• “He’s a Ghost. But He’s Out There”Borderlands Science Fiction and the Gothic in No Country for Old Men
• Micah K. Donohue (bio)

Shortly after the film No Country for Old Men (2007) premiered in theaters, the Coen brothers, along with actors Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin, appeared on the Charlie Rose show to discuss the movie.¹ Near the beginning of the interview, which aired November 16, 2007, Charlie Rose asked about the source material for the film, Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel of the same name. Joel Coen described the directors’ attraction to McCarthy’s text as due, partly, to its being “much pulpier than his other novels,” a quality they thought would lend itself to a successful adaptation. Ethan Coen expanded on his brother’s point, describing the novel as a “chase, action, story and . . . something more than that.” Literary critics have been trying to define the “something more” of McCarthy’s novel since he published what, in an ironic and transmedial full turn of the circle, began as a film script that he later rewrote in novel form (Wallach xii).

The novel has been read in formal terms as a variant of the “border ballad” (Tatum 79), and as an example of a “neo-naturalist trend” in McCarthy’s work (Gibbs 61). No Country has also been studied in terms of its transformative imitation and parodying of the Western, noir, and detective literary genres (Luce 6; Jarrett 36; and King 535). Its postmodern tendencies have been dissected (Cagle 1), as have its theological and philosophical elements (Griffis 541; Phipps 38). McCarthy’s novel has been viewed as an instantiation of the Gothic, whose sepulchral roots twist through the deserts of the American Southwest (Biancotti 465; Monk 178), and as a depiction of the post-9/11 borderlands (Hwang 347). Thematically, it has been [End Page 261] interpreted as a “late-capitalist novel” that critiques the ascendancy of neoliberalism in the borderlands (Malewitz 734), even as it portrays new, terribly violent, and “psychopathic” subjectivities that have emerged as a result of that ascension (Elmore and Elmore 169; Braune 16–17). No Country has also been analyzed as an index of “post-Vietnam malaise” (Spoden 76), an identification that links the novel— through Richard Slotkin’s study of the post-Vietnam “demoralization of the Western” (591)— to the “poetics of violence” that characterizes all of McCarthy’s works (Frye 110).

This sampling of criticism, while not exhaustive, reveals in broad strokes the interpretive patterns that have shaped scholarship on No Country. Critics describe it as a borderlands text and as a critique of transnational capitalism. They remark its propensity to borrow from and combine other genres (the Western, the Gothic, the detective story), and they underscore how the portrayal of the Vietnam War in No Country shifts metonymically into an interrogation of the many wars that have impacted the US–Mexican borderlands. In what follows, I draw on all these approaches to advance a reading of No Country that analyzes an unstudied component of McCarthy’s novel: its inclusion of elements of borderlands science fiction, an “emergent genre” that appears in “response” to the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and “US–Mexican relations, both past and contemporary” (Wells 70–71). On the one hand, I argue that reading No Country as a work of borderlands science fiction sheds new light on the novel’s engagement with history and its critique of capitalism, fusion of genres, and musings on war. On the other hand, analyzing the science-fictional nature of No Country helps to contour the aesthetic and cultural possibilities of this new form. In particular, the novel draws into focus the genre’s capacity to generate dystopian warnings about the future of the borderlands if its past of violence and bloodshed continues to determine its present.

Borderlands science fiction, writes Lysa Rivera in a seminal essay, “embeds tales of futurity in deep-seated narratives of colonial history, labor exploitation, and racial violence, all of which continue to inform contemporary economic policy and labor practices within the region” (“Future” 431). Works of borderlands [End Page 262] science fiction by authors and filmmakers such as Guillermo...

• “他是个鬼。“但他在那儿”《无国界科幻小说》和《哥特无国度老人》
• Micah K.Donohue（生物）

在电影《老男人的乡村》（2007年）在电影院首映后不久，科恩兄弟以及演员哈维尔·巴尔登和乔什·布洛林一起出现在查理·罗斯（Charlie Rose）表演中，讨论了这部电影。^1个在2007年11月16日播出的采访即将开始时，查理·罗斯（Charlie Rose）询问了该电影的原始材料，这是科马克·麦卡锡（Cormac McCarthy）2005年的同名小说。乔尔·科恩（Joel Coen）形容导演之所以对麦卡锡的著作如此着迷，部分原因是其“比他的其他小说更脏”，他们认为这种特质可以成功地进行改编。伊桑·科恩（Ethan Coen）扩展了他兄弟的观点，将小说描述为“追逐，行动，故事和故事”。。。不仅如此。” 自从麦卡锡的讽刺和中庸的转折开始发表以来，文学评论家一直试图定义麦卡锡小说的“更多内容”，起初是他后来改写成小说形式的电影剧本（Wallach xii）。

该小说被正式读作“边境民谣”的变体（塔特姆79），并作为麦卡锡作品中的“新自然主义潮流”的一个例子（吉布斯61）。尚未对任何国家进行过西方，黑色和侦探文学体裁的模仿和模仿模仿研究（Luce 6； Jarrett 36； King 535）。它的后现代倾向已经被剖析（Cagle 1），其神学和哲学元素也已被解剖（格里菲斯541；菲普斯38）。麦卡锡的小说被视为哥特式的一个实例，其坟墓根部缠绕在美国西南部的沙漠中（比安科蒂465；僧侣178），并描绘了9/11后的边疆地区（黄347）。从主题上讲，它已经是[End Page 261]被解释为批评边境地区新自由主义崛起的“晚期资本主义小说”（Malewitz 734），尽管它描绘了由于提升而出现的新的，极其暴力的和“精神病性”主观（Elmore and Elmore） 169；布劳恩16-17）。没有国家也被分析为“越南后萎靡不振”的索引（Spoden 76），通过理查德·斯洛特金（Richard Slotkin）对越南后“西方不道德化”（591）的研究，该小说将小说与“暴力诗意”体现了麦卡锡的所有作品（Frye 110）。

批评的样本虽然不详尽，但广泛地揭示了塑造“无国界”学术思想的解释模式。批评家将其描述为边疆文本和对跨国资本主义的批评。他们表示愿意从其他类型的小说中借鉴并结合其他类型的小说（西方，哥特式，侦探小说），并强调越南战争在“无国界”的描述如何通过代名词转变为对许多影响美国的战争的审讯–墨西哥边疆。接下来，我将利用所有这些方法来推动《无国界》的阅读这篇文章分析了麦卡锡小说中未曾研究的部分：它包含了边疆科幻小说的元素，一种“新兴类型”，出现在对1994年北美自由贸易协定（NAFTA）的“回应”中以及“美国与墨西哥的关系，既有过去也有过去的当代”（Wells 70-71）。一方面，我认为读《无国界》是一部边疆科幻小说，为小说对历史的参与及其对资本主义的批判，流派的融合以及对战争的沉思提供了新的视角。在另一方面，分析的科学虚构性质无国家有助于勾勒出这种新形式的美学和文化可能性。尤其是，如果小说的暴力和流血事件继续决定了它的现状，该小说将这种类型的能力聚焦于对边境地区的未来发出反乌托邦警告的能力。

莱萨·里维拉（Lysa Rivera）在一篇开创性的文章中写道，边疆科幻小说“在关于殖民历史，劳工剥削和种族暴力的深层叙述中嵌入了关于未来的故事，所有这些故事继续为该地区的当代经济政策和劳工实践提供信息”（ “未来” 431）。边疆地区的作品[完第262页]由作家和电影制片人（如吉勒莫...