the cambridge companion to cormac mccarthy -...

The Cambridge Companion to Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy both embodies and redefines the notion of the artist as outsider. His fiction draws on recognizable American themes and employs dense philosophical and theological subtexts, challenging readers by depicting the familiar as inscrutably foreign. The essays in this Companion offer a sophisticated yet concise introduction to McCarthy’s difficult and provocative work. The contributors, an international team of McCarthy scholars, analyze some of the bestknown and commonly taught novels – Outer Dark, Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, and The Road – while providing detailed treatments of McCarthy’s work in cinema, including the many adaptations of his novels to film. Designed for scholars, teachers, and general readers, and complete with a chronology and bibliography for further reading, this Companion is an essential reference for anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of one of America’s most celebrated contemporary novelists.

steven frye is Professor of English at California State University, Bakersfield, and President of the Cormac McCarthy Society. He is the author of Understanding Cormac McCarthy and Historiography and Narrative Design in the American Romance, as well as numerous articles on Cormac McCarthy, Herman Melville, and other novelists of the American romance tradition, American naturalism, and the literature of the American west.

A complete list of books in the series is at the back of this book.

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Cambridge University Press978-1-107-01815-0 - The Cambridge Companion to Cormac McCarthyEdited by Steven FryeFrontmatterMore information

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THE CAMBriDgE

CoMPAnion To

CorMAC McCArTHy






T H E C A M B r i D g E

C o M P A n i o n T o

CorMAC McCArTHy

STEvEn FryECalifornia State University, Bakersfield

EDiTED By






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First published 2013

Printed in the United States of America

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication dataThe Cambridge companion to Cormac McCarthy / [edited by] Steven Frye,

California State University, Bakersfield.pages cm. – (Cambridge companions to literature)

includes bibliographical references and index.isbn 9781107018150 (hardback) – isbn 9781107644809 (paperback)

1. McCarthy, Cormac, 1933 – Criticism and interpretation. i. Frye, Steven, editor of compilation.

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List of Figures page ixList of Contributors xiAcknowledgments xvChronology of McCarthy’s Life and Works xvii

Introduction

1. Histories, novels, ideas: Cormac McCarthy and the Art of Philosophy 3Steven Frye

Part I Influence and Innovation

2. McCarthy’s Heroes and the Will to Truth 15Linda Woodson

3. Modernism, Postmodernism, and Language: McCarthy’s Style 27Phillip A. Snyder and Delys W. Snyder

Part II Beginnings in the American South

4. McCarthy, Tennessee, and the Southern gothic 41Lydia R. Cooper

5. McCarthy and the Uses of Philosophy in the Tennessee novels 54Brian Evenson

Part III The Move Westward

6. History and the Problem of Evil in McCarthy’s Western novels 67Timothy Parrish

7. The Border Trilogy, The Road, and the Cold War 79Pierre Lagayette

ConTEnTS






Contents

viii

Part IV The Novels

8. Outer Dark and romantic naturalism 95James R. Giles

9. Blood Meridian and the Poetics of violence 107Steven Frye

10. All the Pretty Horses, the Border, and Ethnic Encounter 121Nicholas Monk

11. The Quest for god in The Road 133Allen Josephs

Part V Themes and Issues

12. McCarthy and Literary naturalism 149Eric Carl Link

13. McCarthy and Film 162Stacey Peebles

14. McCarthy’s Heroes: revisiting Masculinity 175John Dudley

Selected Bibliography 189Index 195






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9.1 Along with their fellow outlaws, Pike Bishop, Lyle gorch, and Dutch Engstrom (William Holden, Warren oates, and Ernest Borgnine) fight general Mapache’s men in the concluding scenes of The Wild Bunch (Warner Brothers, 1969). page 112

13.1 in The Gardener’s Son (PBS, 1976), robert McEvoy (Brad Dourif) trudges wearily through a doorway and into James gregg’s office, moments before the murder. 165

13.2 While in the Saltillo prison, Lacey rawlins and John grady Cole (Henry Thomas and Matt Damon, center at rear) are up against the wall with other prisoners during a dream sequence in All the Pretty Horses (Columbia Pictures, 2000). 167

13.3 Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) tries to escape the men pursuing him from the scene of a drug deal gone wrong in No Country for Old Men (Miramax and Paramount vantage, 2007). 169

13.4 White (Tommy Lee Jones) and Black (Samuel L. Jackson) are close together but still far apart in The Sunset Limited (HBo Films, 2011). 172

FigUrES






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Lydia R. Cooper is Assistant Professor of twentieth and twentyfirstcentury American and native American literature at Creighton University. Her earlier work on McCarthy appeared in a book, No More Heroes: Narrative Perspective and Morality in Cormac McCarthy. Her work on McCarthy and on other contemporary American and British writers has appeared in journals such as Studies in the Novel, Studies in American Indian Literature, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Critique, and Papers on Language and Literature.

John Dudley is Associate Professor and Chair of the English Department at the University of South Dakota. He is the author of A Man’s Game: Masculinity and the Anti-Aesthetics of American Literary Naturalism. He is also the author of numerous articles on American literary naturalism and the literature of the American west, with a particular focus on issues of gender and ethnicity. He is currently working on a study of AfricanAmerican literature and culture between 1890 and 1928, with an emphasis on the role of music, aesthetics, and material culture in developing notions of racial identity.

Brian Evenson is Chair of the Literary Arts Department at Brown University, where he currently holds the royce Professorship of Excellence in Teaching. He is the author of eleven books of fiction, including The Open Curtain, Fugue State, and Immobility, as well as Understanding Robert Coover. He has delivered a number of papers on McCarthy and published work on him in Sacred Violence: A Reader’s Companion to Cormac McCarthy and The Cambridge Companion to American Novelists.

Steven Frye is Professor of English at California State University, Bakersfield, and President of the Cormac McCarthy Society. He is the author of Understanding Cormac McCarthy and Historiography and Narrative Design in the American Romance. He is the editor of Critical Insights: The Tales of Edgar Allan Poe and Critical Insights: The Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, as well as the associate editor of ALN: The American Literary Naturalism Newsletter. He is also the author of an essay “naturalism and religion,” published in The Oxford Handbook to

ConTriBUTorS






CONTRIBUTORS

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American Literary Naturalism, as well as numerous articles on Herman Melville, Cormac McCarthy, and other novelists of the American romance tradition, literary naturalism, and the literature of the American west.

James R. Giles is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at northern illinois University, where he taught in the Department of English from 1970 to 2007. He is the author of nine books and the coeditor of eight others, including The Spaces of Violence (2006), Violence in the Contemporary American Novel, The Naturalistic Inner-City Novel in America, and six volumes of the Dictionary of Literary Biography (all coedited with Wanda H. giles). in addition, he has published more than thirty articles or short stories in various journals. Most recently, he published essays in The Oxford Handbook of American Literary Naturalism and A Companion to Twentieth-Century United States Fiction.

Allen Josephs is University research Professor at the University of West Florida, where he has taught since 1969. He is past president of the Hemingway Society and Foundation and of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association. He is the author of eight books and numerous articles on Hemingway, Lorca, Picasso, Mailer, and Cormac McCarthy. His latest book, Ritual and Sacrifice in the Corrida: The Saga of César Rincón, has won multiple awards. Currently he is researching a book on the human fascination with the bull, as well as his second book on For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Pierre Lagayette is Emeritus Professor of American Studies at the University of ParisSorbonne, where he taught graduate seminars on the American west and contemporary American history and literature. He is also the founder and director of the Center for Western America and AsiaPacific Studies at ParisSorbonne and has been a visiting scholar at Stanford University. He is the author of The American West: Reality and Myths, Strategies of Difference in Modern Poetry: Case Studies in Poetic Composition, Major Landmarks in American History, A Short History of American Literature, Contemporary United States: A Bilingual Guide, and Executive Empire: The American Presidency from F. D. Roosevelt to G.W. Bush.

Eric Carl Link is Professor of American Literature and Chair of the Department of English at the University of Memphis. He is the author of several books, including The Vast and Terrible Drama: American Literary Naturalism in the Late Nineteenth Century, Understanding Philip K. Dick, and Neutral Ground: New Traditionalism and the American Romance Controversy (coauthored with g. r. Thompson). He is also the founder and editor of the journal ALN: The American Literary Naturalism Newsletter and the coeditor (along with Donald Pizer) of the Norton Critical Edition of The red Badge of Courage, fourth edition. He is the editor of several collections, including Taming the Bicycle: Essays, Stories, and Sketches by Mark Twain and Critical Insights: The red Badge of Courage.






CONTRIBUTORS

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Nicholas Monk is Assistant Professor of English and Curriculum Development at the University of Warwick. He is editor of Intertextual and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Cormac McCarthy, to which he contributed the introduction and an essay titled “versions of the Seeleroman: Cormac McCarthy and Leslie Silko.” other publications on McCarthy include: “‘An impulse to Action, an Undefined Want’: Modernity, Flight, and Crisis in the Border Trilogy and Blood Meridian” in Sacred Violence: A Reader’s Companion to Cormac McCarthy, vol. 2; “Career and Critical responses to Cormac McCarthy,” which is forthcoming in Literature Compass; and the entry on Cormac McCarthy in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the Gothic, also forthcoming. in 2009, he organized the international Cormac McCarthy Conference at Warwick, and he teaches the MA module Literatures of the American Southwest.

Timothy Parrish is Professor of English at Florida State University. He is the author of Walking Blues: Making Americans from Emerson to Elvis, From the Civil War to the Apocalypse: Postmodern History and American Fiction, and Ralph Ellison and the Genius of America. He is also the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Philip Roth and, most recently, The Cambridge Companion to American Novelists. He has published widely on contemporary American literature in such journals as Contemporary Literature, Modern Fiction Studies, Prospects, American Literary History, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, and Arizona Quarterly, among others.

Stacey Peebles is Assistant Professor of English and Film Studies at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, as well as vice President of the Cormac McCarthy Society and editor of The Cormac McCarthy Journal. She is the author of Welcome to the Suck: Narrating the American Soldier’s Experience in Iraq. Her research addresses the representation of violence and war in contemporary literature and film; she has published in PMLA, The Journal of Film and Video, Texas Studies in Language and Literature, and anthologies like Sacred Violence: A Reader’s Companion to Cormac McCarthy and Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, The Road. Her next book will cover McCarthy’s work in adaptations for the screen and stage.

Delys W. Snyder directs the AcrosstheCurriculum Writing Fellows Program at Brigham young University, where she teaches composition, grammar, history of the English language, and world civilization. Her interest in stylistics has led her to the study of Cormac McCarthy, and her work includes papers such as “A Discourse Analysis of Class and gender and the reigning Female in McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses” and “origins, Effects, and Frequency of McCarthy’s neologisms in Blood Meridian.”

Phillip A. Snyder is Associate Professor and Chair of the English Department at Brigham young University, where he teaches autobiography, contemporary






CONTRIBUTORS

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literature, and western studies. He recently received the university’s Karl g. Maeser Award for Excellence in Teaching. His recent publications on McCarthy include “Disappearance in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian” in Western American Literature and “Hospitality in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road” in The Cormac McCarthy Journal.

Linda Woodson is Professor of English at The University of Texas, San Antonio, where she teaches courses on the literature of Texas and the Southwest, American literature, and writing studies. She has published articles on McCarthy in The Southern Quarterly and in The Cormac McCarthy Journal, as well as essays in Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, The Road; No Country for Old Men: Novel to Film; Cormac McCarthy: New Directions; Myth, Legend, Dust: Cormac McCarthy’s Western Fiction; and Sacred Violence: A Reader’s Companion to Cormac McCarthy. She also has authored, coauthored, and edited articles and books on rhetoric and composition, including Modes of Inquiry: Voices of Scholars Across the Fields of Study, Writing in Three Dimen-sions, The Writer’s World: An Essay Anthology, From Cases to Composition, and A Handbook of Modern Rhetorical Terms.






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The best thing about editing The Cambridge Companion to Cormac McCarthy has been the chance to learn. i am grateful to the many scholars who contributed to this project. Friends and colleagues all, they approached their essays with a rare blend of curiosity, commitment, and passion. in reading their work, my understanding of Cormac McCarthy has grown immeasurably. i would like to thank the editorial team at Cambridge University Press, specifically ray ryan and Louis gulino, for their dedicated work in bringing this volume to fruition. i also am particularly grateful to Stacey Peebles, not only for our regular conversations throughout the project, but for her insightful reading of my essay. Thanks also to Eric Carl Link for his steadfast collegiality and friendship. My appreciation as well goes to Dianne C. Luce for her invaluable assistance with the chronology and her encouragement in McCarthy studies over the years. A special thank you to Edwin T. Arnold, who, even though unable to contribute to the collection, has influenced all the essays in incalculable ways. My gratitude as always to rick Wallach for his hard work with the Cormac McCarthy Society from its inception until today. i would also like to express my appreciation to Morgan Johnson and rebecca iverson, my editorial assistants at California State University, Bakersfield. Their tireless efforts with the details of the editorial process were invaluable. Finally, a special thank you to my family: to my parents, Ed and Joann Frye, and my sister Laura Myers, who have supported me for years and beyond measure; to my wife Kristin, for her heart, her mind, and her willingness to make of them a gift; and to my children, Melissa and Thomas, who laugh with sympathy at their father’s passions and obsessions, and in many ways secretly share them.

ACKnoWLEDgMEnTS






xvii

CHronoLogy oF McCArTHy’S LiFE AnD WorKS

1933 Born Charles Joseph McCarthy in Providence, rhode island, July 20, third child and oldest son of Charles Joseph and gladys Mcgrail McCarthy.

1937 Moves to Knoxville, Tennessee, with his parents and older sisters, where his father, a yaleeducated lawyer, takes a position as counsel for the Tennessee valley Authority (TvA). His two younger brothers and younger sister are born in Knoxville. growing up in Tennessee, McCarthy attends Catholic parochial schools and spends much time in the rural countryside among the people who form the basis of characters in his early southern novels.

1951 graduates from Catholic High School in Knoxville. Enters the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, as a liberal arts major.

1953 Joins the United States Air Force, spending two years in Alaska, where he begins reading intensely.

1957–1960 returns to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, enrolling in robert Daniel’s course in fiction writing. Based on work produced in this course, he is chosen by the English department for the ingramMerrill Award for creative writing. The university’s literary magazine, The Phoenix, publishes two of his short stories, “Wake for Susan” (1959) and “A Drowning incident” (1960), under the name of C. J. McCarthy. Begins work on his first and fourth novels, The Orchard Keeper and Suttree.

1960 Leaves the University of Tennessee without taking a degree. Moves his family to Chicago, illinois, and continues work on






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CHRONOLOGY OF McCARTHY’S LIFE AND WORKs

The Orchard Keeper, while working part time in an autoparts warehouse.

1961 Marries Lee Holleman, a fellow student at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

1962 Son Cullen is born. Completes The Orchard Keeper in April and submits it to random House in May. returns with his family to his parents’ home in vestal, Tennessee, in May. Moves with his family to an old farmhouse outside Sevierville, Tennessee. Begins drafting Outer Dark in December.

1963 Albert Erskine of random House, William Faulkner’s former editor, becomes McCarthy’s editor. Erskine will serve as McCarthy’s editor for the next twenty years.

1963–1964 Separates from Lee Holleman and moves to Asheville, north Carolina. Moves to new orleans, Louisiana, in 1964.

1965 “Bounty,” an excerpt from The Orchard Keeper, published in Yale Review. “The Dark Waters,” an excerpt from The Orchard Keeper, published by Sewanee Review. returns to vestal, Tennessee, to revise Outer Dark. The Orchard Keeper published by random House in May. Wins the Academy of Arts and Letters Fellowship. in August, travels to ireland and meets Anne De Lisle, a British singer and ballet dancer, on board the Sylvania.

1965–1966 Settles in Paris, France, to revise Outer Dark and compose Suttree. Conceives Child of God in January 1966.

1966 Marries Anne De Lisle. Wins the William Faulkner Foundation Award for the best first novel by an American. Wins the rockefeller Foundation grant providing for two years of support and travels through England, France, Switzerland, italy, and Spain, while working to complete Outer Dark. Lives for a year on ibiza, an island off the coast of valencia, Spain.

1967 returns to England in late summer. Arrives in new york on october 17 and drives to Washington, DC, to visit his parents.

1968 Moves to rockford, Tennessee, with Anne De Lisle by February. Lives in a cheaply rented house. Outer Dark published by random House.






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1969 Wins the guggenheim Fellowship.

1971 Buys and moves to a small barn in Louisville, Tennessee, which he remodels, learning stonemasonry. in the summer he collaborates with Bill Kidwell on the creation of two large stone mosaics in Maryville, Tennessee. Continues drafting Suttree and Child of God.

1974 Child of God published by random House in January. Conceives Blood Meridian; or, The Evening Redness in the West. Travels to Tucson, Arizona, to begin research for his selfdescribed “Western,” Blood Meridian.

1975–1976 researches and writes the script of The Gardener’s Son for public television’s Visions series. Participates in the filming.

1977 Separates from Anne De Lisle. The Gardener’s Son airs on public television, directed by richard Pearce and starring Brad Dourif. McCarthy appears in a nonspeaking role as a stockholder of a textile mill. Moves to Tucson, Arizona, where he begins a sustained process of drafting Blood Meridian.

1978 Moves to El Paso, Texas.

1979 “Burial,” an excerpt from Suttree, appears in Antaeus. Suttree published by random House in February. Moves to nashville, Tennessee, by February and moves to Lexington, Kentucky, in the fall.

1980 returns to the west in August. Conceives and begins drafting his as yet unpublished novel The Passenger by october. Conceives and begins drafting his screenplay “Cities of the Plain.” “The Scalphunters,” an excerpt from Blood Meridian, published in TriQuarterly in the spring.

1981 By June, returns to Knoxville and settles in a motel to revise Blood Meridian. Wins the MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as the “genius” grant. Attends a dinner in Chicago for MacArthur Fellows where he meets and develops a friendship with Murray gellMann, nobel Prize–winning physicist, director of the MacArthur Foundation, and scholar at the Santa Fe institute.

1982–1983 Buys a house in El Paso, Texas.






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1985 Blood Meridian; or, The Evening Redness in the West published by random House in the spring.

1986 Completes the stageplay “The Stonemason” in February. Works on “Whales and Men” and probably the screenplay “no Country.” Travels to Argentina with cetologist roger Payne to participate in whale research. “instruments of Liberation,” an excerpt from Blood Meridian, published in Homewords: A Book of Tennessee Writers.

1988 Completes a draft of All the Pretty Horses and begins drafting The Crossing. in the spring, he travels to Mexico. Completes a draft of The Crossing and begins Cities of the Plain.

1992 All the Pretty Horses is published by Alfred A. Knopf under the editorship of gary Fisketjon, who works diligently to increase McCarthy’s public exposure. An excerpt of the novel is published in March in Esquire. The novel wins the national Book Award and the national Book Critics Circle Award. McCarthy grants his first public interview to richard B. Woodward of the New York Times Magazine. Participates in workshop readings of The Stonemason in Washington, DC, in preparation for the play’s production at the Arena Stage. revises the play, but the production is abandoned.

1993 Cormac McCarthy Society formed at Bellarmine College in Louisville, Kentucky, at the first national Cormac McCarthy Conference. McCarthy is awarded the Texas institute of Letters Jesse H. Jones Award for All the Pretty Horses. The “Wolf Trapper,” an excerpt from The Crossing, is published in Esquire.

1994 The Stonemason: A Play in Five Acts is published by Ecco Press in May. The Crossing is published by Alfred A. Knopf in June.

1995 “The Wolf Hunter,” an excerpt from The Crossing, is published in the January issue of Sports Afield.

1996 The Gardener’s Son: A Screenplay is published by Ecco Press in September.

1997 receives the Texas institute of Letters Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement. Participates in a workshop of The






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Stonemason at the McCarter Theatre of Princeton. revises the play.

1998 Cities of the Plain is published by Alfred A. Knopf in May. All the Pretty Horses film production is announced. Marries Jennifer Winkley and buys a house in the Coronado Country Club neighborhood in El Paso, Texas. Son John Francis is born. “The Dogs,” an excerpt from Cities of the Plain, is published in Men’s Journal in May. Another excerpt is published in World and I in october.

1999–2000 Continues work on “The Passenger,” as yet unpublished.

2000 Columbia Pictures releases the film adaptation of All the Pretty Horses, directed by Billy Bob Thornton.

2001 Moves with Jennifer Winkley and John Francis to Santa Fe, new Mexico, where he becomes a Fellow at the Santa Fe institute. in october, attends a premiere performance of The Stonemason at the Arts Alliance Center at Clear Lake in Houston, Texas.

2003 Sits for photographs for portraitist Andrew Tift.

2004 Andrew Tift completes the portrait. McCarthy spends the summer in ireland, where he begins the composition of The Road and The Sunset Limited.

2005 No Country for Old Men is published by Alfred A. Knopf in July.

2006 Blood Meridian and the Border Trilogy are listed by the New York Times Book Review among the best novels of the preceding twentyfive years. The Sunset Limited: A Novel in Dramatic Form is published by Alfred A. Knopf in January. Participates in readings and dress rehearsals of The Sunset Limited at Steppenwolf Theatre in April and May in preparation for its June performances. The Road is published by Alfred A. Knopf in September. The Sunset Limited premieres in the Steppenwolf’s garage Theatre in Chicago in May and June and later moves to new york City, where it is performed by the Steppenwolf Company at 59E59 Theatres.

2007 The Sunset Limited is performed at the galway Arts Festival in July. McCarthy grants his first and only television interview






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to oprah Winfrey after The Road becomes an oprah Winfrey Book Club selection. The Road wins the Pulitzer Prize and the United Kingdom’s James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Paramount Pictures film adaptation of No Country for Old Men, directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, premieres in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. The film opens commercially in limited release in twentyeight theaters in the United States on november 9, then moves to wide release and critical acclaim.

2008 Film adaptation of No Country for Old Men wins four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director (Joel and Ethan Coen), Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Joel and Ethan Coen). McCarthy and his son John Francis attend the Academy Awards ceremony. McCarthy and the Coen brothers win the University of Southern California Scripter Award for the best adapted screenplay of 2007. The Southwestern Writers Collection (SWWC), a part of the Wittliff Collections at the Alkek Library, Texas State University, San Marcos, acquires the Cormac McCarthy Papers by January. They are opened to scholars in october. The Albert Erskine Files at the University of virginia are opened in May. Andrew Tift portrait of McCarthy is acquired by the national Portrait gallery.

2009 Wins the PEn/Saul Bellow Lifetime Award for his work in the writing of fiction. 2929 Productions, MetrogoldwynMayer, and Dimension Films release the film adaptation of The Road, directed by John Hillcoat.

2011 The film adaptation of The Sunset Limited premieres on HBo Films. it is produced and directed by Tommy Lee Jones and stars Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson. Production takes place in new Mexico and McCarthy attends much of the filming.

2012 HBo releases the film version of The Sunset Limited, which includes an audio commentary version in which McCarthy, Jones, and Jackson watch the film together and comment on aspects of its production and content. Sells screenplay “The Counselor” to Mark Wechsler and Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz. Filming begins in May.






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