Cormac McCarthy novels have suddenly become hot property in the film industry.  “No Country for Old Men” grabbed best picture in the 2008 Oscars, and now a film version of the Pulitzer-prize winning novel “The Road” is set to hit screens in November, while a film version of “Blood Meridian” is scheduled for release in 2009.

Frequently called one of the best American authors, McCarthy’s first book was published in 1965; since then he’s won numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship.  However, only recently has his work achieved popular accolades, from movies to a stint on Oprah’s book club. 

I wonder what exactly caused the change – why, in the last decade, has McCarthy’s work caught public attention, not just the eye of writers, scholars, and literary aficionados?  Part of it could be the author’s known resistance to public attention; or it could be that it just took time for Hollywood to notice McCarthy’s work. 

But I’ll argue that there has been a subtle change in McCarthy’s last two books – “No Country for Old Men” and “The Road.” While his writing style and themes have remained constant, both “The Road” and “No Country for Old Men” have something many of McCarthy’s other books don’t – a character with a strong sense of decency and morals for readers to align with.  In “No Country for Old Men,” there’s Sheriff Bell; in “The Road,” there’s the father and the son.  These characters inhabit almost allegorical worlds where battles between good and evil unfold, arming themselves with principles even as the social order around them falls apart.  Many of McCarthy’s other novels (“Blood Meridian,” for example) are devoid of basically good characters, and that can be difficult for many readers.