Pub Date : 2024-04-01DOI: 10.5325/cormmccaj.22.1.0036
B. W. Cline
This article focuses on the relationship of four Mexican characters in Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses and their rhetorical use of the Mexican Revolution in conversation with John Grady. Rather than these characters being shaped by the revolution, analysis of their historical embellishments, omissions, and fabrications show them to instead imagine the revolution as a history that validates their individual perspectives. In so doing, they reflect John Grady’s desire to imagine a mythical cowboy past that can be lived in Mexico. These similarities therefore suggest that John Grady’s cowboy fantasies arise from a universal human desire rather than the flaws of an individual person, age, or country. By John Grady’s ultimate removal from Mexico and confession to the Texas judge, he may in fact be the only character in the novel who attempts to resist the universal impulse to turn history into self-justification.
{"title":"“Selecting between the dream and the reality”: The Mexican Revolution in All the Pretty Horses","authors":"B. W. Cline","doi":"10.5325/cormmccaj.22.1.0036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/cormmccaj.22.1.0036","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article focuses on the relationship of four Mexican characters in Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses and their rhetorical use of the Mexican Revolution in conversation with John Grady. Rather than these characters being shaped by the revolution, analysis of their historical embellishments, omissions, and fabrications show them to instead imagine the revolution as a history that validates their individual perspectives. In so doing, they reflect John Grady’s desire to imagine a mythical cowboy past that can be lived in Mexico. These similarities therefore suggest that John Grady’s cowboy fantasies arise from a universal human desire rather than the flaws of an individual person, age, or country. By John Grady’s ultimate removal from Mexico and confession to the Texas judge, he may in fact be the only character in the novel who attempts to resist the universal impulse to turn history into self-justification.","PeriodicalId":126318,"journal":{"name":"The Cormac McCarthy Journal","volume":"49 16","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140765631","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-01DOI: 10.5325/cormmccaj.22.1.0055
Paolo Viganò
The metaphysical inquiry of Blood Meridian is structured in two moments, both involving a reflection on religion. On the one hand, the persistence of violence in the novel can be interpreted as the continuous denial of the Christian idea of “salvation through faith.” Faith, in this book, offers neither salvation for those who suffer nor punishment for evil, as it is immediately stated that “It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost as if in sorrowing.” On the other hand, although the Christian God seemingly disappears from the phenomenal world, the search for a higher instance does not completely vanish from the novel. In fact, fleeting divine occurrences frequently appear throughout the novel in various transient epiphanies of grace. After grace vanishes, we can detect in the last chapters of Blood Meridian an abysmal melancholy—an expression of frustrated attempts to transcend human existence. Although this dark path traveled by the kid in Blood Meridian has led critics to call the book a Gnostic parable, these two possibilities of McCarthy’s metaphysical reflection seem to be closely related to Catholic motifs and ideology.
{"title":"Religion Between the Parody of Faith and the Epiphany of Grace in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian","authors":"Paolo Viganò","doi":"10.5325/cormmccaj.22.1.0055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/cormmccaj.22.1.0055","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The metaphysical inquiry of Blood Meridian is structured in two moments, both involving a reflection on religion. On the one hand, the persistence of violence in the novel can be interpreted as the continuous denial of the Christian idea of “salvation through faith.” Faith, in this book, offers neither salvation for those who suffer nor punishment for evil, as it is immediately stated that “It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost as if in sorrowing.” On the other hand, although the Christian God seemingly disappears from the phenomenal world, the search for a higher instance does not completely vanish from the novel. In fact, fleeting divine occurrences frequently appear throughout the novel in various transient epiphanies of grace. After grace vanishes, we can detect in the last chapters of Blood Meridian an abysmal melancholy—an expression of frustrated attempts to transcend human existence. Although this dark path traveled by the kid in Blood Meridian has led critics to call the book a Gnostic parable, these two possibilities of McCarthy’s metaphysical reflection seem to be closely related to Catholic motifs and ideology.","PeriodicalId":126318,"journal":{"name":"The Cormac McCarthy Journal","volume":"377 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140765431","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-01DOI: 10.5325/cormmccaj.22.1.0104
Olivia Carr Edenfield
{"title":"Once More in Defense of the Mother","authors":"Olivia Carr Edenfield","doi":"10.5325/cormmccaj.22.1.0104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/cormmccaj.22.1.0104","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":126318,"journal":{"name":"The Cormac McCarthy Journal","volume":"200 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140794132","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-01DOI: 10.5325/cormmccaj.22.1.0009
Russell M. Hillier
Cormac McCarthy has stated that tragedy is central to human experience and that “the core of literature is the idea of tragedy.” Furthermore, he maintains that the tragic genre probes how humans “deal with” the bad things that happen to them. McCarthy’s duology, The Passenger and Stella Maris, locates its main narrative concerning Alicia and Bobby Western’s taboo love within the framework of romantic tragedy. Incest has been a much-revisited topic within Western tragedy. Consider the dramas of Sophocles, Euripides, Seneca, John Webster, John Ford, Henrik Ibsen, and Eugene O’Neill. In McCarthy’s treatment, incest is an impediment to reciprocal love. This tragic fatedness crosses any expectations Alicia and Bobby court of mutual happiness and fulfillment. The duology explores the siblings’ ways of dealing with their tragic condition, the romantic Alicia’s all-or-nothing, self-destructive passion and the ascetic Bobby’s attitude of self-denial and endurance. Two tragic antecedents further inform McCarthy’s examination of forbidden love: William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1597) and the Nahua myth of the warrior Popocatépetl and the princess Iztaccíhuatl. The article concludes by proposing that, despite the duology’s preoccupation with the tragic human condition, the narrative tentatively gestures to a state of being that might, perhaps, lie beyond tragedy.
{"title":"“The coming darkness”: Romantic Tragedy, Shakespeare, and Nahua Myth in Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger and Stella Maris","authors":"Russell M. Hillier","doi":"10.5325/cormmccaj.22.1.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/cormmccaj.22.1.0009","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Cormac McCarthy has stated that tragedy is central to human experience and that “the core of literature is the idea of tragedy.” Furthermore, he maintains that the tragic genre probes how humans “deal with” the bad things that happen to them. McCarthy’s duology, The Passenger and Stella Maris, locates its main narrative concerning Alicia and Bobby Western’s taboo love within the framework of romantic tragedy. Incest has been a much-revisited topic within Western tragedy. Consider the dramas of Sophocles, Euripides, Seneca, John Webster, John Ford, Henrik Ibsen, and Eugene O’Neill. In McCarthy’s treatment, incest is an impediment to reciprocal love. This tragic fatedness crosses any expectations Alicia and Bobby court of mutual happiness and fulfillment. The duology explores the siblings’ ways of dealing with their tragic condition, the romantic Alicia’s all-or-nothing, self-destructive passion and the ascetic Bobby’s attitude of self-denial and endurance. Two tragic antecedents further inform McCarthy’s examination of forbidden love: William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1597) and the Nahua myth of the warrior Popocatépetl and the princess Iztaccíhuatl. The article concludes by proposing that, despite the duology’s preoccupation with the tragic human condition, the narrative tentatively gestures to a state of being that might, perhaps, lie beyond tragedy.","PeriodicalId":126318,"journal":{"name":"The Cormac McCarthy Journal","volume":"75 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140759048","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-01DOI: 10.5325/cormmccaj.22.1.0094
Zachary Turpin
{"title":"Cormac McCarthy’s Earliest Publication: A Letter on the Beat Generation","authors":"Zachary Turpin","doi":"10.5325/cormmccaj.22.1.0094","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/cormmccaj.22.1.0094","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":126318,"journal":{"name":"The Cormac McCarthy Journal","volume":"96 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140772260","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-01DOI: 10.5325/cormmccaj.22.1.0075
Mark C. Hulse
While the boy in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is characterized in distinctly messianic terms, his father’s many parallels with the prophet Moses have been overlooked. This article traces these correspondences from early in the novel and argues that they represent an externalized faith, one that develops in spite of the man’s empiricist mindset. Breaking with previous commentary, the article then reads the 1:17 clock stoppage as referencing John 1:17 (rather than Revelation), which cements the story’s central dynamic of an Old Testament symbol of Law superseded by a New Testament bringer of Grace and Truth—a Christian theological model referred to as dispensationalism. The tale from Genesis about Lot and his wife also informs the characterization of the family in the novel, particularly through the action of “looking back” due to compassion for those who do not survive the cataclysm. McCarthy builds upon theological speculations that appeared most prominently in the Border Trilogy, interrogating how humans rationalize misfortune and exploring how moral systems behave across real and fictional dispensations. While The Road addresses similar phenomena as these earlier works, it also offers hope and a more optimistic notion of the future through the son character.
{"title":"Finding Grace in The Road: Moses, Messiah, and John 1:17","authors":"Mark C. Hulse","doi":"10.5325/cormmccaj.22.1.0075","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/cormmccaj.22.1.0075","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 While the boy in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is characterized in distinctly messianic terms, his father’s many parallels with the prophet Moses have been overlooked. This article traces these correspondences from early in the novel and argues that they represent an externalized faith, one that develops in spite of the man’s empiricist mindset. Breaking with previous commentary, the article then reads the 1:17 clock stoppage as referencing John 1:17 (rather than Revelation), which cements the story’s central dynamic of an Old Testament symbol of Law superseded by a New Testament bringer of Grace and Truth—a Christian theological model referred to as dispensationalism. The tale from Genesis about Lot and his wife also informs the characterization of the family in the novel, particularly through the action of “looking back” due to compassion for those who do not survive the cataclysm. McCarthy builds upon theological speculations that appeared most prominently in the Border Trilogy, interrogating how humans rationalize misfortune and exploring how moral systems behave across real and fictional dispensations. While The Road addresses similar phenomena as these earlier works, it also offers hope and a more optimistic notion of the future through the son character.","PeriodicalId":126318,"journal":{"name":"The Cormac McCarthy Journal","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140785968","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-01DOI: 10.5325/cormmccaj.22.1.0101
Thomas Palaima
{"title":"“Only the dead have seen an end to war”: Misattributing to Plato in Stella Maris?","authors":"Thomas Palaima","doi":"10.5325/cormmccaj.22.1.0101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/cormmccaj.22.1.0101","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":126318,"journal":{"name":"The Cormac McCarthy Journal","volume":"223 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140779600","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.5325/cormmccaj.21.2.0130
Scott Yarbrough
abstract:One of the central questions tasking any reader of Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road is just what, in the final analysis, is supposed to be our estimation of the father? Is he mostly a moral character, utterly committed to his boy and to providing a foundation for goodness? Is he a competent character, and what we are to make of his travels with his son and their ethical clashes? Is the father right in his pragmatism or is the son right in idealism? Has the father learned the rules of the fallen world sufficiently? Or does he still cling to the past? These questions and others are answered through a thorough examination of the many parallel elements in one of William Faulkner’s greatest accomplishments, his novella “The Bear” and the collection it was published within, Go Down, Moses (1942).
{"title":"Maps and Legends: Patterns of Go Down, Moses in The Road","authors":"Scott Yarbrough","doi":"10.5325/cormmccaj.21.2.0130","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/cormmccaj.21.2.0130","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:One of the central questions tasking any reader of Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road is just what, in the final analysis, is supposed to be our estimation of the father? Is he mostly a moral character, utterly committed to his boy and to providing a foundation for goodness? Is he a competent character, and what we are to make of his travels with his son and their ethical clashes? Is the father right in his pragmatism or is the son right in idealism? Has the father learned the rules of the fallen world sufficiently? Or does he still cling to the past? These questions and others are answered through a thorough examination of the many parallel elements in one of William Faulkner’s greatest accomplishments, his novella “The Bear” and the collection it was published within, Go Down, Moses (1942).","PeriodicalId":126318,"journal":{"name":"The Cormac McCarthy Journal","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131619500","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.5325/cormmccaj.21.2.0166
Greg Hyduke
abstract:All the pretty horses in The Passenger and Stella Maris can only be found under the hood of a car. All the power—not the Nietzschean kind, but the chrome-wheeled, fuel-injected, and steppin’ out over the line kind—comes only from engineering. It’s not the first time McCarthy has given automobiles some page time. A spin down Bibliographic Lane will reveal them wrecked, reeking, or only serving some figurative purpose. Nothing has prepared us for the muscular exotic cars pornographically paraded before our eyes in the pages of The Passenger in particular as if pushed across the red carpet at a six-figure Barrett-Jackson auction. For the kind of reader who can’t tell the difference between a Ford and a Ferrari, or what all the blasted numbers mean, this is the guide. Includes a magic bus ride and a bicycle tour.
{"title":"All the Pretty Horsepower: Physics, Physiques, and Phantasms in The Passenger and Stella Maris","authors":"Greg Hyduke","doi":"10.5325/cormmccaj.21.2.0166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/cormmccaj.21.2.0166","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:All the pretty horses in The Passenger and Stella Maris can only be found under the hood of a car. All the power—not the Nietzschean kind, but the chrome-wheeled, fuel-injected, and steppin’ out over the line kind—comes only from engineering. It’s not the first time McCarthy has given automobiles some page time. A spin down Bibliographic Lane will reveal them wrecked, reeking, or only serving some figurative purpose. Nothing has prepared us for the muscular exotic cars pornographically paraded before our eyes in the pages of The Passenger in particular as if pushed across the red carpet at a six-figure Barrett-Jackson auction. For the kind of reader who can’t tell the difference between a Ford and a Ferrari, or what all the blasted numbers mean, this is the guide. Includes a magic bus ride and a bicycle tour.","PeriodicalId":126318,"journal":{"name":"The Cormac McCarthy Journal","volume":"74 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122422107","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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