No Country For Old Men

Key Takeaways

Cormac McCarthy on violence, chance and moral accounting, mostly through Sheriff Bell’s asides. Kyle’s highlights are almost entirely the aphorisms, not the plot:

• Choices accumulate. “Every moment in your life is a turning and every one a choosing. Somewhere you made a choice. All followed to this. The accounting is scrupulous.” Paired with: “you think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday dont count. But yesterday is all that does count.”
• Against the clean slate. “It’s not about knowin where you are. It’s about thinkin you got there without takin anything with you. Your notions about startin over” — McCarthy’s rejection of reinvention-without-inheritance.
• Governing. “It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people cant be governed at all.”
• Self-knowledge. “It’s a life’s work to see yourself for what you really are and even then you might be wrong.” And the enviable state: “nothin to set a man’s mind at ease like wakin up in the morning and not havin to decide who you were.”
• Gratitude’s asymmetry. “People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they dont deserve but they seldom mention the good.”
• Luck. “You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”
• Aging. “One of the things you realize about gettin older is that not everbody is goin to get older with you.”

Connections

Books: All The Pretty Horses · The Road — same author, and Kyle read all three. Crime & Punishment on moral accounting.

Concepts: Human Nature · Decision Making — “the accounting is scrupulous” is a determinism argument worth keeping next to the behavioural-economics books.

People: Cormac McCarthy.

• All The Pretty Horses · Child of God · The Road · Blood Meridian — other Cormac McCarthy novels in Kyle’s library; together they represent his sustained engagement with McCarthy’s work, which spans the border trilogy through the post-apocalyptic.

Highlights

• “They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. I dont know what them eyes was the windows to and I guess I’d as soon not know. But there is another view of the world out there and other eyes to see it and that’s where this is goin.”
• “Somewhere out there is a true and living prophet of destruction and I dont want to confront him.”
• “His whole life was sitting there in front of him. Day after day from dawn till dark until he was dead. All of it cooked down into forty pounds of paper in a satchel.”
• “Anything can be an instrument, Chigurh said. Small things. Things you wouldnt even notice. They pass from hand to hand. People dont pay attention. And then one day there’s an accounting. And after that nothing is the same. Well, you say. It’s just a coin. For instance. Nothing special there. What could that be an instrument of? You see the problem. To separate the act from the thing. As if the parts of some moment in history might be interchangeable with the parts of some other moment. How could that be? Well, it’s just a coin. Yes. That’s true. Is it?”
• “It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people cant be governed at all. Or if they could I never heard of it.”
• “People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they dont deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things. I dont recall that I ever give the good Lord all that much cause to smile on me. But he did.”
• “Nineteen is old enough to know that if you have got somethin that means the world to you it’s all that more likely it’ll get took away.”
• “The sheriff shook his head. Dope, he said. Dope. They sell that shit to schoolkids. It’s worse than that. How’s that? Schoolkids buy it.”
• “I read in the papers here a while back some teachers come across a survey that was sent out back in the thirties to a number of schools around the country. Had this questionnaire about what was the problems with teachin in the schools. And they come across these forms, they’d been filled out and sent in from around the country answerin these questions. And the biggest problems they could name was things like talkin in class and runnin in the hallways. Chewin gum. Copyin homework. Things of that nature. So they got one of them forms that was blank and printed up a bunch of em and sent em back out to the same schools. Forty years later. Well, here come the answers back. Rape, arson, murder. Drugs. Suicide. So I think about that. Because a lot of the time ever when I say anything about how the world is goin to hell in a handbasket people will just sort of smile and tell me I’m gettin old.”
• “Chigurh thought it an odd oversight but he knew that fear of an enemy can often blind men to other hazards, not least the shape which they themselves make in the world.”
• “One of the things you realize about gettin older is that not everbody is goin to get older with you.”
• “I think if you were Satan and you were settin around tryin to think up somethin that would just bring the human race to its knees what you would probably come up with is narcotics. Maybe he did.”
• “It’s not about knowin where you are. It’s about thinkin you got there without takin anything with you. Your notions about startin over. Or anybody’s. You dont start over. That’s what it’s about. Ever step you take is forever. You cant make it go away. None of it. You understand what I’m sayin?”
• “You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday dont count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothin else. You might think you could run away and change your name and I dont know what all. Start over. And then one mornin you wake up and look at the ceilin and guess who’s layin there?”
• “He said there was nothin to set a man’s mind at ease like wakin up in the morning and not havin to decide who you were.”
• “Every moment in your life is a turning and every one a choosing. Somewhere you made a choice. All followed to this. The accounting is scrupulous. The shape is drawn. No line can be erased. I had no belief in your ability to move a coin to your bidding. How could you? A person’s path through the world seldom changes and even more seldom will it change abruptly. And the shape of your path was visible from the beginning.”
• “Anyway, you never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”
• “When you’re called on like that you have to make up your mind that you’ll live with the consequences. But you dont know what the consequences will be. You end up layin a lot of things at your own door that you didnt plan on.”
• “It’s a life’s work to see yourself for what you really are and even then you might be wrong.”
• “There’s two kinds of people that dont ask a lot of questions. One is too dumb to and the other dont need to.”
• “What do we think is goin to come of that money? Money that can buy whole countries. It done has. Can it buy this one? I dont think so. But it will put you in bed with people you ought not to be there with. It’s not even a law enforcement problem. I doubt that it ever was. There’s always been narcotics. But people dont just up and decide to dope theirselves for no reason. By the millions. I dont have no answer about that. In particular I dont have no answer to take heart from.”
• “You cant have a dope business without dopers. A lot of em are well dressed and holdin down goodpayin jobs too. I said: You might even know some yourself.”