Word: chigurh
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2005-2005
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...eternal laws of the genre that every fictional serial killer must have a grisly idiosyncrasy. Even Cormac McCarthy, a novelist to whose name the phrase "American master" frequently attaches itself, must bow to this rule. Thus Chigurh, the coldly philosophical fiend of No Country for Old Men (Knopf; 309 pages), McCarthy's first book in seven years, carries a signature weapon, a handheld pneumatic stun gun of the kind used on cattle in slaughterhouses. And it's not just distinctive! It baffles investigators, and it's handy for breaking locks. It's like a Swiss Army knife for psychos...
Running after Moss are that world-weary local sheriff, whose name is Bell, and the murderous Chigurh, who works for the druglords but makes it a matter of principle to whack anybody who looks at him funny, and some who don't. Chigurh isn't just testy; he's mesmerized by his power over life and death and fascinated by the vagaries of chance that spare some people and bring others within range of his little air-powered friend. "Even a nonbeliever might find it useful to model himself after God," he tells a prospective victim...
...pitilessly lighted by McCarthy, they somehow mean more than in an ordinary thriller. No Country is suffused with Modernist melancholy, a sense that our civilization is dying and all we have ahead of us are endless salt flats of moral and cultural aridity. Sheriff Bell sees people like Chigurh as avatars of things to come. "I aint sure we've seen these people before," he growls. "Their kind. I dont know what to do about em even." Bell's gloominess sometimes verges on kids-these-days curmudgeonliness, but there are moments when it feels like a genuine diagnosis...