As noticed by many readers, No Country for Old Men opens with a statement by Sheriff Bell that contains historically incorrect information: “I sent one boy to the gaschamber at Huntsville.” Texas has in fact never executed anyone in a gas chamber, as the death penalty was “carried out by means of the electric chair until 1964, a method later replaced by the use of a lethal injection” (Collado-Rodríguez 55). Does this “mistake” matter at all? Should readers expect the fictional world to correspond to reality?
Many academic publications have underlined McCarthy’s careful documentation for his novels, grounding them in contexts that are historically and geographically precise. Even a novel like The Road, taking readers through an indeterminate valley of ashes, gives sufficient clues at times to identify specific locations on the trail chosen by the father (Morgan 39). In his careful mapping of No Country for Old Men, McFarland makes it clear that McCarthy can be quite a stickler at times with geographical notations such as town and street names that are all correct (435), building the readers’ confidence in the verisimilitude of the conjured world of fiction (446). Of course, McFarland picks on Sheriff Bell’s eyebrow-raising opening mistake and contrasts it with the accuracy of the Ozona Judge in All the Pretty Horses, who reflects on sending a boy “to the electric chair in Huntsville in nineteen thirty-two” (292). McFarland first attributes Bell’s apparent error to “an unintentional oversight” (443) on McCarthy’s part…