DOCSLIB.ORG

3. Mccarthy Criticism

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
3. Mccarthy Criticism 3. McCarthy Criticism This chapter starts by discussing the beginnings of McCarthy criticism, which are linked to the commercial success of All the Pretty Horses. The rest of the chapter analyses specific studies of McCarthy in order to better contextualize my own arguments. 3.1. McCarthy as Author: Beginnings of Secondary Literature Vereen Bell¶s 1988 The Achievement of Cormac McCarthy is the cornerstone on which all subsequent criticism has been built and to which reference must always be made. Early secondary literature was typically more concerned with establishing McCarthy as a serious author within academia than with laying out a clear methodology and fixed critical positions. Rick Wallach comments that early studies like %HOO¶VKDGWKHLPSOLFLWJRDORISURYLQJ³ZK\&RUPDF0F&DUWK\LVVR good´ 2002: 1). Bell purports that his study, ³has no thesis other than that which issues from the cryptic intelligibility of the novels themselves when they are patiently and attentively considered´ (1988: xiii), which is as much as to say that he uses a hodgepodge of methodology, depending on its suitability to the text at hand. Bell addresses all the McCarthy novels existing at that time, from The Orchard Keeper to Blood Meridian. The preponderance of his technical vocabulary centers on terms like unity, structure, balance but also metaphysics, theme, discourse, reoccurrence. All in all he aesthetizes the novels, eschewing political and social issues in favor of humanistic appreciation and philosophical insights. This somewhat loose approach did, however, generate many good ideas and much fruitful debate on McCarthy, spurring other critics to quickly produce more secondary literature. Though Bell avoids questions of classification, later critics did debate the matter of aesthetic codes (realist, modern, postmodern, etc.) in McCarthy¶s fiction and were more apt to address issues of methodology. 88 Cormac McCarthy and the Writing of American Spaces The real catalyst to McCarthy criticism was the popular success of All the Pretty Horses almost immediately following its publication in 1993. Upon the death of his longtime editor at Random House, Albert Erskine (also Faulkner¶s editor), McCarthy switched to another publishing company, Alfred A. Knopf, which heavily promoted the new book. While by 1993 Blood Meridian had only sold 1,500 copies, All the Pretty Horses sold 500,000 within the first two years of its release. Since that time, McCarthy has become a national literary figure, winning the National Book Award for fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in the same year. His fame today appears even more certain and destined to last, in light of film productions of All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men and The Road. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for The Road in 2006 and Harold Bloom has named him one of the four great novelists of his time, along with Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Philip Roth. The first academic conference on McCarthy was held in 1993, select essays of which were published in the 1994 anthology Sacred Violence. Since then there have been over twenty additional book length studies on McCarthy and countless articles. McCarthy criticism has now moved into a more mature phase with established positions and a wide array of methodology wielded by critics of diverse backgrounds and interests. One of the best of these books is The Late Modernism of Cormac McCarthy in which David Holloway undertakes a Marxist metacriticism of the most important secondary literature on McCarthy to date; it is valuable for its insights and rigorous methodology, as well as for a review of McCarthy criticism up to 2002. Though McCarthy has been known to the general public and to academia for more than fifteen years now, his most recent novel, The Road, calls for a reassessment of its author¶s oeuvre. Whereas other McCarthy texts engage very specific places and times (pre-war Appalachia or the post-war border regions of Texas and Mexico), this latest novel eschews even the very notion of specificity by its post- apocalyptic setting and almost categorical avoidance of proper nouns (there are eight in the text).1 2QH FDQ GLYLGH 0F&DUWK\¶V OLWHUDU\ 1 &ORVHDWWHQWLRQWRWKHWH[WUHYHDOVVRPHPDUNHUVVXFKDVWKH³6HH5RFN&LW\´ sign that place The Road in the southeastern United States. The text begs the .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Addition to Summer Letter
    May 2020 Dear Student, You are enrolled in Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition for the coming school year. Bowling Green High School has offered this course since 1983. I thought that I would tell you a little bit about the course and what will be expected of you. Please share this letter with your parents or guardians. A.P. Literature and Composition is a year-long class that is taught on a college freshman level. This means that we will read college level texts—often from college anthologies—and we will deal with other materials generally taught in college. You should be advised that some of these texts are sophisticated and contain mature themes and/or advanced levels of difficulty. In this class we will concentrate on refining reading, writing, and critical analysis skills, as well as personal reactions to literature. A.P. Literature is not a survey course or a history of literature course so instead of studying English and world literature chronologically, we will be studying a mix of classic and contemporary pieces of fiction from all eras and from diverse cultures. This gives us an opportunity to develop more than a superficial understanding of literary works and their ideas. Writing is at the heart of this A.P. course, so you will write often in journals, in both personal and researched essays, and in creative responses. You will need to revise your writing. I have found that even good students—like you—need to refine, mature, and improve their writing skills. You will have to work diligently at revising major essays.
    [Show full text]
  • Cormac Mccarthy's Suttree
    Missing in Portuguese: Prolegomenon to a Translation of Cormac McCarthy‟s Suttree Michael Scott Doyle (University of North Carolina at Charlotte) Missing in Portuguese is a translation of Cormac McCarthy‟s fourth novel, Suttree.1 Why should this be of concern? Because Portuguese is a major world language,2 Cormac McCarthy is one of the most acclaimed contemporary American novelists, and Suttree, published in 1979, is one of his most lauded novels. McCarthy—winner of a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship (1981), also known as the “genius grant,” the National Book Award (1992) and National Book Critics Circle Award (1992) for his novel All the Pretty Horses, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (2007), and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2007) for The Road—is a high priest among American writers. While eight of his ten novels have been translated into Portuguese—O Guarda do Pomar in 1996 [The Orchard Keeper, 1965], Filho de Deus, 1994 [Child of God, 1974], Meridiano de Sangue, 2006 [Blood Meridian, 1985], Todos os Belos Cavalos, 1993 [All the Pretty Horses, 1992], A Travessia, 1999 [The Crossing, 1994], Cidades da Planície, 2001 [Cities of the Plain, 1998], Onde os Velhos Não Têm Vez, 2007 [No Country for Old Men, 2005] and A Estrada, 2007 [The Road, 2006]—Suttree awaits its rightful rendition into this major literary language as well.3 The translation-to-be will require the talents of a master wordsmith in order to felicitously bring the novel‟s many complexities into Portuguese, and doing so will enrich the library of world literature available in the Portuguese language.
    [Show full text]
  • AP Literature Summer Assignment Information
    HS East AP Literature Summer Assignment Ms. Morgan / HS East / W24 [email protected] NOTE: Guidance processes course requests and prerequisites over the summer, usually confirming enrollments in July. Attending this meeting DOES NOT MEAN you are officially in the course yet. If you complete this assignment before Guidance confirms placement, you do so AT YOUR OWN RISK! Materials: Looseleaf Binder (1.5” to 2” with the following recommended 5-section headings: Class Discussion / Writing / Reading Notes / ILE Notes / Vocabulary); Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (or equivalent; NOT “student” dictionary) Sticky Notes (Post-Its®, etc; multi-colored 3” & 1” squares are most handy) Course Overview: Between now and May, you will be aiming to achieve mastery over an extensive range of literary genres and time periods from at least the Renaissance through contemporary literature (though the Ancient and Medieval eras also bear much sweet fruit), and represented by as many individual works of literature as possible, from full-length novels and plays to short stories and poems. Competence with as much literary terminology as possible combined with knowledge of relevant historical and cultural contexts and development of a strong analytic writing style further support success on the exam — and well beyond. I am honored to share that I hear from former students every year who report that this course made the difference for them — regardless of their future fields of study. Summer Assignment, Part A: Reading for Fun and Profit! (or at least for credit...)
    [Show full text]
  • Complete List of Oprah's Book Club Books
    Complete List of Oprah’s Book Club Books 2020 American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker Deacon King Kong by James McBride 2019 The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates Waterford does not own, can request Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout from another library 2018 An American Marriage by Tayari Jones The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton Becoming by Michelle Obama 2017 Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue 2016 The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead Love Warrior: A Memoir by Glennon Doyle Martin 2015 Ruby by Cynthia Bond 2014 The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd (announced in 2013, published in 2014) 2012 – “Oprah’s Book Club 2.0,” post-Oprah Winfrey Show club launched Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis 2010 Freedom by Jonathan Franzen A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 2009 Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan 2008 A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski 2007 The Measure of a Man by Sidney Poitier The Road by Cormac McCarthy Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett 2006 Night by Elie Wiesel 2005 A Million Little Pieces by James Frey As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, and Light in August by William Faulkner 2004 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy The Good Earth by Pearl S.
    [Show full text]
  • Oprah's Book Club Titles
    Oprah’s 1998 1996 Paradise by Toni Morrison The Deep End of the Ocean by Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman Jacquelyn Mitchard Book Club Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton Danticat She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb I Know This Much Is True by Wally titles Lamb What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary 1996 - 2010 Day by Pearl Cleage Midwives by Chris Bohjalian Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts 1997 Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou Songs In Ordinary Time by Mary McGarry Morris The Meanest Thing To Say by Bill Cosby A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines Mount Vernon City Library Mount Vernon A Virtuous Woman by Kaye Gibbons 315 Snoqualmie Street Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons Mount Vernon, WA 9827 City Library The Treasure Hunt by Bill Cosby 360-336-6209 The Best Way To Play by Bill Cosby 2010 2005 2001 Freedom by Jonathan Franzen Light in August by William Faulkner We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens The Sound and the Fury by William Oates Great Expectations by Charles Dickens Faulkner Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert A Million Little Pieces by James Frey Jail by Malika Oufkir 2009 Cane River by Lalita Tademy The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen Say You’re One of Them by Uwem 2004 A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry Akpan One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez The Heart is a Lonely Hunter 2008 by Carson McCullers 2000 A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy Gap Creek by Robert Morgan The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David The Good Earth by Pearl S.
    [Show full text]
  • In the Wake of the Sun: Navigating the Southern Works of Cormac Mccarthy © 2009 by Christopher J
    In the Wake of the Sun Navigating the Southern Works of Cormac McCarthy Christopher J. Walsh In the Wake of the Sun In the Wake of the Sun Navigating the Southern Works of Cormac McCarthy Christopher J. Walsh Newfound Press THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE LIBRARIES, KNOXVILLE In the Wake of the Sun: Navigating the Southern Works of Cormac McCarthy © 2009 by Christopher J. Walsh Digital version at www.newfoundpress.utk.edu/pubs/walsh Newfound Press is a digital imprint of the University of Tennessee Libraries. Its publications are available for non-commercial and educational uses, such as research, teaching and private study. The author has licensed the work under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/>. For all other uses, contact: Newfound Press University of Tennessee Libraries 1015 Volunteer Boulevard Knoxville, TN 37996-1000 www.newfoundpress.utk.edu ISBN-13: 978-0-9797292-7-0 ISBN-10: 0-9797292-7-0 Walsh, Christopher J., 1968- In the wake of the sun : navigating the southern works of Cormac McCarthy / by Christopher J. Walsh. Knoxville, Tenn. : Newfound Press, University of Tennessee Libraries, c2009. xxiii, 376 p. : digital, PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. [357]-376). 1. McCarthy, Cormac, 1933- -- Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. PS3563.C337 Z943 2009 Book and cover design by Jayne Rogers Cover image by Andi Pantz I dedicate this book to my mother, Maureen Lillian Walsh, and to the memory of my father, Peter Anthony Walsh (1934-2000), as their hard work and innumerable sacrifices made all of this possible.
    [Show full text]
  • Gender Studies in Cormac Mccarthy's the Road
    ===================================================================== Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 18:3 March 2018 Dr. T. Deivasigamani, Editor: Vol. II Black Writings: A Subaltern Perspective Annamalai University, Tamilnadu, India ===================================================================== Gender Studies in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road Kalithabegam, M.Phil. Scholar ================================================================== Courtesy: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Road-Cormac-McCarthy/dp/0330447548 Abstract This paper deals with the brief history of the Post-apocalyptic Fiction, “The Road”. Cormac McCarthy is an American Writer. The novel deals with the theme of Gender studies. This novel deals with two unnamed persons man and his son as they seek to survive. The Author is a =================================================================== Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 18:3 March 2018 Dr. T. Deivasigamani, Editor: Vol. II Black Writings: A Subaltern Perspective Kalithabegam, M.Phil. Scholar Gender Studies in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road 86 specialist to give masculine gender very effectively and lack of female character. The woman is the wife of man and mother of the boy. The female characters are not found in the novel, the author did not give importance to the female character. The man portrayed as survival and boy as Morality. The man surviving toils in nature. The journey seems to be tough, that makes man and the boy feel hungry. Identifying the food is a continual struggle. The man falls in sick in the Journey. Nature is one thing, but man and boy survive other humans. The boy portrays as clear authority on morality. The man faces many struggles in their journey. His main intention is to protest boy his boy from others.
    [Show full text]
  • Annie Proulx—A Writer in Quest
    English Language and Literature Studies; Vol. 8, No. 4; 2018 ISSN 1925-4768 E-ISSN 1925-4776 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education Annie Proulx—A Writer in Quest Xiaojuan Liu1 1 College English Department, Capital Normal University, Beijing, China Correspondence: Xiaojuan Liu, College English Department, Capital Normal University, Beijing, China. Received: October 5, 2018 Accepted: October 30, 2018 Online Published: November 28, 2018 doi:10.5539/ells.v8n4p104 URL: https://doi.org/10.5539/ells.v8n4p104 Abstract This article reviews Annie Proulx’s life and her writing career and examines the quest motif throughout her writing, in order to shed light on Annie Proulx studies. It explores Proulx’s insight into the existential predicament of contemporary people living in a post-industrial society as traditional culture is getting lost and traditional ways of living are out of date. By setting her characters on the journey of quest in an attempt to discover who they really are, Proulx has invigorated the traditional quest motif. Keywords: Annie Proulx, quest 1. Introduction As a fiction writer, fame came to Annie Proulx relatively late in life. When her first novel, Postcards (1992), won her the 1993 PEN\Faulkner Award for fiction, she was already 58 years old. As the first female writer who had breached this male cultural bastion (Note 1), she has written her name into the history of the award as well as that of American literature. Her second novel, The Shipping News (1993), which became a greater success both commercially and critically, sent Proulx directly to literary stardom.
    [Show full text]
  • AMERICAN LITERARY MINIMALISM by ROBERT CHARLES
    AMERICAN LITERARY MINIMALISM by ROBERT CHARLES CLARK (Under the Direction of James Nagel) ABSTRACT American Literary Minimalism stands as an important yet misunderstood stylistic movement. It is an extension of aesthetics established by a diverse group of authors active in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that includes Amy Lowell, William Carlos Williams, and Ezra Pound. Works within the tradition reflect several qualities: the prose is “spare” and “clean”; important plot details are often omitted or left out; practitioners tend to excise material during the editing process; and stories tend to be about “common people” as opposed to the powerful and aristocratic. While these descriptors and the many others that have been posited over the years are in some ways helpful, the mode remains poorly defined. The core idea that differentiates American Minimalism from other movements is that prose and poetry should be extremely efficient, allusive, and implicative. The language in this type of fiction tends to be simple and direct. Narrators do not often use ornate adjectives and rarely offer effusive descriptions of scenery or extensive detail about characters’ backgrounds. Because authors tend to use few words, each is invested with a heightened sense of interpretive significance. Allusion and implication by omission are often employed as a means to compensate for limited exposition, to add depth to stories that on the surface may seem superficial or incomplete. Despite being scattered among eleven decades, American Minimalists share a common aesthetic. They were not so much enamored with the idea that “less is more” but that it is possible to write compact prose that still achieves depth of setting, characterization, and plot without including long passages of exposition.
    [Show full text]
  • Masculinity in Modern American Fiction (1969–1977) Focuses on Masculinity in Late Twentieth-­Century American Fiction
    From the Delivered to the Dispatched From the Delivered to the Dispatched: Masculinity in Modern American Fiction (1969–1977) focuses on masculinity in late twentieth- century American fiction. In this rigorous study, Harriet Stilley shows the vari- ous ways post-war American authors engage with the tension between late capitalist consumer culture and traditional national conceptions of American manhood. Drawing on examples from the works of prolific contemporary American writers, including John Cheever, James Dickey, Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison and Michael Herr, Stilley investi- gates hypermasculine male violence, the classical and grotesque body, as well as specific regional themes such as the Western frontier, the Ameri- can Adam, the Southern Gothic and the Suburban Gothic. Harriet Stilley teaches American Literature at the University of Edin- burgh. Her research interests focus on masculinity in late twentieth- century American fiction. Harriet’s work has been published in a number of American, British and European journals, including the Cor- mac McCarthy Journal, the Journal of American Studies, the European Journal of American Studies, and the European Journal of American Culture. Routledge Studies in Contemporary Literature 20 Poetry Against the World Philip Larkin and Charles Tomlinson in Contemporary Britain Magdalena Kay 21 Tim O’Brien The Things He Carries and the Stories He Tells Tobey C. Herzog 22 The Wounded Hero in Contemporary Fiction A Paradoxical Quest Edited by Susana Onega and Jean-Michel Ganteau 23 Women on the
    [Show full text]
  • The Audacity of Prose.Pdf
    The Audacity of Prose Chigozie Obioma June 8, 2015 | 5 books mentioned 55 8 min read In one of his essays, the late Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe stated that “no one be fooled by the fact that we write in English, for we intend to do unheard-of things with it.” That “we” is, in essence, an authoritative oratorical posture that cast him as a representative of a group, a kindred of writers who — either by design or fate — have adopted English as the language of literary composition. With these words, it seems that to Achebe the intention to do “unheard-of” things with language is a primary factor in literary creation. He is right. And this should be the most important factor. Achebe was, however, not merely speaking about the intention of his contemporaries alone, but also of writers who wrote generations before him. Among them would be, ironically, Joseph Conrad, whose prose he sometimes queried, but who embodied that intention to the extent that he was described by Virginia Woolf as one who “had been gifted, so he had schooled himself, and such was his obligation to a strange language wooed characteristically for its Latin qualities rather than its Saxon that it seemed impossible for him to make an ugly or insignificant movement of the pen.” That “we” also includes writers like Vladimir Nabokov of whom John Updike opined: “Nabokov writes prose the way it should be written: ecstatically;” Arundhati Roy; Salman Rushdie; Wole Soyinka; and a host of other writers to whom English was not the only language.
    [Show full text]
  • ABSTRACT Art and Artistry in Katherine Anne Porter
    ABSTRACT Art and Artistry in Katherine Anne Porter: Iconographic Figures and Festive Patterns Karen Svendsen Werner Ph. D. Mentor: Joe B. Fulton, Ph.D., Chairperson Exploring how art influences the works of Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980), this study examines the way Porter’s fictional narrative patterns adapt and arrange images from paintings, folk art, and prints. In her structural response to artistic issues prevalent during the Modernist Period, Porter runs her literary versions of iconographic figures through festive patterns to depict the changes individuals experience when significant cultural shifts envelop them. Besides employing grotesque images to portray suffering, Porter evokes the life-death-rebirth cycle of festive patterns, also called folk carnival humor by Mikhail Bakhtin, to convey hope for people and the continuation of their culture during times of turmoil. Medieval, renaissance, and modernist artwork provides Porter with images and structural approaches. Reflecting the traits of typology and the subjects of medieval iconography, Porter’s characters function by fulfilling past figures such as Eve and by anticipating literary figures in the future. As part of the development of her literary figures in Noon Wine, Porter blends influences from the Agrarians with her appreciation of renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel to emphasize the relationship between her characters and the landscape. Porter’s associations with modernist Mexican artists and her knowledge of the successors to Hans Holbein’s Dance of Death shape her interpretation of the arts and her portrayal of death in stories such as “María Concepción.” Through Mexican anthropologist Manuel Gamio, Porter develops an understanding of Franz Boas’s theories, which contribute to her sense of folk culture, foster within her a sense of the chronological connectedness of time, and lead her to treat artwork as archeological artifacts.
    [Show full text]