decades and who is watching a new kind of violence arrive that he cannot understand or stop. Bell's chapters are meditations in a country voice on what has changed in America, what evil is, and what it means to be unable to face what the world has become. The novel was adapted into the Coen Brothers' film in 2007, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture — one of the rare cases where an adaptation matches the source.
Where to start
No Country for Old Men — any Vintage International paperback. The most conventional starting point for McCarthy — if this is your first McCarthy, it is the right place to begin. The Coen Brothers' film is an excellent adaptation but read the novel first.
Complete No Country for Old Men Book List
- 1Buy
No Country for Old Men
Cormac McCarthy·2005·The novel — Llewelyn Moss, the drug money, Anton Chigurh's pursuit, and Sheriff Bell's meditation on evil; McCarthy's most formally accessible major novel and the cleanest statement of his philosophical concerns. - 2Buy
Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy·1985·McCarthy's greatest and most extreme novel — the essential companion; where Chigurh is McCarthy's portrait of evil in contemporary dress, the Judge in Blood Meridian is the same figure in mythological proportions; reading both reveals McCarthy's sustained meditation on violence. - 3Buy
All the Pretty Horses
Cormac McCarthy·1992·McCarthy's National Book Award-winning Border trilogy opener — the romantic counterpart; where No Country is about the end of something (Bell's America), All the Pretty Horses is about the last gasp of something (John Grady Cole's romantic dream of the Old West). - 4Buy
The Road
Cormac McCarthy·2006·McCarthy's Pulitzer-winning post-apocalyptic novel — published the year after No Country, the companion in his meditation on what fathers leave their children; Bell's regret about what he is handing on is the companion to the man's determination to carry something forward. - 5Buy
Suttree
Cormac McCarthy·1979·McCarthy's most personal novel — the companion in his literary mode; Suttree's lyrical meditation on a wasted life in Knoxville is the Southern counterpart to Bell's West Texas meditations on a life outlived by its world. - 6Buy
In Cold Blood
Truman Capote·1966·Capote's true crime classic — the predecessor in American literature about cold-blooded murderers; Perry Smith and Dick Hickock are the historical predecessors to Anton Chigurh, and Capote's examination of what made them what they are is the journalistic version of McCarthy's fictional examination. - 7Buy
The Friends of Eddie Coyle
George V. Higgins·1972·Higgins's crime classic — the companion in American crime fiction that takes criminals and violence seriously without glamorizing either; the Boston criminal world of Eddie Coyle is the Eastern version of the West Texas drug world of No Country. - 8Buy
Outer Dark
Cormac McCarthy·1968·McCarthy's second novel — the Southern Gothic predecessor; the three unnamed men who pursue Culla Holme through the novel are the early version of Chigurh — implacable, unexplained, violent — showing how long McCarthy has been meditating on the same figure.
No Country for Old Men — Frequently Asked Questions
What is No Country for Old Men about?
No Country for Old Men is told in three threads. Llewelyn Moss, a Vietnam veteran and welder living in a Texas trailer park, finds the aftermath of a drug deal massacre in the desert and takes two million dollars from it — knowing that someone will come for it. Anton Chigurh, a hitman of unusual conviction and unusual methods, is hired to recover the money. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, the aging lawman of the county, tries to protect Moss and understands that he is dealing with a kind of evil he has never encountered. The novel's outcome is not what crime fiction usually delivers: Moss is killed offscreen, Chigurh escapes, and Bell retires — unable to face what the world has become. Bell's chapters, in his own voice, are meditations on evil, age, and the America he no longer recognizes.
Who is Anton Chigurh and why is he so frightening?
Anton Chigurh is a hitman who operates according to a consistent philosophy: outcomes are determined by chance (he flips coins to decide whether to kill people), but the coin flip is fate, not chance — what is decided is decided. He uses a captive bolt pistol (a cattle stunner) as his preferred weapon. He is frightening because he is not emotional about violence — he is not cruel for pleasure, not sadistic in the conventional sense. He is simply consistent: a person who encounters him is in the coin flip, and the coin flip is final. Chigurh's philosophy is the mundane, contemporary version of Judge Holden's philosophy in Blood Meridian — both argue that violence is not personal but cosmological, an impersonal force rather than a human failing.
What is the novel's actual subject?
Despite the thriller plot, No Country for Old Men is a meditation on aging, loss, and the limits of courage. Sheriff Bell is the novel's thematic center, not Moss or Chigurh. Bell is a man who has spent his adult life as a lawman in the belief that courage, righteousness, and persistence can protect the innocent and enforce the law. The novel is about what happens when a man of that belief encounters a form of evil that his beliefs cannot address — Chigurh is beyond Bell's experience, beyond his framework, beyond his capacity to stop. Bell retires not from cowardice but from an honest recognition that he has reached the limit of what he is capable of. The title comes from Yeats's 'Sailing to Byzantium': 'That is no country for old men.'
How does the Coen Brothers' film compare to the novel?
The Coen Brothers' 2007 film is one of the rare adaptations that matches the source — it won four Academy Awards including Best Picture. The Coens were extremely faithful to McCarthy's dialogue (much of the film's dialogue is taken directly from the novel) and to the novel's structure and tone. The main difference is that the film's ending is slightly ambiguous where the novel is clear: Bell's dream at the end is in the novel described in his own voice, and the film makes it slightly more impressionistic. Readers who loved the film will find the novel gives them Bell's inner life in more depth; readers who loved the novel will find the film captures McCarthy's prose rhythms remarkably well through visual means.
What should I read after No Country for Old Men?
After No Country for Old Men, Blood Meridian is the essential companion in McCarthy's meditation on violence — larger, more extreme, but the same philosophical concerns in a different historical setting. All the Pretty Horses is the romantic counterpart. The Road is the companion in McCarthy's meditation on what fathers leave their children. For crime fiction in a similar register, In Cold Blood and George V. Higgins's The Friends of Eddie Coyle are the most important companions.
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