The Blog

that's it. i can't stand your writing, your blog, or your opinion. i can't believe you're paid to do this.

SEAN--some people have all the luck ...

Makes sense to me--the Cohens are skilled at extreme, almost-campy violence, and No Country For Old Men, the book, is a bit campy, and dryly funny. Think about it further in terms of Fargo: bleak landscape (southwest/northern plains), laconic regional humor (ditto), farm equipment used for explicit murder scenes (bolt gun/wood chipper).

WHET--it's the "humor" thing that throws me, since what's comic in mccarthy (and "laconic" hits it squarely) seems primarily indirect, a byproduct of some highly stylized diction * which is utterly unlike what the coens are about, which is specifically to yank the yuks out of you * i do think mccarthy's "funny," if that's the right word for such arcane gamesmanship, but primarily in this sense: after scraping/abrading the narrative down to zero-degrees aridity, he then starts hitting you with dialogue: "you thought THAT was desperation, you ain't seen nothin' yet!" * and of course he's right, because you ain't ... really a howler there, but it's all about formal contrasts

I think there's a bit of a gap, but NCFOM is campier than the other McCarthy I've read (just 2/3 of the Blood Meridian trilogy, admittedly), and I think the Cohens go about getting the yuks in a weird, indirect way, depending on the movie. Maybe Miller's Crossing is a better comparison?

Sean? Ditto. Squared. Cubed, even. I'm sorry the humor thing throws you, Pat. Maybe you should see the movie? Or read the book? And not use asterisks as some weird, self-important punctuation? As far as having all the luck, I think you're cursed to write this way, Mr. Graham. I don't think it's lucky to have to write in a vacuum where (usually) only the webmaster tries to engage you in converation because you're so pretentious and obtuse that the rest of us (usually) throw up our hands except for the occasional rant.

seanistheman, I think this is the second time I've responded to one of Pat's posts (maybe the third). So by "usually" do you mean "on this post"? By all means rant away, but it bugs me when people don't do their research.

Whet: Perhaps a good point. To whet (sic): If I COULD research articles by author (the search doesn't work - I search for "pat graham" and it turns up 2 articles that aren't written by pat graham), I might be able to do some research, Mr. WEBMASTER. Your search engine sucks, so don't jump on my ass for not being able to do research! I guess the inbreeding of Reader staffers responding to each other's post unfortunately clouded my views. Look at Pat G's recent post - a "public discussion" between two reader film critics. I get turned on just reading this circle jerk! Oy. I'll admit I haven't done my "research," (mainly because your blog software doesn't measure up to, oh, say, a wordpress release from 5 years ago), but I hazard to guess that you responding to even TWO of Pat G's post puts you in the top responders. So, Whet, I detract my comment, but I guess the intent of my statement still stands - it's an inbred environment therein at the Reader, best exemplifed by Pat G who writes in such an obscure manner that I feel only Reader staffers are compelled to respond except for those of us who can't understand how this becomes relevant for publication.

I will consider the comment detracted.

FWIW, I like Pat's prose, but it is unusual, particularly for blogs. Journalism + blogging generally results in a lot of dry, straighforward, untextured writing, and that makes me sad (especially since my prose is dry and untextured). I'm kind of a fuddy-duddy, though, and confess to being behind the times.

Sean, that's what Rosenbaum is around here for: being the only real film critic in these parts. Thank heavens for lucidity!

sean- Don't feel like you're the only one who thinks this way of Mr Graham. I have a master's in film and the only rebuttal I have to this guy's blogs is that he's a douche bag. NO COUNTRY, along with ZODIAC are the two best films of the year (that I've seen) Pat just can't seem to like things that are well crafted and entertaining. To him I say, lame.

still haven't read mccarthy's novel, but i'm guessing that NO COUNTRY's serial assailant pretty well replicates the judge in his earlier BLOOD MERIDIAN * which makes him not some literal embodiment of "evil," whatever that means, but more like "negative" antimatter colliding with the "positively" charged particles of our own material world, an oppositional force annihilating everything it touches--not out of "moral" selection, but as part of what it essentially is and does * and even if individual characters talk of good and evil--as in THE ROAD: e.g., "we're the good guys," though what the putative hero does hardly distinguishes him from the "bad"--that's THEIR existential handle on the world, not necessarily the author's which creates a problem for the coens, since principles of destruction don't make for tangible human characters * implicitly bardem's assassin ought to be elusive, indefinable, maybe even wraithlike: a personification rather than a person * unfortunately that's not how he plays him, which is too stolidly earthbound, concretely "of the flesh" ... but it's an adaptation, and the coens--obviously--aren't obliged to be faithful to what i'm only alleging is the author's original "vision" * but i do think the film's a little flat-footed ...