I just finished.....

No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy

If I was to ever picture one of these old cowboys with their tight jeans, flannel shirt, cowboy hat, and boots with a book in their hand, it would have to be this one. This book has Texas written all over it. No pun intended, or wait, was that a pun? Anyway, it's a story of this guy, Llewellyn, who, while out hunting something out near the Texas/Mexico border, finds a shot up car full of dead Mexicans (that's about how he states it) and while one half dead Mexican asks for water, Llewellyn grabs a suitcase full of money and runs home. The rest of the book is about how he's on the run and being chased by the local sheriff, the FBI, and some crazy guy that kills everyone in his path.

It's actually a pretty good book and it's a page turner and in between all this shooting and horse riding there's a lot of these two old sheriffs pondering the state of everything. It's kinda like those new Clint Eastwood movies.

I'm thinking of reading more of his books, but there's one thing stopping me. All of McCarthys characters have that southern sensibility with God on their side that talk about the good people of this country. But apparently the good people are all white and pretty much anyone with a bad personality trait is Mexican. In fact, they don't even have names, they're just "a Mexican". When one of the main character gets shot in a gunfight near the border, he limps across the bridge into Mexico where he asks "a Mexican" for help, and "the Mexican" stands there with a confused look on his face until the main character pulls out a wad of cash, then the "Mexican" understands as he looks at the money with "quiet reverence" or something like that. When one of the sheriffs investigates a car accident at a four way stop sign, he concludes that it was caused by a car full of "Mexicans" smoking dope and the only witness were two white boys. Of course they were just good ol' boys and... well, you get the idea, right?

Anyway, I don't mean to go off on a racial rant, but lately I've been getting really sensitive about that kind of stuff. So if you don't mind all that stuff it is a pretty good book. But I'm not sure if I want to read any more of his books cause I got pretty mad a couple of times. Though, it did get me thinking about why I'm so sensitive about my heritage and wondering why I can get mad at any kind of racist joke against Mexicans but laugh my ass off at something like this



Kinda hypocritical, eh?