Reading McCarthy

The guest for our 50th episode is the OG himself, the redoubtable RICK WALLACH, who joins us for a rousing discussion of No Country for Old Men. Somehow both Batman and Godzilla are referenced as we consider both the novel and the Coen Bros. film. Rick Wallach has recently retired from teaching English at the University of Miami. He is a founder of the Cormac McCarthy society, the senior and primary editor of the Cormac McCarthy Society casebook series, and editor of the two-volume collection of essays Sacred Violence as well as Myth, Legend Dust: Critical Responses to Cormac McCarthy, and co-editor with Lynnea Chapman King and the late James Welsh of From Novel to Film: No Country for Old Men. He is currently working on a new book called "In Search of Godzilla: Myth, History, and Politics in Ishiro Honda's Masterpiece." 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 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. Support the Show. Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast will accept 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...

In this episode we head across the border one more time for a consideration of the Border Trilogy as a whole. How does knowing how the story begins and ends change how we read any of the different parts? My guests on this filibuster over the border include Dr. Nell Sullivan, a Kentuckian who earned her BA in English from Vanderbilt University and earned her PhD from Rice University. She is currently Professor of English at University of Houston-Downtown, where she teaches courses in American literature and the literature of the American South. A former editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal, she has published extensively on gender and class representation in McCarthy’s novels, and has also published essays on Katherine Dunn, William Faulkner, and Nella Larsen, among others. Her work has appeared in numerous essay collections and in such journals as Genre, Critique, The Southern Quarterly, Mississippi Quarterly, and African American Review. She’s joined by long time contributor Dr. Stephen Frye. 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 book, Unguessed Kinships: Naturalism and the Geography of Hope in Cormac McCarthy, University of Alabama Press. Bringing in a breath of non-academic fresh air is Marty Priola. Voracious reader, a sometime critic, and book collector, Marty attended the Christian Brothers University of Memphis, the Publishing Institute at the University of Denver, and earned his J.D. at the University of Memphis. Marty’s website for McCarthy appreciation became the first website and a foundational part of the formation of the Cormac McCarthy Society, and he still maintains the Cormac McCarthy webpages and forums. He has written two entries on McCarthy for the Dictionary of Literary Biography. His writing is also featured in exchanges with Peter Josyph in Cormac Mccarthy’s House: Reading Mccarthy Without Walls and The Wrong Reader’s Guide to Cormac Mccarthy: All The Pretty Horses, which he edited and published in its first (ebook) form. As always, listeners 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. We appreciate favorable reviews on your favorite podcasting platform. 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.comThe 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 will accept 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...

The guest for this episode is Dr. Nick Monk, who joins me for a consideration of perhaps McCarthy’s most idiosyncratic work. The 90s were an exciting time for McCarthy fans. In 92 he published the award winning All the Pretty Horses, followed two years later by the next installment in the Border Trilogy, The Crossing. Before he would go on to close out the trilogy in 98, however, in 1995 he also published a strange and fascinating play, The Stonemason. The play is about the Telfairs, a family of Black stone masons in Louisville, Kentucky. The play examines the mystical and perhaps metafictional notion of stone masonry. Using experimental techniques, we follow Ben Telfair in his worshipful relationship to his 100 year old stonemason grandfather, Papaw. The play was canceled both figuratively and literally before it was ever fully produced. Was it shut down because of McCarthy’s appropriation of Black life? Or because the novelist included elements in the play which are more or less impossible to stage? Both? Dr. Nick Monk is the author of True and Living Prophet of Destruction: Cormac McCarthy and Modernity, published in 2016 by the University of New Mexico Press, and he edited the collection Intertextual and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Cormac McCarthy: Borders and Crossings from 2012. Nick has also published on McCarthy and the ‘Desert Gothic,’ Native American literature – particularly Leslie Silko – intercultural communication, identity, and teaching and learning in higher education. Nick is currently Director of the Center for Transformative Teaching, and Honorary Professor in the Department of English, at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. 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 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. Support the Show. Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast will accept 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 47 of READING MCCARTHY considers the author’s references to and uses of disability in its many forms. My guest DR BRENT CLINE. 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. He teaches a seminar on McCarthy every two years. 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. Support the Show. Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast will accept 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...

In this episode we ride to the end of the road in the last episode of the Border Trilogy, CITIES ON THE PLAIN. My guest for this foray is Dr. Bryan Vescio, Professor and Chair of English at High Point University in North Carolina. A guest on former episodes on faith and Suttree, Dr. Vescio 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, Nathanael West, and, of course, Cormac McCarthy. As always, listeners 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. Support the Show. Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast will accept 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...

This is our final of 3 tribute episodes in the wake of Cormac McCarthy's passing this past June. Guests on this final tribute episode include: Dr. Steven Frye, professor and chair of English at California State University in Bakersfield. Steve has just stepped down as 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. His book Unguessed Kinships: Naturalism and the Geography of Hope in Cormac McCarthy was released this past summer. Dr. Nell Sullivan earned a BA in English from Vanderbilt University and earned her PhD in English from Rice University. She is currently Professor of English at University of Houston-Downtown, where she teaches courses in American literature and the literature of the American South. A former editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal, she has published extensively on gender and class representation in McCarthy’s novels, and has also published essays on Katherine Dunn, William Faulkner, and Nella Larsen, among others. Her work has appeared in numerous essay collections and in such journals as Genre, Critique, The Southern Quarterly, Mississippi Quarterly, and African American Review. Dr. Bill Hardwig is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Tennessee. His book Upon Provincialism: Southern Literature and National Periodical Culture, 1870-1900 was published by the University of Virginia Press in 2013. He has written and published various essays on McCarthy and is currently working on a book-length study of McCarthy’s fiction tentatively titled How Cormac Works: McCarthy, Language, and Style. He is also creator of the website Literary Knox (www.literaryknox.com), which presents the rich literary history of the city in which he lives and works, Knoxville, Tennessee. Rick Wallach is one of the founders of the Cormac McCarthy society, and recently retired after some few years teaching English at the University of Miami, He is senior editor of the Cormac McCarthy Society casebook series, and editor of the two-volume collection of essays Sacred Violence as well as Myth, Legend Dust: Critical Responses to Cormac McCarthy, and co-editor with Lynnea Chapman King and the late James Welsh of From Novel to Film: No Country for Old Men. He has written widely and extensively on numerous topics in literature, film, media and contemporary music. As always, listeners beware: there be spoilers here. All music for Reading McCarthy composed, performed, and produced by Thomas Frye. The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society. We appreciate favorable reviews on your favorite podcasting platform. 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. 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/ Support the Show. Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast will accept 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...

In the wake of Cormac McCarthy's passing on June 13, 2023, a number of excellent tributes and discussion pieces were published. In this second of three tribute episode, we've asked for permission for the authors to read some of those tributes to McCarthy here on the podcast and we have also solicited a couple of others. The guests this episode include: 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; her tribute originally appeared in Publisher's Weekly. Bill Hardwig, Associate Professor of English at the University of Tennessee. His book Upon Provincialism: Southern Literature and National Periodical Culture, 1870-1900 was published by the University of Virginia Press in 2013. He has written and published various essays on McCarthy and is currently working on a book-length study of McCarthy’s fiction tentatively titled How Cormac Works: McCarthy, Language, and Style. He is also creator of the website Literary Knox (www.literaryknox.com), which presents the rich literary history of the city in which he lives and works, Knoxville, Tennessee. Previously published in The Conversation. Marty Priola launched the first McCarthy website (Cormacmccarthy.com) and is a founding member of the Cormac McCarthy society. He has written two entries on McCarthy for the Dictionary of Literary Biography. His writing is also featured in exchanges with Peter Josyph in Cormac Mccarthy’s House: Reading Mccarthy Without Walls and The Wrong Reader’s Guide To Cormac Mccarthy: All The Pretty Horses, which he edited and published in its first (ebook) form. He wrote this piece especially for the podcast. Casey Spinks is a Ph.D. candidate in theology at Baylor University. He is writing a dissertation on Søren Kierkegaard’s ontology in his religious discourses. He writes from Waco, Texas. His piece was published on the webzine Front Porch Republic. Multitalented Peter Josyph has joined us for talks on Suttree and his own works, which include The Wrong Reader’s Guide to Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses; Adventures in Reading Cormac McCarthy; Cormac McCarthy’s House: Reading McCarthy Without Walls; Liberty Street: Encounters at Ground Zero; and The Wounded River, which was a New York Times Notable Book of 1993. His films include the award-winning Liberty Street: Alive at Ground Zero; as well as Acting McCarthy: The Making of Billy Bob Thornton’s All the Pretty Horses. Solicited for the podcast from a longer piece. As always, readers should beware: there be spoilers here. All music for Reading McCarthy is composed, performed, and produced by Thomas Frye. The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society. We appreciate favorable reviews on your favorite podcasting platform. If you enjoy this podcast you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL PODCAST, hosted by my Support the Show. Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast will accept 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 will accept 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 will accept 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 will accept 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 will accept 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 will accept 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 will accept 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 will accept 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 will accept 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 35 takes a first ride across the border with the novel that would elevate McCarthy's profile and career. All the Pretty Horses won McCarthy the National Book Award following its publication in 1992 and was McCarthy's first best-selling novel. Our guest for this episode is Dr. Allen Josephs. A Hemingway scholar as well as a Cormackian, Allen Josephs is a past president of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation and Society and a past president of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association. He is the author of 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 has edited 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. He has published numerous articles on Spain and Hispanic culture in the Atlantic, the New Republic, the Virginia Quarterly, the North Dakota Quarterly, and New York Times Book Review, as well as many publications in scholarly journals. Additionally he has published numerous essays on McCarthy, some of which have been collected in On Cormac McCarthy: Essays on Mexico, Crime, Hemingway and God, published by New Street in 2016. Recently, he has translated with his daughter poet Laura Juliet Wood the work of Spanish poet Fernando Valverde, and their translation of The Insistence of Harm appeared in 2019 from the University Press of Florida. Future projects include a thematic memoir, centered on Josephs’ literary and taurine experiences from 1962 to the present. He is University Research Professor and Professor of Spanish at the University of West Florida where he has taught for more than five decades. Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the theme music and interludes 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. To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; 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 page to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy. Correction: I made kind of a big deal in this 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 will accept 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...

Some six weeks or so after the publication of McCarthy's first novel in 16 years, The Passenger, we have its slim companion volume, the little sister, if you will, Stella Maris. In this brief review, I again forego the normal conversation format to offer a quick first-take review of the newest McCarthy novel, one that many presume will be the last book of his published in his lifetime. The novel is composed of the recording of 7 interviews conducted with Alicia Western, genius and sister to The Passenger's Bobby Western, at the Stella Maris psychiatric care facility in 1972. As always, thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY. The views of the podcaster and his guests (when they are on the podcast) 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 us 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. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; 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 will accept 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...

This episode is a thorough discussion of McCarthy's use of the animal kingdom in his works. My guest in this episode is Wallis Sanborn, Chair of the Department of English, Mass Communication, and Drama, and Graduate Program Head of the Master of Arts-Master of Fine Arts in Literature, Creative Writing, and Social Justice Program at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas. Dr. Sanborn is the author of Animals in the Fiction of Cormac McCarthy (2006) and The American Novel of War: A Critical Analysis and Classification System (2012) and the editor of The Klondike Stampede (2017). His work has appeared in They Rode On: Blood Meridian and the Tragedy of the AmericanWest, Gale’s Contemporary Literary Criticism, Harold Bloom’s Modern Critical Views, The Cormac McCarthy Journal, Southwestern American Literature, Texas Books in Review, Voices de la Luna, Iron Horse Literary Review, and Concho River Review. 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, although in our hearts we hope they’ll someday see the light. Download and follow us 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 and Facebook; 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 will accept 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...

After a sixteen year wait, we finally have a new novel by Cormac McCarthy grasped in our greedy little podcasting clutches. In this episode of the podcast, we break with form a bit. There's no guest discussion this episode; instead we offer a quick review of THE PASSENGER. Is it completely correct to call it McCarthy's "new novel" since we know he's been working on it since at least the early 90s? Has the wait been worth it? Will this prove a worthy finale to a remarkable career? Do you have to be able to discuss string theory at length to understand it? Where do the physical, the metaphysical, and the metafictional all meet? The review tries to avoid big spoilers other than those provided by the book jacket and already leaked through other major reviews. As always, thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY. The views of the podcaster and his guests (when they are on the podcast) 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 us 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. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; 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 will accept 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...

This episode delves again into McCarthy's roots as we consider his intersections with Irish literature. The guest in this episode is Tennessean by birth and now fully Texified, Richard R. Russell is Professor of English and director of graduate programs at Baylor University. He earned an M Phil at the University of Glasgow and his MA and PhD from the U of North Carolina. Books include Seamus Heaney: A Critical Introduction, Edinburgh University Press, Seamus Heaney's Regions. University of Notre Dame Press, June 2014. Modernity, Community, and Place in Brian Friel’s Drama. Syracuse University Press, Irish Studies series, 2013. Poetry and Peace: Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney, and Northern Ireland. University of Notre Dame Press, 2010, and forthcoming James Joyce and Samaritan Hospitality by Edinburgh University Press. He has published articles on McCarthy, including one on Beckett’s influences in English Studies and “Embodying Place: Ecotheology and Deep Incarnation in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road,” Christianity and Literature. Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the theme music and interludes 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. To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; 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 page 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 will accept 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...