Hi, Rara Avians:
Introducing myself, I'm Lawrence Coates, a lurker for the
past few months. A novelist. Nothing too noir so far, though
I have my aspirations.
I was sorry I missed the discussion of "No Country for Old
Men," that I saw alluded to several times, but maybe I can
take Jack Bludis's comment as a jumping off point on the way
the novel ends.
Seems to me that the obvious and expected ending was to have
the old sheriff prove to have the native intelligence and
perhaps moral authority missing from everyone else in the
book, and use them to bring down Chigurh. McCarthy declines
to give us the promised end. Hollywood usually delivers the
promised end.
I tend to like endings that deviate from what's expected in
some way. I'm not necessarily saying that I loved the way "No
Country for Old Men" closed, but I would be disappointed by a
film that ended in an updated version of a shootout between
the guy wearing a white hat and the guy wearing a black
hat.
If you covered this extensively already, my apologies.
Lawrence
---------Included Message----------
>Date: 31-Jul-2007 12:02:38 -0400
>From: "Jack Bludis" <
buildsnburns@yahoo.com>
>Reply-To: <
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com>
>To: <
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com>
>Subject: RARA-AVIS: Trailer *No Country for Old Men*
& reading *Red Dust*
>
>I thought some of the Cormac McCarthy fans here might
like
>to see the movie trailer for *No Country for Old
Men.*
>Looks like the same book I read, but my bet is
that
>Hollywood will change the ending--for the better, I
hope.
>
>http://www.variety.com/index.asp?
layout=VideoBC&bcpid=987390441&bclid=1021004993&bctid=987200355
>
>I am, or was, 3/4 of the the way through my third
attempt
>to like *Red Dust,* and felt that I was wasting
valuable
>reading time.
>
>If this is, as Jim Doherty said, four novellas linked
in a
>novel, the first of the four was OK, the second
sucked and
>confused the first, the third a waste of time. I
don't
>think I'll got as far as the fourth quasrter--at
least not
>for a while.
>
>Jack Bludis
>
>http://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JackBludis
>http://jackbludis.com/
>Recent Story at http://backalleywebzine.com/
>
>
>
>____________________________________________________________________________________
>Sick sense of humor? Visit Yahoo! TV's
>Comedy with an Edge to see what's on,
when.
>http://tv.yahoo.com/collections/222
>
>
---------End of Included Message----------
Lawrence Coates Associate Professor of Creative Writing
Bowling Green State University
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