The HugeManatees Reader

Review by Jed Geiman

Beyond the striking title and wonderful jacket (design by Carol Hayes), the element which first struck my interest in this book was its unusual protagonist, a simple man by the name of Howard Kopastosh. Howard is a Vietnam War veteran who suffers from a brain injury which has rendered him unable to speak. He lives a stoic, day-to-day existence in a large Victorian house he's inherited from his parents, along with a younger Asian woman named Laurel and two dopey 20-something guys he calls Nit and Nat.

Howard finds his life and his behaviors shifted around after a flaky ex-girlfriend (for whom he still pines) drops off her 9-yeard-old boy for him to look after. The relationship they create and the changes Howard undergoes as a result are the fodder for this fiction.

From a context that could become heart-wrenching or treacle, Dave King has crafted a subtle story that creates profoundly beautiful moments from very human situations. Given the extremity of Howard's condition, a lesser author might have taken him too far, but King manages to make him likable despite his flaws.

I've found that in the most memorable novels, there's a particular point where I realize that the author really knows what he or she is doing. It's sort of an "a-ha!" moment, where story and character bond and the novel's import or elegance is revealed. I don't want to give away where that moment occurs in this novel (for me), but it's beautiful writing that gives us the reasoning for the book's title and also gets to the heart of who Howard is and what he has lost as a result of his injury. Suffice to say, moments like that are what make reading pleasurable for me.

"The Ha-ha" is essentially a story about growing up, told from the perspective of an unusual and rewarding character. I highly recommend it.

Review by Dave Geiman

No Country for Old Men has been reviewed, not just favorably, but gushingly, by every reviewer I have read over the past month or so. For example, Michael Dirda of The Washington Post Book World called it “an imaginative oeuvre greater and deeper than any single book.” And The Sunday Times of London says, “His fiction is heroic and somber…”

No one in any review anywhere mentioned that this book might just be the literary equivalent to a Steven Seagal movie without an ending, a morality play that impolitely slaps you in the face and a none-too-subtle commentary on current society that includes such gems as the loss of the war in Vietnam being the result of not taking God into the battle with us.

Llewelyn Moss, a welder out hunting antelope near the Mexican border in west Texas, finds some shot-out vehicles, dead men, heroin and the more than $2 million in cash meant to pay for the drugs. Why both the drugs and the money are still there always remains a mystery. Llewelyn takes the money, of course, as there are no heroes in this basic story. He then reveals himself to be one of the least competent characters in any mystery novel not involving brain damage. Llewelyn is sought by an agent for the original owners of the property- a free-lance sociopath who is colorful, if not enchanting, in his killing techniques and his sense of personal morality. This character, Anton Chigurh, is in many respects the best reason to read the book.

McCarthy has been taken to task, on one notable occasion at least, for writing sentences that have color but lack meaning. Color without meaning is sometimes forgivable if it adds sufficiently to the story. In this book McCarthy has chosen a color vehicle that involves the selective absence of apostrophes in such words as "cant" and "dont," but not in "that’s" or "where’d" or "they’ll" and "it’s," an inconsistent absence which just slows down the reading. Do people who speak english (sic) improperly fail to apostrophize the words "cant" and "dont" in their heads, but apply them to it’s and that’s and where’d?

This book was never meant to be just a high plains western thriller. But a well-written novel deserves a better plot line and more resolution, even if the events are meant to embody seemingly random violence as a foil for commentary on morality. We all know by now that drug smugglers are frequently vicious, immoral people who are, or employ, sociopaths and psychopaths to carry out their bloody tasks. We also know there wouldn’t be drugs and drug dealers if there weren’t users. No new news here.

What is the new news in this book then? That there is honor in a sociopathic killer keeping the promises he makes to himself? That this fixed system of morality may have virtues lost in the rest of the country’s slide into Godlessness and disrespect? (This is the first book I  have read in more than thirty years that uses the word Mammon.) 

No Country for Old Men is worth the read for Chigurh and the atmosphere of the Texas/New Mexico border with old Mexico. Just as importantly, the book reveals that contrived plots, contrived abuse of grammatical rules and stale commentary do not make a work a masterpiece. It's already been done, over and over, by Steven Seagal.