Reading McCarthy – Détails, épisodes et analyse

This 53rd episode of READING MCCARTHY takes a long ramble down THE ROAD, McCarthy’s 2006 Pulitzer Prize winning novel of a father and son enduring life in a harrowing, ashen landscape after some undisclosed apocalypse. For this discussion I’m glad to welcome back guest Dr. Bryan Vescio. Professor and Chair of English at High Point University in North Carolina, Dr. Vescio has previously joined us for discussions on Suttree and Cities of the Plain, among others. He is the author of the 2014 book Reconstruction in Literary Studies: An Informalist Approach, as well as numerous articles on American authors including Mark Twain, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, and Nathanael West, and articles on works by Cormac Mccarthy  including Suttree, Blood Meridian, and The Road.

Thomas Frye composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  

The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society. If you’re agreeable it’ll help us if you provide favorable reviews on your favorite podcasting platforms.  If you enjoy this podcast, you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt. 

To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Despite the evening redness in the west Reading McCarthy is still nominally on X aka Twitter that was.  The website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the webpage to buy the show a cappuccino.

Support the show

Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast began accepting minor sponsorship offers to offset the costs of the podcast. This may cause a mild disconnect in earlier podcasts where the host asks for patrons in lieu of sponsorships. But if we compare it to a very large and naked bald man in the middle of the desert who leads you to an extinct volcano to create gunpowder, it seems pretty minor...

Episode 52 is a round table considering the impact of Ernest Hemingway’s writing on the works of Cormac McCarthy.  Joining us for this discussion are Dr. Olivia Carr Edenfield, Professor of English at Georgia Southern University.  She is a founding member of the Society for the Study of the American Short Story and Director of the American Literature Association.  She has recently published a defense of the mother in The Road  in the CMJ.    

 Dr. Brent Cline is an associate professor of English at Hillsdale College.  He has published articles and chapters involving disability on Walker Percy, James Agee, and Daniel Keyes. His review of The Passenger/Stella Maris was published with The University Bookman. His article on The Mexican Revolution and All the Pretty Horses was just published in the CMJ.  

 Dr. Bryan Giemza is an Associate Professor of Humanities and Literature in the Honors College at Texas Tech University. He  is author or editor of  numerous books on American literary and cultural history, ten book chapters, and more than thirty published articles and reviews. His books include Irish Catholic Writers and the Invention of the American South, and more recently Science and Literature in Cormac McCarthy’s Expanding Worlds (2023), and the forthcoming Across the Canyons: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Divisive Communications in West Texas and Beyond, Texas Tech UP.  

 Dr. Allen Josephs joined us for a discussion of All the Pretty Horses.  A past president of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation and Society and the South Atlantic Modern Language Association in 2008, where he was awarded the continuing honorary membership.  He is the author of some 15 books, including On Hemingway and Spain: Essays and Reviews 1979 – 2013; White Wall of Spain: The Mysteries of Andalusian Culture; and For Whom the Bell Tolls: Ernest Hemingway’s Undiscovered Country. He is the author of four critical editions of the poetry of Federico García Lorca and a book of translations of Lorca’s poetry and prose, Only Mystery: Federico García Lorca’s Poetry in Word and Image. . His book On Cormac McCarthy: Essays on Mexico, Crime, Hemingway and God, was published in 2016. Dr. Josephs is professor emeritus from the University of West Florida where has taught for more than five decades and now resides in Spain.  

As always, readers are warned: there be spoilers here. 

 Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society, although in our hearts we hope they’ll someday see the light.  If you enjoy this podcast you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt. 

To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Despite the evening redness in the west Reading McCarthy is nominally still on Twitter/X.  The website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com.

Support the show

Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast began accepting minor sponsorship offers to offset the costs of the podcast. This may cause a mild disconnect in earlier podcasts where the host asks for patrons in lieu of sponsorships. But if we compare it to a very large and naked bald man in the middle of the desert who leads you to an extinct volcano to create gunpowder, it seems pretty minor...

On June 13, 2023, we lost a literary giant.  Cormac McCarthy, the greatest writer of our time (in this podcast's completely unbiased opinion) passed away in Santa Fe, New Mexico, his home these past couple of decades.  E-mails and queries started pouring in, mostly asking, "are you going to do a special tribute podcast?  And the answer to that, is yes.  Episode 43 is the first of 3 planned tribute episodes to McCarthy.

 Joining us for this first panel is a roundup of some of the usual suspects: 

Dianne Luce, founding founding member and past president of the Cormac McCarthy Society, author of Reading the World: Cormac McCarthy’s Tennessee Period (2009) and more recently Embracing Vocation: Cormac McCarthy's Writing Life, 1959-1974;

 Stacey Peebles, Chair of the English program, Director of Film Studies, and the Marlene and David Grissom Professor of Humanities at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, author of Cormac McCarthy and Performance: Page, Stage, Screen (2017) and co-editor  of Approaches to Teaching the Works of Cormac McCarthy (2022, MLA press); she has been editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal since 2010, and is now the President of the Cormac McCarthy Society;

 Bryan Giemza's books include the literary history Irish Catholic Writers and the Invention of the American South.  Recently he has worked with the Texas Tech Climate Center and just out from Bloomsbury press is Science and Literature in Cormac McCarthy’s Expanding Worlds; 

 Lydia Cooper's most recent book is Cormac McCarthy: A Complexity Theory of Literature; other books includes Masculinities in Literature of the American West: and No More Heroes: Narrative Perspective and Morality in the Novels of books of Cormac McCarthy.

 Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society.  Download and follow on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.  If you’re agreeable it’ll help us if you provide favorable reviews on these platforms.  If you enjoy this podcast you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt. 

 To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Despite the evening redness in the west Reading McCarthy is also on Twitter.  The website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the webpage to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.

Support the show

Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast began accepting minor sponsorship offers to offset the costs of the podcast. This may cause a mild disconnect in earlier podcasts where the host asks for patrons in lieu of sponsorships. But if we compare it to a very large and naked bald man in the middle of the desert who leads you to an extinct volcano to create gunpowder, it seems pretty minor...

Like the rest of the world I learned this past Tuesday, June 13th, that Cormac McCarthy had passed away at the age of 89.  This episode had already been recorded, but I thought it would still serve as an initial and quick response to the need to offer a tribute: it's a compilation of the responses to the question What's your favorite McCarthy novel, and why? from the podcast's first 16 guests.

 The guests responding to the "favorite book and why" question this episode are: 

 Steven Frye, Dianne Luce, Bill Hardwig, Nell Sullivan, Brian Giemza, Dennis McCarthy, Stacey Peebles, Paulo Faria, Jay Watson, Marty Priola, Bryan Vescio, Michael Crews, Peter Josyph, Richard Poe, Rick Wallach, Lydia Cooper, and myself.  It is worth noting that at the time of the recording of each of these responses, The Passenger and Stella Maris had not yet been published.

 A more intentional tribute will be forthcoming soon. 

 As posted on the society website:

 Cormac McCarthy 
 1933-2023

It is with great sadness but also with deep gratitude that we mourn the loss of Cormac McCarthy. His contributions to literature, and to our lives, have been momentous. McCarthy was one of the most notable authors of his or indeed any generation. In his long, rich life, lived in places as various as Knoxville, Santa Fe, and Ibiza, his voracious curiosity led him equally to the most abstract ideas and the most downtrodden of barflies, all the cracks and corners of human thought and experience, our endless potential for both coming together and violently wrenching apart. He never compromised his devotion to the beauty of language and the necessary art of storytelling. He leaves behind an extraordinary body of work, tapestries of character, history, philosophy, environment, and the moral questions that pull at all of us.

 Stacey Peebles, President

Lydia Cooper, Vice President

 Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  

 The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society, although in our hearts we hope they’ll someday see the light.  Download and follow on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.  If you’re agreeable it’ll help us if you provide favorable reviews on these platforms.  If you enjoy this podcast you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt. 

 To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Despite the evening redness in the west Reading McCarthy is also on Twitter.  The website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the webpage to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.

Support the show

Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast began accepting minor sponsorship offers to offset the costs of the podcast. This may cause a mild disconnect in earlier podcasts where the host asks for patrons in lieu of sponsorships. But if we compare it to a very large and naked bald man in the middle of the desert who leads you to an extinct volcano to create gunpowder, it seems pretty minor...

Episode 41 is our second excursion over the border as the Brothers Elmore and I finish our conversation about THE CROSSING.  Returning as the guests are twin scholars Jonathan and Rick Elmore.  That's right, twins.  Jonathan Elmore is Associate Professor of English at Savannah State University and the Managing Editor of Watchung Review.. He is the editor of Fiction and the Sixth Mass Extinction: Narrative in an Era of Loss (Lexington) and co-author of An Introduction to African and Afro-Diasporic Peoples and Influences in British Literature and Culture before the Industrial Revolution (ALG). His scholarship has been published in The Cormac McCarthy Journal, Mississippi Quarterly, The British Fantasy Society Journal, Orbit, The Journal of Liberal Arts and Humanities, and The Criterion, among others.    

His twin brother Rick Elmore is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Appalachian State University and Senior Managing Editor of book reviews at Symposium. He researches and teaches in the areas of twentieth-century French philosophy, critical theory, animal philosophy, and Cormac McCarthy Studies. He is the co-editor of The Biopolitics of Punishment: Derrida and Foucault (Northwestern University Press). His articles and essays have appeared in Politics & Policy, Symplokē, Symposium, Mississippi Quarterly, and The Cormac McCarthy Journal, among others.

 As always, readers should beware: there be spoilers here.

Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society, although in our hearts we hope they’ll someday see the light.  We appreciate favorable reviews on your favorite podcasting platform.  If you enjoy this podcast you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt. 

To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Despite the evening redness in the west Reading McCarthy is also on Twitter.  The website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the webpage to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.

Support the show

Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast began accepting minor sponsorship offers to offset the costs of the podcast. This may cause a mild disconnect in earlier podcasts where the host asks for patrons in lieu of sponsorships. But if we compare it to a very large and naked bald man in the middle of the desert who leads you to an extinct volcano to create gunpowder, it seems pretty minor...

Episode 40 is a long ride through rough country as we dig into The CROSSING, McCarthy's masterful middle volume in the Border Trilogy.  My guests today are twin scholars Jonathan and Rick Elmore.  That's right, twins.  Jonathan Elmore is Associate Professor of English at Savannah State University and the Managing Editor of Watchung Review.. He is the editor of Fiction and the Sixth Mass Extinction: Narrative in an Era of Loss (Lexington) and co-author of An Introduction to African and Afro-Diasporic Peoples and Influences in British Literature and Culture before the Industrial Revolution (ALG). His scholarship has been published in The Cormac McCarthy Journal, Mississippi Quarterly, The British Fantasy Society Journal, Orbit, The Journal of Liberal Arts and Humanities, and The Criterion, among others.    

His twin brother Rick Elmore is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Appalachian State University and Senior Managing Editor of book reviews at Symposium. He researches and teaches in the areas of twentieth-century French philosophy, critical theory, animal philosophy, and Cormac McCarthy Studies. He is the co-editor of The Biopolitics of Punishment: Derrida and Foucault (Northwestern University Press). His articles and essays have appeared in Politics & Policy, Symplokē, Symposium, Mississippi Quarterly, and The Cormac McCarthy Journal, among others.

As always, readers should beware: there be spoilers here.

Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society, although in our hearts we hope they’ll someday see the light.  We appreciate favorable reviews on your favorite podcasting platform.  If you enjoy this podcast you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt. 

To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Despite the evening redness in the west Reading McCarthy is also on Twitter.  The website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the webpage to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.

Support the show

Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast began accepting minor sponsorship offers to offset the costs of the podcast. This may cause a mild disconnect in earlier podcasts where the host asks for patrons in lieu of sponsorships. But if we compare it to a very large and naked bald man in the middle of the desert who leads you to an extinct volcano to create gunpowder, it seems pretty minor...

Cormac still types his novels on an Olivetti typewriter and your host can't figure out Facebook.  So for Episode 39 we bring in some expert help in the form of a lively discussion with Redditor supreme Joe Parslow.  He has moderated the Cormac McCarthy subreddit for over a decade and has seen it grow from its first post in April 2012 to its current position as the largest online community devoted to the works of Cormac McCarthy.  In March 2023 the membership of the subreddit approached 12,000 members. He is a professional writer and the former Senior Editor of the online literary journal Holy Cuspidor. Joe earned simultaneous bachelor’s degrees in English and philosophy from The College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York, where he also earned his Master’s degree in English. He lives in upstate New York with his wife, his daughter, and his dog, Pfeiffer.  Please join us for this discussion of the role of social media in getting the word out, a brief consideration of The Passenger and Stella Maris, and other things cormackian.   As always the discussion is far ranging, and beware: there be spoilers here.

As always, thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  

The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their employers or the Cormac McCarthy Society, although in our hearts we hope they’ll someday see the light.  You can follow the podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.  If you’re agreeable it’ll help us if you provide favorable reviews on these platforms.  If you enjoy this podcast you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt. 

To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Despite the evening redness in the west Reading McCarthy is also on Twitter.  The website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the webpage to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.

Support the show

Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast began accepting minor sponsorship offers to offset the costs of the podcast. This may cause a mild disconnect in earlier podcasts where the host asks for patrons in lieu of sponsorships. But if we compare it to a very large and naked bald man in the middle of the desert who leads you to an extinct volcano to create gunpowder, it seems pretty minor...

 Today's guest is George Berridge. George began academic life as a journalist but like Hank Williams saw the light and also began digging deeply into American Literature.  He's now the American Literature editor of the Times Literary Supplement. He lives and works in London. His exceptional review of THE PASSENGER and STELLA MARIS was published in October of last year.  He joins me in a nice conversation about the role of the literary critic in modern journalism (with of course a focus on the works of McCarthy). 

 Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  

 The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their employers or the Cormac McCarthy Society.  Download and follow on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.  If you’re agreeable it’ll help us if you provide favorable reviews on these platforms.  If you enjoy this podcast you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt. 

 To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Despite the evening redness in the west Reading McCarthy is also on Twitter.  The website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the webpage to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.

 To read George Berridge's review of The Passenger, see: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-passenger-stella-maris-cormac-mccarthy-book-review-george-berridge/

 Valerie Stivers' review is published in Compact Magazine and may be found here:

https://compactmag.com/article/cormac-mccarthy-s-masterpiece

Support the show

Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast began accepting minor sponsorship offers to offset the costs of the podcast. This may cause a mild disconnect in earlier podcasts where the host asks for patrons in lieu of sponsorships. But if we compare it to a very large and naked bald man in the middle of the desert who leads you to an extinct volcano to create gunpowder, it seems pretty minor...

Frequent guests Steven Frye and Stacey Peebles join me for another roundup of All the Pretty Horses, the National Book Award winning novel which finally forced the literary world to sit up and take notice of McCarthy.  We climb on and hold tight for this ride through this incredible novel. 

 Stacey Peebles is Chair of the English program, Director of Film Studies, and the Marlene and David Grissom Professor of Humanities at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky.  She is the author of Welcome to the Suck: Narrating the American Soldier's Experience in Iraq (Cornell Univ Press, 2011) and Cormac McCarthy and Performance: Page, Stage, Screen (Univ of Texas, 2017).  She is editor of the collection Violence in Literature and, with Ben West, is co-editor of the volume Approaches to Teaching the Works of Cormac McCarthy, published this past year by MLA.  She has published widely on the representation of contemporary war and on McCarthy, and has been editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal since 2010.  

 Steve Frye is professor and chair of English at California State University, Bakersfield and President of the Cormac McCarthy Society. He is the author of Understanding Cormac McCarthy (Univ. of South Carolina Press) and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Cormac McCarthy, and Cambridge UP’s Cormac McCarthy in Context. He has written numerous journal articles on Cormac McCarthy and other authors of the American Romanticist Tradition.  Additionally, he is the author of the novel Dogwood Crossing and the forthcoming book, Unguessed Kinships: Naturalism and the Geography of Hope in Cormac McCarthy, University of Alabama Press. 

 Listeners are reminded this is a show of approachable literary criticism and not a review show, and so we don't always shy away from spoilers; discussions of his novel may spoil other parts of the Border Trilogy. 

Thanks as well to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society. Download and follow us on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.  Listeners may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt. 

 To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Despite the evening redness in the west Reading McCarthy is also on Twitter; the website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com.  

Correction: I made kind of a big deal in this and the other ATPH episode about how John Grady is not called a boy after he crosses into Mexico. I seem to have done the search wrong, because one excellent reader has found that he is, indeed, referred to as a boy after he’s in Mexico, but the collective group seems not to be called the boys in the after that point.  

Support the show

Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast began accepting minor sponsorship offers to offset the costs of the podcast. This may cause a mild disconnect in earlier podcasts where the host asks for patrons in lieu of sponsorships. But if we compare it to a very large and naked bald man in the middle of the desert who leads you to an extinct volcano to create gunpowder, it seems pretty minor...

Like Cormac McCarthy, Wes Morgan was born in the North—Albany, New York rather than Rhode Island—but came south at the age of 4.  Wes grew up in Atlanta and earned BS degrees in Physics and Applied Psychology at Georgia Tech.  In 1962 Wes moved to Knoxville and began working on his doctorate in psychology.  He went on to work as a staff psychologist at Palo Alto Veterans Administration Hospital in California, where he met Marian, who would become his wife, Wes and his family returned to Knoxville in 1970 to join the faculty in the Department of Psychology at the University of Tennessee, where he remained until his retirement from full-time teaching in 2007.  Wes has had a longstanding interest in the writings of Cormac McCarthy with particular focus on the early novels centered in Knoxville and East Tennessee.  He has developed a website called "Searching for Suttree" which shows photographs of the places mentioned in that novel and is working on a reader's guide to the book as well.  Wes has published articles and chapters on McCarthy in numerous places, including The Cormac McCarthy Journal, the Casebook series, Appalachian Heritage, and Puerto Del Sol. 

Support the show

Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast began accepting minor sponsorship offers to offset the costs of the podcast. This may cause a mild disconnect in earlier podcasts where the host asks for patrons in lieu of sponsorships. But if we compare it to a very large and naked bald man in the middle of the desert who leads you to an extinct volcano to create gunpowder, it seems pretty minor...