I’ve been waiting for No Country For Old Men to arrive in theaters and the nice people at Miramax saved me the wait by inviting me to an advance screening. To be honest I was thrilled to learn the Coen Brothers were adapting this story, and then even a bit surprised to read the piece in Esquire about the mix up between James Brolin and Josh, where one showed up for the first day of filming and everyone was expecting the other, you can read the piece, I think it was tongue in cheek. This is a brutal story about an unstoppable killer, someone who is to be feared, completely, by everyone. Much ink will be spilled on Javier Bardem’s performance; which is a complete masterpiece of detached acting. His voice comes across in murmurs and his actions like wet dynamite. His character is brutally efficient with every unsuspecting character that has the great misfortune to cross his path. I felt he was almost playing it like an intellectual snob, someone who isn’t impressed easily and feels vaguely superior to everyone around him, or worse, offended. A craftsman from the Michael Mann school of filmmaking (see Bardem in Collateral), in this film Bardem delivers something truly unique. From the moment we meet him with the Tommy Lee Jones voice over, there is a palpable sense of dread. Anton Chigurh is the personification of bad; he’s a killer in every sense of the word. He is evil. He’s is Cormac McCarthy’s bread and butter, No Country For Old Men is about good and evil, just like The Road, another movie coming soon to theaters from what I hear. Tommy Lee Jones does some scene stealing playing a laid back law man who lets the story come to him, he just can’t figure out why this is happening or grasp how the world is coming to a seemingly brutal end while everyone around him just sits by and watches. The opening twenty minutes of this picture are the most potently beautiful I’ve ever seen captured on film, the Coen’s take a page out of Terrence Malick’s play book and show the natural beauty of the Texas plains right down to the cactus that becomes road kill (plus capturing a sunrise and lightening). A cloud’s shadow rolls over the proceedings and from that moment on Josh Brolin’s character Llewellyn Moss is on the run from one bad decision. I reviewed this book a few years ago when it came out, and I was floored back then, but was never interested in seeing the internal monologue’s of Sheriff Bell play out any other way than on the page. Somehow this movie creates a confection that is delectable. Maybe it’s the dyed in the wool right wing nature of Sheriff Bell, his lawman politics or how crime becomes a part of society, acceptable or not. On the other hand Brolin plays Moss like a wily veteran, accelerating through luscious territory and profound moments of realization, like when he figures out he’s done something irreversibly stupid, his reaction is to run. It was thrilling to watch Bardem and Brolin go toe to toe throughout the film, and Jones find him self one step behind at every turn, which he seems to be fine with. The Coen’s do something incredible in this film, they capture the brutally savage truncated dialogue of McCarthy’s prose (he’s a stylist with a chisel as he makes something out of nothing, like Jones looking at a burning car) and blast an indelible portrait of the modern (car’s, drugs, immigration…I think the time period is the 70’s) American West while telling the age old story which could go one of two ways, stranger comes to town or man against himself. By the way, Roger Deakins will most likely win an Oscar for his cinematography, the movie is just a stunner to look at, every moment feels natural and glows from within, which is a sign of a good movie, where you never see the craftsman just the illusion. Accolades all around for this film, Jones is a reliable workhorse and Brolin is luminescent in his part, while Bardem is just pure grain alcohol magic.
This novel has two things going for it, a fantastic cover (now it’s changed to something far less interesting, the galley I got had a women collapsed on a bed in close up); I mean it’s really great, and an amazing opening line. “I have been waiting for my husband to die for six years.” It probably ranks right up there with some of the best first lines I’ve read in a long time, and by the time you realize that you’ve been hooked, it’s too late as you’ve been sucked into a story that is both mesmerizing and gruesome to witness. Occasionally you hear stories from other people, tragic stories, and you think, “well, that sucks, but it didn’t happen to me.” In this case, you say that throughout the entire story. But what would you do if your spouse fell and bumped their head and dropped into a coma for six years? Would you wait? Walk away? Or just pull the plug and get on with life? It’s a moral quandary that looms over Jarvis, (a strange name even by her own admission) who is the loving spouse of Martin, who’s been in a coma for six years since falling from a ladder in his studio while painting. Besides all of this narrative, which is abundantly overflowing with quandaries and riddles, double blinds and triple sided friends, it’s a story about the art world, which in my opinion has never ever been done right, except for Pollock, and that was a movie. In fiction it’s so easy to round out the edges of a story (take creative short cuts to poke the sore of an emotional basket case) especially when it’s about an artist, you end up smoothing things out to make them fit. When in fact the artist who’s getting this fictional treatment could never be classified by anyone no matter how you slice it. ‘Port Mungo’ is probably the best example of a story about an artist (this is fiction I’m talking about) where the author had NO IDEA what he was talking about, what it’s like to create something from nothing, everyday (sure he’s a writer, and he does that himself, but painters are a different breed). That story shrunk itself down to a dirty little secret about the Hemingway-esque painter sleeping with his daughter (sorry if you were planning on reading the book). Sure he was depicted doing all the stereotypical things; drinking, screwing and painting, but if you’re going to portray an artist, do me a favor, don’t make him handsome and sexy, as most artists are just regular people with potbellies, bad haircuts and credit problems. Which leads me to Ms. Attenberg’s portrait of a painter, it’s not great, but it’s not awful either, but it’s not supposed to be the center of the story, so it’s okay that I wanted more of Martin’s “art life”, but didn’t get it because Jarvis is such a complicated character, almost defying description and she’s the focal point of the novel, she’s not the one in the coma. She’s tough, but silly, desperate but lonely and she’s turned her husband into a Happy Meal and is pleased to spend his riches while he sleeps forever (she pretends to be guilty, but when you’re spending money, does guilt ever sit at the table and play a hand?). His art dealer, a crafty little caricature and his friends are trying to explode Martin on the world, while Jarvis contemplates her life and what a waste it’s become as she only now realizes she’s nothing without Martin, and once his shadow has receded she’s stuck without an excuse for living. So she drags herself through some humiliating affairs with married men, just so she can feel something, while Martin sits in a nursing home collecting dust. By the time the story arc’s and Martin’s time comes to a close, I felt a sickness wash over me as I watched Jarvis turn into a puddle of despair and hopelessness because she just doesn’t know what to do with out him. There are a few bones I’d like to pick, the lack of Martin’s back story, sure, I know, like I said, he’s in a coma and Jarvis is the story, and another secondary story that I didn’t think needed the space it got, but ultimately this book was a very exciting and urgent experience. Jarvis it was fun to watch you implode, get sick, lose sleep and decide how to handle the emotional wreckage of your life and marriage. All this to say; if an author can fluidly weave these themes together in under three hundred pages then Ms. Attenberg I tip my hat to you.
It’s a complete accident that I found this book. It was sent to me with some other things that will remain nameless, most of which are probably making coal by now. Right away this first novel grabs you be the short hairs and won’t let go. Here I go again, reading a first novel, excuse me, debut novel, and I’m happy to report it’s more than meets the eye and has some very, very juicy details simmering under the casual veneer which Will Lavender paints this tricky narrative. I’m always impressed with the hidden ramifications of having enjoyed Paul Auster’s early novels and novellas as his work seems to have permeated much of the literary landscape of the last ten years, either in person or impersonated by other writers. Lavender manages to write a parallel story to City of Glass (my favorite Auster story) while still operating in the realm of postmodern fiction, and on a plain similar to where you find yourself every day. Mary, the hero (more like a witness), along with Dennis whom she shares a past are both taking a logic class from a mysterious professor at a Midwestern college. His first assignment, actually his only assignment, is for them to figure out where a missing girl is by the end of the semester or she’ll die. Fairly urgent assignment I’d say. Leonard Williams is a quirky man, odd, convicted of plagiarism and is running this mystery on his students by giving out information on the details of the missing girl. Where she was the night she went missing, where her boyfriend was, why her father was watching David Letterman. The details of her last night on earth are plain as rain; it’s the details of the characters pursuing her, or the innocent bystanders that make this tale all the more interesting. The dean’s wife, Lizzy, has such a sordid and libidinous background that it’s hard to look away from her self-destructive impulses, which involve many an hour spent on her back. I enjoyed the nagging mother that Mary is constantly trying to avoid but seems inexplicably drawn to because of the safety and warmth she represents. Each section is given a time frame heading, how many weeks are left before the deadline, how long the missing girl has to live. While Mary and Dennis are chasing after the leads that Professor Williams is giving out, they’re running into red herrings, which are meant to throw you and me off the scent, and well, they give our hero’s a phony sense of security. I loved how Williams has a wife who’s not his wife, or Lizzy showing up battered, even the strangers in this story find themselves apart of the action whether you like it or not. When the missing girl shows no sign of being found Mary and Dennis turn in on the man behind the curtain and begin discovering things about themselves that they never thought possible. I suppose that the ability to work within the thriller/mystery genre is what got this novel to market, it’s certainly not the wild almost non linear structure or the self possessed characters with savage narrative arc’s and the little hints meant to be disposable but really meaning something else. Good novels like this tend to invoke the rule; everything means something, pay attention. All this means an editor with a keen eye disregarded the commercial world to take this story on. Shaye Areheart Books is to be commended for forging ahead with a book like this. Watch for something that’s mentioned once and then forgotten about, like a suicide, or, wait, I can’t spoil it. Lavender follows the postmodern rules to the letter, has his characters are on a quest; it involves much folly and keeps the big machine of higher education looming over the proceedings with shadowy flair. City of Glass is more than an assignment for Mary, it’s a book on the reading list of most writers today, and for Lavender a wonderful inspiration for a novel that makes me want to stop people in the street and tell them that they should read this book before they do anything else. Until next time, Frank Bascombe
