“Just how dangerous is he?” Cormac McCarthy’s Hybridized Crime Fiction

Abstract In No Country for Old Men , McCarthy draws on and incorporates genres into his narrative with the effect of expanding the overall possibilities of crime fiction, pushing the boundaries of what narrative structures it can include, and testing the limitations of hybridization. By contrasting three main characters of very different character types associated with very different genres, McCarthy creates the forward energy of the narrative, a characteristic of crime fiction, while presenting a complex and nuanced set of subtexts and motifs more common to literary fiction. Each genre in the narrative offers a different view of key elements of traditional crime fiction: death, knowledge, moral values, character choice, and narrative closure. At the same time, McCarthy disrupts the expectations of those genres, even while relying on various generic elements to heighten the tensions. McCarthy borrows heavily from genre techniques and tropes to expand and intensify his narrative. Genre elements enhance the effect of crime fiction’s notable inclusion of fear, death, and point of view without disrupting the elements of literary fiction. (MP)