Western
When you think of Westerns, you think of Texas, border runs, cattle drives, lassos, cowboy boots, and lots of lots of dust. Once you clear the air, you're left with a warm feeling of love for the past. Or maybe that's just all the beans you ate around the campfire.
No Country for Old Men takes the Western from the 1880s to the 1980s. Texas is still there, and so are border runs, but instead of driving cattle across the Mexican border, these people are driving drugs. Lassos have been replaced with high-powered weaponry. And the old cowboys are not happy about it.
No Country for Old Men sucks out all the romance the old dudes might still feel for the Wild Wild West. Mules and wagons and biscuits around the campfire are now a thing of the past; instead, we've got bloody shootouts at rundown desert motels? The Wild Wild old West starts to look a lot like the Mild Mild West in comparison. How depressing.
There's a kind of nostalgia in this novel for a past that can never be reclaimed, though people will keep trying to reclaim it. This love is best summed up by the following line: "This country will kill you in a heartbeat and still people love it" (9.3.106). God bless Texas.