No Country for Old Men

小說內容 post.books.com.tw/bookpost/blog
在荒涼崎嶇、接壤墨西哥的德克薩斯州邊境、摩斯 Moss 打獵時、偶爾發現了幾部卡車、幾具屍體、一批毒品、和二百萬元美鈔。摩斯一時鬼迷心竊、把不義之財據為己有、因此引來黑幫追殺、所經之處、盡是慘案、而且不留活口。另一方面、老警長貝爾 Bell 設法阻止兇案發生、卻力有不逮。

小說裡、各個人物的描寫十分細膩、精闢。特別深刻的是殺手齊哥 Chigurth 。他心狠手辣、冷酷無情、戰無不勝、卻非常重視原則、一視同仁、不分黑白善惡、他使人想起人面對死亡時、那種無能為力、和無可奈何。

小說原名 No Country for Old Men、源自詩人葉慈的詩篇〈航向拜占庭〉第一句。綜觀全詩、這句話指的是老無所終之處。當世界變成一個我們不再認識的地方、當人心已經轉為一片尋不著良善的荒蕪、無論是年事漸高還是心境漸老、我們都必須面對無所著落的惶恐。 - -  博客來 / 達利

Excerpts 內容摘錄
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 teaching in the schools.  And they come across these forms, they’ve been filled out and sent in from around the country answering these questions.  And the biggest problems they could name was things like talking in class and running in the hallways, chewing gum, copying homework, things of that nature.  So they got one of these forms that was blank and printed up a bunch of them and sent them 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 going to hell in a handbasket people will just sort of smile and tell me I’m getting old.  That it’s one of the symptoms.  But my feeling about that is that anybody that can’t tell the difference between raping and murdering people and chewing gum has got a whole lot bigger problem than what I’ve got.  Forty years is not a long time neither.  May be the next forty of it will bring some of them out under the ether.  If it ain’t too late. – P195

I try to put things in perspective but sometimes you are just too close to it.  It’s a life’s work to see yourself for what you really are and even then you might be wrong.  And that is something I don’t want to be wrong about.  I’ve thought about why it was I wanted to be a lawman.  There was always some part of me that wanted to be in charge.  Pretty much insisted on it.  Wanted people to listen to what I had to say.  But there was a part of me too that just wanted to pull everybody back in the boat.  If I’ve tried to cultivate anything it’s been that.  I think we are all of us ill prepared for what is to come and I don’t care what shape it takes. And whatever comes my guess is that it will have small power to sustain us.  These old people I talk to, if you could of told em that there would be people on the streets of our Texas towns with green hair and bones in their noses speaking a language they couldn’t even understand, well they just flat out wouldn’t believed you.  But what if you’d of told them it was their own grandchildren? Well, all of that is signs and wonders but it don’t tell you how it got that way.  And it don’t tell you nothing about how it’s fixing to get neither.  Part of it was I always thought I could at least someway put things right and I guess I just don’t feel that way no more.  I don’t know what I do feel like. I feel like them old people I was talking about.  Which ain’t going to get better neither.  I’m being asked to stand for something that I don’t have the same belief in it I once did.  Asked to believe in something I might not hold with the way I once did.  That’s the problem.  I failed at it even when I did.  Now I’ve seen it held to the light.  Seen any number of believers fall away.  I’ve been forced to look at it again and I’ve been forced to look at myself. For better or for worse I do not know.  I don’t know what I would even advise you to throw in with me, and I never had them sorts of doubts before.  If I’m wiser in the ways of the world it comes at a price.  Pretty good price too. - - P295

It was a cold bluestery day when he walked out of the courthous for the last time.  Some men could put their arms around a crying woman but it never felt natural to him.  He walked down the steps and out the back door and go in his truck and sat there.  He couldn't name the feeling.  It was sadness but it was something else besides.  And the something else besides was that had him sitting there instead of starting the truck.  He'd felt like this before but not in a long time and when he said that, then he new what it was.  It was defeat. It was being beaten.  More bitter to him than death.  You need to get over that, he said.  Then he started the truck. - - P306 

書評 Book Review
The facility for language remains unparalleled … writing this rich should be cherished … No Country for Old Men is a severed head and shoulders over anything else written in America this year - - Independent on Sunday

No one has McCarthy’s ear for regional talk, nor eye for details of place.  The writing transforms a standard western good-guy bad-guy plot into serious literature … The book inspires discussion and reading groups will surely have vigorous responses to it … McCarthy’s oeuvre can be seen as the ongoing study of a burning American rage, and how common that rage has became - - Annie Proulx, Guardian

Where his earlier books employ an almost lingering style, No Country for Old Men races on as fast and relentlessly as the nemesis that bears down upon his characters … [an] utterly absorbing chilling tale … [Chigurh is] one of the most sinister characters in modern American fiction … McCarthy’s economy of language is stunning characters defined by a line of conversation, place made vivid within the space of sentence … [This novel] shows that fiction, at least, is country where old men can flourish. - - Herald

A compelling killer is central to Cormac McCarthy’s typically lean and stylish novel … McCarthy’s ean, man’s-manly style achieves exquisite effects - - Adam Mars-Jones, Observer

Rich prose and resonant speech … the plot, like the dialogue, travel light and makes good speed … McCarthy’s most accessible novel to date - - Sunday Telegraph

Sinewy and ruthless … an intelligent, highly literary thriller … McCarthy can use two short lines to suggest an entire world and the characters who inhabit it. - - Daily Telegraph

“Outstanding dialogue, vivid characters, a powerful sense of place.” - - Literary Review

作者簡介
麥卡錫 Cormac McCarthy 曾獲詹姆斯泰特布萊克紀念文學獎（英國歷史最悠久之文學獎）、美國國家書卷獎、美國國家書評人獎、普立茲文學獎、鵝毛筆獎等眾多獎項。他被譽為海明威、與福克納的唯一後繼者。一九六五年麥卡錫出版了第一本小說 The Orchard Keeper、其後陸續出版的有 Outer Dark、Child of God、Suttree 等，皆獲好評。

一九八五年出版的《血色子午線》Blood Meridian 為麥卡錫創作生涯的轉捩點。此書開啟了麥卡錫以美國西部為創作背景的一系列作品。一九九二年出版的邊境三部曲Border Trilogy 首卷《所有漂亮的馬》All the Pretty Horses、獲得讀者的廣泛注意、把將麥卡錫推向暢銷作家之列。

二○○六年、紐約時報將邊境三部曲列為美國近二十五年來最優秀的小說。而另一本作品 長路 The Road、大受矚目、更榮獲詹姆斯泰特布萊克紀念文學獎、普立茲小說獎、美國鵝毛筆獎、並由數十家國際媒體及歐普拉讀書俱樂部選為好書。二○○八年、由 No Country for Old Men 改編的電影《險路勿近》囊括奧斯卡四項大獎。二○○九年、獲美國筆會頒發索爾貝婁文學終生成就獎。- - 麥田出版社

Sailing to Byzantium
William Butler Yeats

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unaging intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

余光中‧翻譯:

那不是老人的國度。年輕人
在彼此的懷中；鳥在樹上、
- 那些將死的世代 - 揚著歌聲、
鮭躍於瀑、鯖相摩于海洋；
泳者、行者、飛者、整個夏季頌揚
誕生、成長、而死去的眾生。
惑於感官的音樂、全都無視
紀念永生的智慧而立的碑石。

一個老人不過是一件廢物、
一件破衣掛在木杖上、除非
靈魂拍掌而歌、愈歌愈激楚、
為了塵衣的每一片破碎；
沒有人能教歌。除了去研讀、
為靈魂的宏偉而豎的石碑；
所以我一直在海上航行、
來到這拜占庭的聖城。

哦、諸聖立在上帝的火中、
如立在有鑲金壁畫的牆上、
來吧、從聖火中、盤旋轉動、
且教我的靈魂如何歌唱。
將我的心焚化、情欲已病重、
且系在垂死的這一具皮囊、
我的心已不識自己、請將我納入、
納入永恆那精巧的藝術。

一旦蛻化後、我再也不肯
向任何物體去乞取身形、
除非希臘的金匠所製成
的那種、用薄金片和鍍金、
使欲眠的帝王保持清醒；
不然置我于金燦的樹頂；
向拜占庭的貴族和貴婦歌詠
已逝的、將逝的、未來的種種。