"No Country"- I-2- The time.

The novel was published in 2005. Why do you think the story is set in 1980 as opposed to, say, 2004?

The story takes place in 1980. In the coin-flip scene at the filling station Chigurh tells the proprietor that it is a 1958 coin and has taken 22 years to reach him. Also, as a WW2 vet, Bell could not be a functioning sheriff when the book is published in 2005.

True, Kenneth...


This posting makes you the first person to start the "No Country" discussion!

Yes, it took me awhile to figure out that it was in the 80's. The author never tells you the date. Like Kenneth mentioned, you have to do it yourself. I missed the coin flip date but there are others. It was actually starting to bug me.

I think the WWII, Viet Nam, todays killer was neccesary for the larger "cosmic" storyline. An that is, at least to me, the real story line.
I can write that but I am not sure I grasp it completely.

Yes, the plot needed the timelines you've mentioned, and also it had to be the Texas border, pre-fence.

Wouldn't the fence have changed things?*

Then, another reference to history:

Ch V, p 134 (after a shooting).

"There's days I'm in favor of giving the whole damn place back to 'em, the sheriff said.
I hear you, Bell said".

I was feeling a little lost (probably from lack of interest in shootings) at that stage, and I wondered whether the first sheriff wouldn't be Mexican by any chance, and mostly I wondered who "em" was. Bandits? Mexico?

The choice of Eagle Pass as location is important I think, it's one of those cities that straddle the border between Texas and Mexico (as I've just found out from wiki).

The drug traffic and the bad guys like Chigurgh thrive on coming and going bewtween the two countries, and the allusion to giving back the place to Mexico gives us a further historical landmark: a time in the past when the tate of Texas didn't exist and there was only Mexico, so pre-1836.


* Out of curiosity: from what I read, in 2007 the fence through Eagle Pass had still not been built because of a court decision against it.
Does anybody know whether it has been built now?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15198528

When Bell talked about people with blue hair and bones in their noses near the end of the book, I thought it was written for current time.

But purple and blue hair . . . punks and rockers . . . yeah, I guess it would be eighties.

Other than that being mentioned, I think it could have taken place anywhere from 1950 through till the present time.