Clik here to view.
What else? | Last scattered thoughts on Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Passenger
What else? The Passenger, Cormac McCarthy Versions of the phrase What else repeat throughout The Passenger, sometimes at the beginning of a sentence but more often than not as a two-word statement or...
View ArticleNation and ghost of nation passing in a soft chorale across that mineral...
In the evening he saddled his horse and rode out west from the house. The wind was much abated and it was very cold and the sun sat blood red and elliptic under the reefs of bloodred cloud before him....
View ArticleSelections from One-Star Amazon Reviews of Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger
[Editorial note: The following citations come from one-star Amazon reviews of Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Passenger. I think The Passenger is a brilliant, messy, baggy synthesis of much of the...
View ArticleIt makes me a participant in the universe | Barry Hannah on Cormac McCarthy’s...
Interviewer: You mention the influence of Faulkner. Who are some of the writers around at the moment who you admire and who influence you? Hannah: Cormac McCarthy. It’s not just the language, although...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The freed and missing passenger | Joy Williams on Cormac McCarthy’s latest...
At Harper’s, novelist Joy Williams has a nice long essay on Cormac McCarthy’s novels The Passenger and Stella Maris. Williams begins with a concern that I think is fundamental to reading these novels:...
View ArticleThe wolf had crossed the international boundary line at about the point where...
The wolf had crossed the international boundary line at about the point where it intersected the thirtieth minute of the one hundred and eighth meridian and she had crossed the old Nations road a mile...
View ArticleSeek some witness | A passage from Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing
The black eyes all shifted to the leader of their small clan. He sat for a long time. It was very quiet. Out on the road one of the oxen began to piss loudly. Finally he shaped his mouth and said that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Clik here to view.
Blog about some recent reading
I finished A. V. Marraccini’s We the Parasites very very early Friday morning and then sneaked in two hours of sleep before a nine a.m. alarm. We the Parasites is a discursive ekphrasis, its finest...
View ArticleThe tale of the enemy padrino | From Cormac McCarthy’s novel Cities of the Plain
Why would a man want an enemy for a padrino? For the best of reasons. Or the worst. This man of whom we speak was a dying man when his lastborn came into the world. A son. His only son. So what did he...
View ArticleAll games aspire to the condition of war | From McCarthy’s Blood Meridian
The judge smiled. Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Suttree, Cormac McCarthy’s Grand Synthesis of American Literature
In his 1992 interview with The New York Times, Cormac McCarthy said, “The ugly fact is books are made out of books. The novel depends for its life on the novels that have been written.” McCarthy’s...
View ArticleSelections from One-Star Amazon Reviews of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian
[Editorial note: The following citations come from one-star Amazon reviews Cormac McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian. I’ve preserved the reviewers’ original punctuation and spelling. More one-star Amazon...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“Books are made out of books”| Blood Meridian and Samuel Chamberlain
In his 1992 interview with The New York Times, Cormac McCarthy said, “The ugly fact is books are made out of books. The novel depends for its life on the novels that have been written.” McCarthy’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A life obscene | On Cormac McCarthy’s early novel Child of God
Overflow, 1978, Andrew Wyeth In ancient Greek drama, acts of violence or sex were “ob skena,” relegated to offstage. Thus, the horrific violence of Oedipus gouging out his eyes is not shown, but rather...
View Article“It was a lone tree burning on the desert”| Blood Meridian’s Moral Core
Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian begins as a strange, violent picaresque bildungsroman, detailing the adventures of a teenage runaway known only as “the kid.” When the Kid falls in with John Glanton’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Riff on the death of Cormac McCarthy
We were about an hour north of the border, driving a rented car from Quebec City to a hiker hostel our friends own in Maine, when I got a text from my uncle: “It seems your favorite author has died…”...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Clik here to view.
Illustration for Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses — Marshall Arisman
An illustration by Marshall Arisman (1937-1922) that accompanied a March 1992 excerpt of Cormac McCarthy’s novel All the Pretty Horses that appeared in Esquire.
View ArticleClik here to view.
Books acquired, 13 Oct. 2023
I couldn’t pass on a used copy of the second edition of Steven Weisenburger’s A Gravity’s Rainbow Companion even though it ate up most of my trade credit. I used the first edition of the Companion...
View Article