Product Description
A Reader's Guide to Blood Meridian is the essential companion to the classic novel by Cormac McCarthy. Every reader, whether a student of literature or a fan of the book, will find a wealth of information in these pages. Shane Schimpf has researched every aspect of the novel from terminology to foreign language translations to historical references to literary underpinnings. The content is presented as a page-by-page analysis facilitating a simultaneous reading of both. The result is a more complete understanding of the novel and McCarthy's dark vision contained therein.

Unlike other written works about the novel, A Reader's Guide to Blood Meridian includes:
1) Chapter-by-chapter, page-by-page annotations to the novel.
2) A subject index which includes the initial appearance of major characters, references to historical figures, geographical locales, indigenous flora and fauna, biblical references and more.
3) A thematic overview of Blood Meridian exploring the relationship between the novel's two major figures, The Kid and The Judge.

The first page of the annotations, reproduced below, offers an example of what the reader can expect to find in A Reader's Guide to Blood Meridian:

CHAPTER ONE - PAGE 3
Nacogdoches: The oldest town in Texas, founded in 1779. Named after the Caddo Indians who originally lived in this area, Nacogdoches played a prominent role in Texas history; in particular, the town was the site of three failed attempts to establish the Republic of Texas. As a result, nine flags have flown over the city: Spanish, French, Mexican, The Magee-Guiterrez Repubic, The Long Republic, The Fredonia Republic, The Lone Star, The Confederate, and The United States. See cets.sfasu.edu/NacHis. html. Last visited on 04/08/2006.
An affray: A noisy quarrel or brawl.
See the child: Perhaps an allusion to Alexander Pope's Essay on Man: Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law/Please with rattle, tickled with straw (274-5). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Oh, Happy Day!
Buy this book!And you can buy it directly from the author.I'm a new reader of the literature of Cormac McCarthy.In fact, so new that I thought that beautifully titled "No Country for Old Men" was a late 20th century novel about the treatment of elderly people in the United States.Seriously.I did!I'm not ashamed to say it.But after reading that book straight through, I decided to try another McCarthy book, "Blood Meridian."Historical fiction was the pull.One could teach a college course on this book and maybe somewhere that is being done.I struggled through "Blood Meridian."McCarthy's highly descriptive writing and wildly imaginative use of vocabulary kept me hooked, but I have to admit I was flummoxed in many places. Then I found out there was a Readers Guide!

Mr. Schimpf has created a very useful, readable book.He interweaves his point of view and Nietzschean (is that a word?) philosophy with the historical facts and has managed to produce an original work based on an original work.Kind of like Dali and Warhol painting their own versions of the "Mona Lisa."The original can never be imitated, but it can certainly be enhanced by other artists' view points. In fact, with his "Reader's Guide," Schimpf kind of did a little twist on what Nietzsche himself said, "A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but that of his friends." "A Reader's Guide to Blood Meridian" could also be looked upon as a tribute to McCarthy's literary genius.

I must admit I have not read Mr. Sepich's "Notes on Blood Meridian" yet, but it is arriving soon in mymailbox.

Simon Schimpf's book is a nice size and the print is wonderful for an old lady from a "wider audience" like me.It's a wonderful, educational read from the preface - be sure to read the preface - tothe sources. Excellent purchase.

Great compliment to Blood Meridian
A Reader's Guide to Blood Meridian gives insight to Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.I first read the book, then I purchased this guide and reread Blood Meridian with this Reader's Guide page by page. This guide states the pages to which it refers to in Blood Meridian. This Reader's Guide matches pages perfectly with the 2001 edition of Blood Meridian from the Modern Library(printed on acid-free paper). I live in southeast Arizona after living 25 years in northern California and thought I recognized locations/towns etc..in the book. After I used this Reader's Guide I realized that I was incorrect about some of the locations, towns and villages in Blood Meridian. One location I thought was in California is just 5 miles from my home in Arizona. Shane Schimpi, the author,of A Reader's Guide to Blood Meridian gives history of the locations and actual people in the story. The details Schimpi lends on factual data and some made-up people gives vitality to this great story. The descriptions and factual information about the people, ranches, rivers, towns, dress, battles, equipment (including weapons),individual deserts (and many more items which I forget right now) make the Great Book "Blood Meridian" both real and alive. It is very easy for me to imagine the main cowboy, just a teenage boy, as he acts and reacts in multiple violent settings. I thoroughly enjoyed Blood Meridian without a reader's guide but with the guide by Mr Schumipf I have a greater understanding of the time and the people. They are no longer figments or characters in a story, but living people, even those who are total fabrications of Cormac McCarthy. This guide coordinates the history preceding the story, history that most likely influenced some men to such terrible violence, violence which is forever possible. The interpretation of the Spanish dialog in the book is justification enough to purchase this book. The Guide arrived before expected date and in perfect condition.

How deep do you want to go with Blood Meridian? Bring your pistols.
Let's face it, Blood Meridian is an easy read from the aspect that it's a work of art, but from a literary stand point, it's a harder read than a rattlesnake at a thousand yards. You can't tell me you aren't dieing to know what the Judge's weapon's inscription "Et In Arcadia Ego" is all about, what "St. Elmo's Fire" is doing on a page about horseback riding, or just what the heck all those Mexicans are discussing?

The guide consists of a thesis like summary of interpretations Mr. Schimpf has made, then a page-by-page explanation of practicably every obscure term in the novel, and includes historical references.

Mr. Schimpf's interpretations are very interesting (and I rarely enjoy such writing). He makes several surprisingly bold points about The Judge, The Kid, and the overall theme of BM. However, all of these points are extremely well referenced. I only wish he'd continued this type of interpretation throughout some of the more major parts of the story.

The page-by-page definitions are a mixture of words taken from everywhere you can possibly imagine and some that can't even be proven to exist at all. Fans of BM's language style will likely find some definitions to be what they expected but some to be extraordinary in that they are unexpected and add considerable depth to the story.

The page-by-page also includes historical explanations. Many of the Characters and Locations mentioned in BM are based on factual figures from the late 1800's and there is impressive effort in researching this. Furthermore many of these historical references include internet addresses the reader can review online.

My only complaints are that I wish Mr. Schimpf had included more of his interpretations & that he'd left his photo and bio off the backcover. I realize he had to self-publish this but reading about his fondness of basketball on the back cover of such a powerful guide makes me want to saddle my Warhorse. Mr. Schimpf, next guide should have less pics of your adorable face and more coffins.

Seriously though, this is a guide that will have you experiencing something you love on an even more intense level. I applaud Shane Shimpf's "A Reader's Guide to Blood Meridian."

A handy page-by-page reference.
The bulk of this book, the last 300 pages of it, presents a valuable addition to the crit-lit on Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece, BLOOD MERIDIAN.The definitions and historical notes are arranged in a reader-friendly page-by-page format, with translations of the foreign terms and astute explanations, elaborations, and speculations on the many arcane references.

Both scholars and casual readers will find this work rewarding, even if they already have copies of John Sepich's masterful NOTES ON BLOOD MERIDIAN, which preceded this work and is now also available in a new expanded edition.

I would now like to review the first fifty pages, Shane Schimpf's Nietzschean interpretation of the novel.While this interpretation is as valid as any, and might seem handy for college students, readers should be aware that it is not the only interpretation. Just one of many. I wish that Mr. Schimpf had published this separately, or had provided more notations of the alternative published arguments, or else had simply let readers choose their own interpretations.A guide should simply be a guide.

Mr. Schimpf states his opinion that the words of McCarthy's fictional Judge Holden express Cormac McCarthy's own philosophy.Again, readers new to McCarthy crit-lit should be aware that this is just one of many takes on the novel, among them the Christian, Gnostic, Marxist, and Buddhist interpretations.To me, the novel does not belong to the Judge, but to the kid, the conscript everyman.

Again, this is the second and improved edition of a valuable and handy resource, in which the author seeks out the primary historical sources for a closer look.Scholarship is never definitive and always ongoing, and readers of this work are encouraged to also dip into the great wealth of alternate Cormac McCarthy crit-lit now available.

If only all McCarthy novels had a companion guide like this!
For anyone looking to improve their understanding of Blood Meridian, this guide is a must-have.It covers the novel in a clear, beginning-to-end format allowing you to refer back to the guide with ease any time that you come across one of the myriad unfamiliar words, phrases, historical persons and places found in McCarthy's rich literary landscape. There is an amazing amount of information packed in the pages, but because of its user-friendly format it would be useful tool for any reader of the book; someone using the guide as a Blood Meridian 'dictionary' of sorts will be served just as well as the reader looking for a comprehensive source of references, maps, translations and the like.The analysis of McCarthy's motivations is also interesting and well-argued; while one is hard pressed to ever really know what an author had in mind when writing a novel, the ideas presented here seem right on the mark.
... Read more

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Customer Reviews (3)

Lincoln's American Canticles
Sentimentality, which has become common place with the multitudes and reviewers, and the myriad historicisms driven by a myriad of political agendas and languages litter the current topography of McCarthy readings in popular media reviews and academic writing.As opposed to these agenda-driven studies composed by those in search of political succor, who cringe at the arrival and impending violence of the real, Lincoln's cogent study of McCarthy's writings bluntly considers the politically futile, blood-soaked, hopeless fictions, including McCarthy's dramas and novels, in their sequential publication in order to open up discussion addressing the violence and unresolved injustices of modern existence alongside the great traditional writings. Most important, Lincoln does so without using the commonplace modern tools of Freud and Marx and their postmodern progeny.
The introductory chapter "Canticles Down West: Hyperrealism", employs an etymological study to reclaim the term "hyperreal" from such influential contemporary thinkers such as Baudrillard, Eco, and Deleuze (to name a few); and then uses biblical prophecy and other classic and modern writers to establish McCarthy as a writer composing "threnodies" for those who are still human.Each proceeding chapter is dedicated to each of McCarthy's work up to The Road, McCarthy's most recent publication to date.

McCarthy in a Different Light
Kenneth Lincoln's interpretation succeeds admirably in describing McCarthy's work in ways often neglected by other critics. The nuts and bolts of Lincoln's interpretation are certainly not extraordinary, but it is important to keep in mind that Lincoln is not writing for McCarthy specialists but rather for a "generally literate" audience familiar with the tradition within which McCarthy is self-consciously writing. The value of Lincoln's interpretation consists in his description of McCarthy's metaphysical holism. This is different than most contemporary literary criticism which looks for historical, biographical/psychological, and/or political details, and then attempts somewhat mechanistically to reduce most or all of an author's work to the effect of a particular cause or relatively small set of causes. Of course the two methodologies are not mutually exclusive and it is neither possible nor desirable to overlook one completely for the other; however, one method or the other usually predominates and acts as the unifying thread for an interpretation. In adopting a holistic method Lincoln does not disregard the particular matters on which bottom-up methodologies concentrate, but his unifying thread is decidedly more systematically organic. In my view, it is clear that McCarthy himself does not write the kind of realistic narratives that accommodate bottom-up and etiologically reductive interpretations but is more of a metaphysical thinker who imbues the material world with an uncanny metaphysical presence. Doubtless delineating the facts McCarthy puts into his stories is helpful and necessary for a complete picture of McCarthy's art, but ultimately a more organic methodology is required if one is to understand the way in which McCarthy's works encourage readers to ask metaphysical questions that perhaps do not have answers but are thereby no less important as questions. Speaking truthfully, the fact that the definite explanations realists tend to desire are not available (not to mention that metaphysical questions as such cannot even be meaningfully raised) within the methodological framework of the etiologically reductive approach speaks powerfully for the superiority of the holistic method adopted by Lincoln when it comes to interpreting McCarthy. I don't think many serious readers would deny that something is going on that does not meet the eye in McCarthy's often highly descriptive and materially oriented prose. In this connection, one could argue that McCarthy is a "higher realist" (Lincoln uses the term hyperrealist) in the sense that Dostoevsky described his novels in contradistinction to the more realistic and prosaically grounded works of contemporaries like Tolstoy.

A lively reading of Cormac McCarthy, life and works.
Poet/Native American scholar Kenneth Lincoln's stated mission is to provide "a Cormac McCarthy guide for the common reader."An overview with condensed plot threads, one work at a time.As such, for the beginning and curious McCarthy reader, it rates five stars.

The text is only 177 pages long--193 pages with the Selected Criticism, About The Author, and Index.So few pages, so much to say.

Dr. Lincoln distances himself from academics by quoting William Carlos Williams: "Such must be the future: penetrant and simple--minus the scaffolding of the academic."

"Many literary critics, particularly the bricoleurs of postmodernist theory, have fallen from their scaffolds on blunt swords. Beyond some fine scholars and perceptive readers, I've come to hedge writers on writers over literary pundits, to avoid academic in-groups, to take the characters and stories clean, to trust my own hunches."

He says in his introductory note ("HEADNOTE: PENETRANT AND SIMPLE") that "CORMAC MCCARTHY: AMERICAN CANTICLES is a roadmap to the author's artistic life and work written for the generally literate public--a grounded, minimally scaffolded, book-by-book engagement...No post modern theory, no theme park, no identity politics, no rhetorical haze. What do we make of the words and the story in our own time?"

But there is a rhetorical haze in Kenneth Lincoln's own writing style. Don't get me wrong, I know he is a poet and this is his style.At times he turned poetic and oblique when I wanted him to be accurate and concrete. Otherwise, I enjoyed his breezy style.

Some chapters are better than others. A couple of them made me wince, including his chapter on BLOOD MERIDIAN--which is a much better book than he makes it out to be. It is obvious that Kenneth Lincoln has not read
either John Sepich's NOTES ON BLOOD MERIDIAN nor Shane Schimpf's A READER'S GUIDE TO BLOOD MERIDIAN. He makes both errors of omission and factual errors. This is too bad, for his quirky prose contains bookish delights and a lively and contagious enthusiasm.

And there is much to admire here. Of course, he quotes some of the same Melville, Faulkner, Conrad, and Joyce passages appearing in earlier McCarthy crit-lit, but there are new associations sprinkled here and there.

Readers should be aware that the critical literature on Cormac McCarthy is vast, and that a lot of it is every bit as reader-friendly as Dr. Lincoln's overview, if not as spritely poetic.

I'm hoping that, in some future edition of this work, Dr. Lincoln will add footnotes so that the reader may know which insights are his own and which insights are from his reading of the scholars listed in his Selected Criticism. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume gathers together some of the best literary criticism devoted to the work of D.H. Lawrence during the past 20 years. The unifying theme, loosely woven throughout, may be described as "Lawrence in the Romantic tradition."

This series is edited by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University; Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English, New York University Graduate School. These texts presents critical essays that reflect a variety of schools of criticism on the most important 20th-century criticism on major works from The Odyssey through modern literature. Each volume also contains an introductory essay by Harold Bloom, critical biographies, notes on the contributing critics, a chronology of the author's life, and an index. ... Read more

Product Description
ALL THE PRETTY HORSES
The first volume of the Border Trilogy–tells of young John Grady Cole, the last of a long line of Texas ranchers. Across the border Mexico beckons–beautiful and desolate, rugged and cruelly civilized. With two companions, he sets off on an idyllic, sometimes comic adventure, to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.

THE CROSSING
In the late 1930’s, sixteen-year-old Billy Parham captures a she-wolf that has been marauding his family’s ranch. But instead of killing it, he decides to take it back to the mountains of Mexico. With that crossing, he beings an arduous and often dreamlike journey into a country where men meet like ghosts and violence strikes as suddenly as heat-lightening–a world where there is no order "save that which death has put there."

CITIES OF THE PLAIN
It is 1952 and John Grady Cole and Billy Parham are working as ranch hands in New Mexico, not far from the proving grounds of Alamogordo and the cities of El Paso and Juarez. Their life is made up of trail drives and horse auctions and stories told by campfire light. They value that life all the more because they know it is about to change forever. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Sitting my horse with Cormac McCarthy
I get Cormac McCarthy and Frank McCourt mixed up, so after trying to read _Angela's Ashes_ by McCourt and absolutely hating it, I wasn't sure if I would like McCarthy's westerns. However, they were recommended to me by a trusted friend so I decided to give 'em a try. I really liked all 3 stories and Brad Pitt did an admirable job of reading them without his usual lisp, but by the end of the 3rd story, I was about ready to go postal if I heard the phrase "sitting his horse" one more time. (That's the author's fault, not the reader's.) Other than that, listening to the language flowing from one image to the next was very relaxing, and I found myself eager to get to the end of each story while at the same time hoping they'd never end.

Just don't bother--
The abridgment keeps the work from making sense, especially in "The Crossing." Brad Pitt does not even bother to try to shape Spanish phonology, whether the Spanish is meant to be spoken by a North American who probably speaks the language fairly well but not with native phonology, or meant to be spoken by a native speaker.

The North Americans in these books would be speaking from "heard" language--not written language--so they would not say "jay fay" for Spanish "jefe," for example.

Brad Pitt's reading is so abysmal that you may be unable to continue to listen to it, especially if you speak or understand Spanish.

A competent producer would never have let a reader get away with this insulting performance. Insulting to the literature and insulting to the listener.

Pitiful effort by the reader. Pitiful production values. Should be withdrawn and re-recorded unabridged by someone who gives more than a rooty-toot-toot about literature, language, performance, and product on both sides of the glass.

Brad Pitta Poor Reader
Buy the other, the All The Pretty Horses alone, with reader Muller (sp?) Frank. Brad Pitt does a very poor job, and I was amazed how poor. He hardly seems like a trained actor. He badly mispronounces Spanish (pronounces 'jefe' as 'jeffy')and his reading is like something a grade-school child would produce. He carries the question tone over to the 'he said' in interrogative sentences and does not change voice tone from one speaker to another. He sounds like a slacker who has been forced to read a high-school composition. This guy is an actor?

And the abridgement ruins the stories in all three novels.

Now I have to go back and buy the other because I love ATPH very much and want to hear it read by someone who has had voice training and a good voice.

excellent abridged version of McCarthy's work
Cormac McCarthy is undoubtedly one of the best American writers alive today. This is precisely why I purchased one of his works for my first venture into the "books on tape" world. I feared that hearing his works read to me my a Hollywood actor would diminish its impact, but I am happy to report that Brad Pitt does a good job of keeping the spirit and humor of his writing up to par. There are, however, times when he seems bored with the task as his voice takes on a particularly lullaby-like quality, so be sure to keep a cup of coffee handy if listening while driving!

I have read all of these novels before so I was familiar with the stories. The abridgement did cut out some of my favorite passages (especially in the Crossing) where McCarthy embarks on a style parade worthy of Fitzgerald's or Faulkner's attention.

My wife and I listened to the stories while traveling through the Southwest, and it was a delight to experience the landscape through the eyes of the stories. If you are planning a cross country drive or a long drive through the New Mexico-Arizona-West Texas area, I cannot recommend enough these books on tape as travel companions! ... Read more

Product Description
Named by Harold Bloom as one of the most significant American novelists of our time, Cormac McCarthy has been honored with the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for All the Pretty Horses, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Pulitzer Prize for The Road, and the coveted MacArthur Fellowship. Steven Frye offers a comprehensive treatment of McCarthy’s fiction to date, dealing with the author’s aesthetic and thematic concerns, his philosophical and religious influences, and his participation in Western literary traditions.

Frye provides extensive readings of each novel, charting the trajectory of McCarthy’s development as a writer who invigorates literary culture both past and present through a blend of participation, influence, and aesthetic transformation. Understanding Cormac McCarthy explores the early works of the Tennessee period in the context of the “romance” genre, the southern gothic and grotesque, as well as the carnivalesque. A chapter is devoted to Blood Meridian, a novel that marks McCarthy’s transition to the West and his full recognition as a major force in American letters. In the final two chapters, Frye explores McCarthy’s Border Trilogy and his later works— specifically No Country for Old Men and The Road—addressing the manner in which McCarthy’s preoccupation with violence and human depravity exists alongside a perpetual search for meaning, purpose, and value.

Frye provides scholars, students, and general readers alike with a clearly argued foundational examination of McCarthy’s novels in their historical and literary contexts as an ideal roadmap illuminating the author’s work as it charts the dark and mythic topography of the American frontier. ... Read more

Product Description
McCarthy scholar Barcley Owens has written the first bookto concentrate exclusively on his acclaimed western novels: BloodMeridian, National Book Award winner All the Pretty Horses, TheCrossing, and Cities of the Plain.In a thought-provokinganalysis, Owens explores the differences between Blood Meridianand the Border Trilogy novels and shows how those differences reflectchanging conditions in contemporary American culture.

Owens captures both Blood Meridian's wanton violence and theBorder Trilogy's fond remembrance of the Old West.He shows how thisdramatic shift from atavistic brutality to nostalgic Americanasuggests that McCarthy has finally given his readers what they mostwant--the stuff of their mythic dreams.

Owens's study is both an incisive look at one of our most importantand demanding authors and a penetrating analysis of violence and mythin American culture.Fans of McCarthy's work will find much toconsider for ongoing discussions of this influential body of work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Literary Plus Societal Criticism
The basics are here. Mr. Owens has understanding of symbols and themes, with some good structural analysis. Mr. Owens realizes that McCarthy's western novels are unique, even monumental. I read Owens' book because after reading the trilogy, I was astounded at the mastery of the work...the language, the imagery and the grasp of the Americas--the historical, the spiritual, the mythic--seen through the eyes of witnesses to horrific history. For me the only other American writer in McCormac's company is, in my opinion, not Faukner, but William Carlos Williams ("In the American Grain"). I read Owens' book because I wanted a conversation about the novels, and, ironically, there are not many people with whom I can discuss this trilogy. Not many people I know are going to like the West, and extreme violence, and cowboys, and horses, AND understand enough Spanish.
Mr. Owens is one of the legion, arisen since the sixties, of the Blame America (not the karma of the world)academics. He attempts, awkwardly, to interject sentiments of anti-imperialism into the literary criticism, where it dosn't fit. I suppose he realises this and creates an afterword which is much more honest, if not correct.
Mr Owens is pre-2001, and I wonder if at this point, we are still to blame.
Mr. Owens work is good. I was a little put off by his emphasis as I saw it.

a long essay mostly on 'Blood Meridian'
This book is more of a long essay (100 pages?) mostly concerning 'Blood Meridian' which I think is the least interesting of the so-called 'Western' novels. It does contain interesting material and a lot of research went into it.

Sparkling review of an enthralling, enriching body of work.
If you're a bit puzzled by all of the cheering for Cormac McCarthy, look here.I don't agree with everything he says, but Owen packs this slim volume with plenty of eye-opening (and sometimes mind-boggling) insights.

His discussions and comparisons and references have inspired me to go back and read Jack London'sshort story, "To Build A Fire," with new appreciation; then led me to Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat," then to T. R. Fehrebach's THE COMANCHES, which I might otherwise have never discovered. ... Read more

Product Description

One of today's most important novelists, Cormac McCarthy is at the peak of a long and productive career. The film adaptation of his No Country for Old Men is a major motion picture, and his fiction is widely read in book clubs. This volume looks at his works, characters, themes, and contexts and relates his writings to current events and popular culture. Chapters include sidebars of interesting information, along with questions to stimulate book club discussions and student research.

One of today's most important novelists, Cormac McCarthy is at the peak of a long and productive career. He won the Pulitzer Prize for The Road in 2007 and the National Book Award for All the Pretty Horses in 1992. This book is a guide to his works and their relevance.

The volume begins with a look at his life and his use of the novel as a means of expressing his ideas. The book then looks at his works, themes, characters, and contexts. It then discusses his exploration of current events and the presence of his fiction in popular culture. Chapters include sidebars of interesting information and provide questions to stimulate book club discussion and student research.

Customer Reviews (1)

A solid overview for anyone reading Cormac McCarthy.
Willard P. Greenwood's READING CORMAC MCCARTHY is an excellent new overview of McCarthy's published novels to date.

It is 141 pages, counting preface, eighteen chapters of text, a bibliography titled "Resources," and an index.It has a turtleback cover with a picture of old Cormac sitting easily, half his face in light, half in shadow.There are study questions after each chapter.His sources well represent the critical literature available.

This is the third in a series entitled "The Pop Lit Book Club," and previous were READING BARBARA KINGSOLVER and READING AMY TAN.Hopefully other volumes will follow.

I don't personally agree with several of Greenwood's interpretations--he sees Suttree as mainly "McCarthy's homage to alcoholism," for instance--but any Cormac McCarthy scholar might present his own educated views in such a volume.

If I were to improve the book, the first thing I would add would be a disclaimer that there are many interpretations of McCarthy's work, not just those presented therein.

Chapter 19 is "What Do I Read Next?" with some good suggestions to readers wanting more of the same quality if not the same worldview.Greenwood mentions many of the same books that we have recommended at the Cormac McCarthy Society over the years--MOBY DICK, OF WOLVES AND MEN, THE BIRTH OF TRAGFDY, ABSALOM, ABSALOM!--very good books indeed.And he says:

"Reading the epics of Homer will make McCarthy's work more accessible, but most important, these ancient works are as relevant today as they were when they were created.They represent a continuity of the human excperience that transcends time.'

"...The second section of McCarthy's novel, THE CROSSING, opens with the sentence: 'Doomed enterprises forever divide lives into the then and the now."To understand why some of McCarthy's male protagonists seem to embrace futile or lost causes, it is essential to reference the ILIAD, and especially, its doomed young male warrior, Achilles.'

"Homer's richly imagined and gifted hero is timeless because of his rebellious romantic tendencies.Achilles holds himself to a strict code of idiosyncratic ethics that will not be influenced by any outside forces...Achilles doomed nature and how he faces his destiny ennobles him and his struggle...The ODYSSEY contains the character of ODYSSEUS, who serves as the archetypes for many McCarthy characters..."

All in all, one of the very best overviews of McCarthy to found anywhere. ... Read more

Product Description

The western American landscape has always had great significance in American thinking, requiring an unlikely union between frontier mythology and the reality of a fragile western environment. Additionally it has borne the burden of being a gendered space, seen by some as the traditional "virgin land" of the explorers and pioneers, subject to masculine desires, and by others as a masculine space in which the feminine is neither desired nor appreciated. Both Wallace Stegner and Cormac McCarthy focus on this landscape and environment; its spiritual, narrative, symbolic, imaginative, and ideological force is central to their work. In this study, McGilchrist shows how their various treatments of these issues relate to the social climates (pre- and post-Vietnam era) in which they were written, and how despite historical discontinuities, both Stegner and McCarthy reveal a similar unease about the effects of the myth of the frontier on American thought and life. The gendering of the landscape is revealed as indicative of the attempts to deny the failure of the myth, and to force the often numinous western landscape into parameters which will never contain it. Stegner's pre-Vietnam sensibility allows the natural world to emerge tentatively triumphant from the ruins of frontier mythology, whereas McCarthy's conclusions suggest a darker future for the West in particular and America in general. However, McGilchrist suggests that the conclusion of McCarthy's Border Trilogy, upon which her arguments regarding McCarthy are largely based, offers a gleam of hope in its final conclusion of acceptance of the feminine.

Product Description
Georg Guillemin's visionary approach to the work of Western novelist Cormac McCarthy combines an overall survey of McCarthy's eight novels in print with a comprehensive analysis of the author's evolving ecopastoralism. Using in-depth textual interpretations, Guillemin argues that even McCarthy's early work is characterized less by traditional nostalgia for a lost pastoral order than by a radically egalitarian land ethic that prefigures today's ecopastoral tendencies in Western American writing.

The study shows that more than any of the other landscapes evoked by McCarthy, the Southwestern desert becomes the stage for his dramatizations of a wild sense of the pastoral. McCarthy's fourth novel, Suttree, which is the only one set in an urban environment, is used in the introductory chapter to discuss the relevant compositional aspects of his fiction and the methodology of the chapters to come.

The main part of the study devotes chapters to McCarthy's Southern novels, his keystone work Blood Meridian, and the Western novels known as the Border Trilogy. The concluding chapter discusses the broader context of American pastoralism and suggests that McCarthy's ecopastoralism is animistic rather than environmentalist in character. Increasingly, man ceases to be the dominant focus of narration, so that the shift from an egocentric to an ecocentric sense of self marks both the heroes and the narrators of McCarthy's novels. ... Read more

Product Description

This overview of McCarthy’s published work to date, including: the short stories he published as a student, his novels, stage play and TV film script, locates him as a icocolastic writer, engaged in deconstructing America’s vision of itself as a nation with an exceptionalist role in the world.

Customer Reviews (2)

Cultural Studies Meets McCarthy Criticism
In this pro forma study of McCarthy, Cant puts forward a lot of cant from the cultural studies perspective of the contemporary academy but very little in the way of insightful analysis or commentary. For example, the reader constantly encounters the assertion that cultural norms cause the various attitudes and beliefs of McCarthy's characters, leaving one to wonder where the "cultural" norms themselves come from. Not surprisingly, we are never told. We are told that language is a necessary screen of experience that shields the truth. It is not clear if Cant realizes that such an epistemic position results in self-contradiction and therefore self-cancellation. Presumably Cant would respond in good relativist fashion that the "screens" are interminable and there is no logical way out of the circle of screens because that is the nature of human experience. But in offering such a claim about the "nature" of experience, Cant is in fact asserting a universal truth that stands outside of all cultural matrices and at least implicitly claiming that he knows that truth. As for Cant's treatment of McCarthy's various works there is not much to say. The above cultural studies outlook is applied and McCarthy is interpreted as supporting it. Obviously a lot of literary criticism takes the form of a particular theoretical school, but here the ideological mantra is so strong that nothing else comes through.

An incise, stimulating book-length study of Cormac McCarthy's fiction.
This is one of the major studies of Cormac McCarthy's fiction.This volume has 368 pages of easy-to-read text.Its scope stretches from McCarthy's early short stories through the western trilogy, organized into logical chapters and with generous notations, a complete bibliography, and a helpful index.

Here is John Cant in a footnote on the comparing BLOOD MERIDIAN TO MOBY DICK:

"The judge may be likened to to Melville's whale in his mythic form, his size and colouring, his destructive power and his multiple meanings. The whale symbolized both the creative and destructive power of nature, both life and death. Its whiteness reflected that nihilism that so haunted the nineteenth century imagination. The judge parallels these meanings, as they inhere in culture. In the twentieth century it is culture that has the power to be monstrous." --n. 68, p. 309.

On page 171, Cant says:

"Blood Meridian is McCarthy's homage to Moby Dick. Melville wrote of America's hubristic drive to dominate nature; Ahab pursued the whale and it destroyed him. The kid, in his 'cluelessness' state of nature travels the southwest in search of meaning; he finds the judge and is destroyed.'

"Try as he might he cannot escape the culture of his day, that overweening, hubristic that believed that reason could solve all ills and usher in endless progress. It is the hermit on the prairie that poses the fundamental question, 'But where does a man come by such notions?'

"The answer is, of course, from his culture. What McCarthy attacks in Blood Meridian is gnosis, the faith in systems of knowledge and belief that claim a validity that cannot ever exist.'

"This is another of his consistant themes, the notion that the intellectual grids, including language itself, that we deploy in order to mediate our experience of the world are incomplete, provisional, mythic, and distinct from the world that they purport to define..."
_ _ _ _

There is a wealth of solid Cormac McCarthy critical literature from which to choose, but this volume is not to be missed. ... Read more

Product Description
In Reading the World Dianne C. Luce explores the historical and philosophical contexts of Cormac McCarthy’s early works crafted during his Tennessee period from 1959 to 1979 to demonstrate how McCarthy integrates literary realism with the imagery and myths of Platonic, gnostic, and existentialist philosophies to create his unique vision of the world.

Luce begins with a substantial treatment of the east Tennessee context from which McCarthy’s fiction emerges, sketching an Appalachian culture and environment in flux. Against this backdrop Luce examines, novel by novel, McCarthy’s distinctive rendering of character through mixed narrative techniques of flashbacks, shifts in vantage point, and dream sequences. Luce shows how McCarthy’s fragmented narration and lyrical style combine to create a rich portrayal of the philosophical and religious elements at play in human consciousness as it confronts a world rife with isolation and violence.

... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

One of the most significant works on McCarthy in many years.
Dianne C. Luce has been one of the major Cormac McCarthy scholars for a very long time.This long-awaited book is a major event in the evolution of McCarthy crit-lit.

The Gnostic and Platonic interpretations of some of McCarthy's work are explained with a reverence for the beauty of the words and the light of spiritualism which is always present, if sometimes difficult to see.

A generous 270 pages of text, one chapter on each novel through SUTTREE, are followed by pages of detailed annotations, a long bibliography of cited sources, and a complete index.

A grand book well worth the wait.

... Read more

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Twayne's United States Authors Series presents concise critical introductions to great writers and their works.

Devoted to critical interpretation and discussion of an author's work, each study takes account of major literary trends and important scholarly contributions and provides new critical insights with an original point of view. An Authors Series volumeaddresses readers ranging from advanced high school students to university professors. The book suggests to the informed reader new ways of considering a writer's work. A reader new to the work under examination will, after reading theAuthors Series, be compelled to turn to the originals, bringing to the reading a basic knowledge and fresh critical perspectives.

Each volume features:

• A critical, interpretive study and explication of the author's works
• A brief biography of the author
• An accessible chronology outlining the life, work, and relevant historicalbackground of the author
• Aids for further study -- complete notes and references, a selected annotated bibliography and an index
• A readable style presented in a manageable length

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Un padre y su hijo caminan solos por una América devastada. Nada se mueve en el paisaje quemado salvo cenizas en el viento. El cielo es oscuro, la nieve gris, y el frío es capaz de romper las rocas. Su destino es la costa, aunque no saben qué, si algo, les espera allí. No tienen nada; sólo una pistola para defenderse contra las bandas que acechan la carretera, las ropas que llevan puestas, un carrito con comida, y el uno al otro.La carretera es la historia profundamente conmovedora de un viaje. Un libro que atrevidamente imagina un futuro en el que no queda esperanza, pero en el que un padre y un hijo que sólo se tienen a sí mismos, sobreviven por amor.


From the Trade Paperback edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

La Carretera - triste, inspiradora y EXCELENTE
Leí este libro cuando recién salio en ingles. Puedo confirmarles que se trata de una joya literaría. Es extremadamente triste y por momentos muy angustiante. Se trata de la historia de un padre y su hijo. Ambos vagan sin rumbo fijo por la carretera. El mundo como lo conocemos ha dejado de existir, todo esta quemado, hay tribus de canibales y peligros por todos lados y no pueden confiar en nadie. El padre en un gran esfuerzo trata todo lo posible de enseñarle a su hijo que ELLOS son los "tipos buenos" y que son los que llevan "la luz". La verdad les recomiendo este libro, tienen que tenerlo en su colección. Pronto se estrenará una pelicula basada en el mismo, actua nada más y nada menos que Viggo Mortensen (Aragon en "Lord of the Rings) como el padre que cuidará a su hijo por esta travesía despiadada en un mundo post apocalíptico. ... Read more

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In the Spring of 1975 the film director Richard Pearce approached Cormac McCarthy with the idea of writing a screenplay. Though already a widely acclaimed novelist, the author of such modern classics as The Orchard Keeper and Child of God, McCarthy had never before written a screenplay. Using nothing more than a few photographs in the footnotes to a 1928 biography of a famous pre-Civil War industrialist as inspiration, the author and Pearce together roamed the mill towns of the South researching their subject. One year later McCarthy finished The Gardener's Son,a taut, riveting drama of impotence, rage, and ultimately violence spanning two generations of mill owners and workers, fathers and sons, during the rise and fall of one of America's most bizarre utopian industrial experiments. Produced as a two-hour film and broadcast on PBS in 1976, The Gardener's Son recieved two Emmy Award nominations and was shown at the Berlin and Edinburgh Film Festivals. This is the first appearance of the film script in book form.

Set in Graniteville, South Carolina, The Gardener's Son is the tale of two families: the Greggs, a wealthy family that owns and operates the local cotton mill, and the McEvoys, a family of mill workers beset by misfortune. The action opens as Robert McEvoy, a young mill worker, is having his leg amputated -- the limb mangled in an accident rumored to have been caused by James Gregg, son of the mill's founder. McEvoy, crippled and isolated, grows into a man with a "troubled heart"; consumed by bitterness and anger, he deserts both his job and his family.

Returning two years later at the news of his mother's terminal illness, Robert McEvoy arrives only to confront the grave diggers preparing her final resting place. His father, the mill's gardener, is now working on the factory line, the gardens forgotten. These proceedings stoke the slow burning rage McEvoy carries within him, a fury that ultimately consumes both the McEvoys and the Greggs.

Customer Reviews (4)

melancholy
I agree that Cormac McCarthy is America's greatest living author. I have now read all of his works, The Gardener's Son being the last one read. It didn't disappoint me either as none of his books have. He is truely a literary genius and I would love to know him personally.

Not much to say
I give it 2.5 but I really didn't think there was much of a story here.If you're an admirer and want to read his works, this is an earlier example. Easy, undemanding read.

An Appetizer
I agree with the other reviewer who says that you should read McCarthy's books first; that's a must.I found this screenplay interesting, but a bit disappointing in places.Where I detected McCarthy's voice most was in thestage directions and monologues, and a few bits of the dialogue.The powerthe sysnopses mention was a bit lost on me; I actually found this workquite cryptic, and was puzzled by the flap copy's assertion that theaccident was "rumored to have been caused by James Gregg"--Icouldn't find even a hint of that.Maybe I missed it?

In any case, agood little snippet.Now I have to go back to the novels...

Brilliant as expected, but read his other books first
Having read everything else by Cormac McCarthy, I turned to _TheGardener's Son_ and was not disappointed. It has often been said butbears repeating that McCarthy is America's greatest living author, and Irecommend his novels to anyone who enjoys beautiful writing.But Iwouldn't suggest this screenplay unless, like me, you're already addictedto McCarthy and are looking for another "fix".It's a shortwork, fairly expensive for its brief length, and the plot is so sparse thatyou really have to be a fan of his style to feel as though you'vebenefitted from reading it.I hesitate to give less than five stars toanything by Cormac McCarthy, but this screenplay is essentially too littleof a great thing to merit the unqualified recommendation that I give to allhis other books. ... Read more

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This collection of McCarthy criticism anthologizes several of the most prescient early responses to an author who disturbed many when he first emerged, as well as biographical sketches, examinations of his dramatic scripts and his early unpublished stories. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A bright collection of insightful essays
Rick Wallach and company have produced an astonishing array of essays on McCarthy's often deep but always greatly rewarding work.

I've read some of McCarthy's novels several times, and each time I find some things I hadn't noticed before.Reading these essays in MYTH, LEGEND, DUST has awakened me to yet additional insights and different persectives.Simply amazing. ... Read more

Product Description
Even before Harold Bloom designated Blood Meridian as the Great American Novel, Cormac McCarthy had attracted unprecedented attention as a serious and successful novelist, a rare combination in recent American fiction. Critics have been quick to address McCarthy’s indebtedness to southern literature, Christianity, and existential thought, but the essays in this collection are among the first to tackle such issues as gender and race in McCarthy’s work. The rich complexity of the novels leaves room for a wide variety of interpretation. Some of the contributors see racist attitudes in McCarthy’s views of Mexico, whereas others praise his depiction of U.S.-Mexico border culture and contact. Several of the essays approach McCarthy’s work from the perspective of ecocriticism, focusing on his representations of the natural world and the relationships that his characters forge with their geographical environments. And by exploring the author’s use of and attitudes toward language, some of the contributors examine McCarthy’s complex and innovative storytelling techniques.

The contributors include Dana Phillips, K. Wesley Berry, Sara Spurgeon, Adam Parkes, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Dan Cooper Alarcón, Timothy P. Caron, Dianne C. Luce, Rick Wallach, Edwin T. Arnold, George Guillemin, Linda Townley Woodson, Matthew R. Horton, and Robert L. Jarrett. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

A sparkling study of Cormac McCarthy
This is a doctoral thesis, but it is one of the most original and satisfying interpretations of Cormac McCarthy's novels to be found anywhere.

For instance, Shane Schimpf, in his recent and excellent annotation of BLOOD MERIDIAN, suggests that the opening line, 'See the child,' is perhaps an allusion to Alexander Pope's 'Essay On Man.'Elisabeth Francisa goes way beyond that.

McCarthy repeats the 'See him' as a form of Ecce homo, behold the man, from John 19:5:

"...the phrase used by Pontius Pilate in presenting Jesus to the crowd demanding his execution. The phrase Ecce puer (Behold the child) appears in the Old Testament (Isaiah 41:1) in a passage that has traditionally been read as a prefiguration of the miracles performed by Jesus. Ecce Homo has been used since the Middle Ages as the title for paintings depicting suffering, poverty, illness, and death. Among the many works that take Ecce Puer as their title is a poem by James Joyce. Ecce Homo is the title of a book by Friedrich Nietzsche, who employs the phrase ironically. Both works may have been known to McCarthy."

The author takes one novel at a time and examines it in the light of McCarthy's metaphysics, a light dismissed by many critics, but always there dim in the darkness.

In her discussion of SUTTREE, she notes:

"...Suttree's altered states are rendered with a precision that demands close attention. Garry Wallace has written that, in a casual conversation with mutual friends, Cormac McCarthy said that he felt sorry for me because I was unable to grasp this concept of spiritual experience. He said that many people all over the world, in every religion, were familiar with this experience. He asked if I'd ever read William James's THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. His attitude seemed to indicate that in this book were the answers to many of the questions posed during our evening discussion."

"In reply to a letter Wallace wrote months later to follow up, Wallace reports that McCarthy went on to say that he thinks the mystical experience is a direct apprehension of reality, unmediated by symbol, and he ended with the thought that our inability to see spiritual truth is the greater mystery."

"Following up on these hints, William C. Spencer has produced an essay on the altered states of consciousness portrayed in SUTTREE...Spencer convincingly argues that through his newfound cosmic or mystic superconsciousness, SUTTREE moves beyond his felt duality to a sense of universal unity, and he thereby gains control over his fear of death..."

There is much more and it is a treat to read.Elisabeth Francisca deserves a much wider audience.If this interests you and you cannot afford a copy yourself, you might ask your library to order a copy (a lot of libraries have accounts with Amazon). ... Read more

Product Description
Through close examination of the formal as well as thematic organization of Cormac McCarthy's eight novels, this volume offers a radically new assessment of the work of an author who has often been described as one of the greatest contemporary American novelists. In opposition to existing McCarthy scholarship--which tends to concentrate on the regional dimensions of his work, viewing it within the literary and mythopoetic traditions of the South and Southwest--Holloway argues that McCarthy's full significance can only be understood if his work is contextualized within the broader political, economic, and intellectual discourses of the period in which his novels have been produced. Drawing on the ideas of Marxist thinkers such as Fredric Jameson, George Lukacs, and Jean-Paul Sartre, he shows how McCarthy's late modernism resists many of the postmodern assumptions about literary narrative that have come to shape our understanding of aesthetics in recent times. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

New Perspective Feels Like Home To Me
Anyone who has read much McCarthy develops a feel for his world, and David Holloway's analysis doesn't try to alter that as much as to awaken you to what was there all along.

The "late modern" McCarthy writes on his own terms, often creating a mythology all his own.And McCarthy is definitely a blue collar writer.Legends abound about him disdaining commercialism and refusing money when he had none (just to make a speaking appearance, according to an ex-wife).

McCarthy's distain for the trough, coupled with the non-commercial appeal and enduring quality of his writing, serve to endear him all the more to all modest but honest farmers and horseman and other such self-reliant folk.This hearty analysis adds much to that. ... Read more