Pub Date : 2019-04-15DOI: 10.5325/cormmccaj.17.1.0004
D. Holloway
abstract:This article suggests that in a reading environment weighted down by the neoconservative hegemony of the time, when considered at the level of affect—as politics enacted at the level of feeling, or as ideology experienced at a level that is prior to articulation in language—the act of reading The Road might well have worked for some readers as a powerful affirmation of post-9/11 neoconservatism. This suggestion that McCarthy’s prose in The Road might embody, disseminate, and assist in the naturalizing of neoconservative structures of feeling is not, then, a claim about authorial intent. Rather, this article is interested in the reception of McCarthy’s work, or at least the range of possible receptions by readers—the political uses, conscious or otherwise, to which contemporary readers might put McCarthy’s prose—in a specific historical time and place as a metabolizing of historical experience, or lived ideology, in the form of literary fiction.
{"title":"Mapping McCarthy in the Age of Neoconservatism, or the Politics of Affect in The Road","authors":"D. Holloway","doi":"10.5325/cormmccaj.17.1.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/cormmccaj.17.1.0004","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article suggests that in a reading environment weighted down by the neoconservative hegemony of the time, when considered at the level of affect—as politics enacted at the level of feeling, or as ideology experienced at a level that is prior to articulation in language—the act of reading The Road might well have worked for some readers as a powerful affirmation of post-9/11 neoconservatism. This suggestion that McCarthy’s prose in The Road might embody, disseminate, and assist in the naturalizing of neoconservative structures of feeling is not, then, a claim about authorial intent. Rather, this article is interested in the reception of McCarthy’s work, or at least the range of possible receptions by readers—the political uses, conscious or otherwise, to which contemporary readers might put McCarthy’s prose—in a specific historical time and place as a metabolizing of historical experience, or lived ideology, in the form of literary fiction.","PeriodicalId":126318,"journal":{"name":"The Cormac McCarthy Journal","volume":"176 2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120955755","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 : 2019-04-15DOI: 10.5325/CORMMCCAJ.17.1.0064
Dianne C. Luce
abstract:In a letter to Robert Coles, McCarthy paraphrases Ortega y Gasset’s “Notes on the Novel,” which appears together with “On Point of View in the Arts” in The Dehumanization of Art. The latter essay proves to be McCarthy’s primary source for the concept of optical democracy in Blood Meridian. McCarthy’s reflection of Ortega’s optical democracy challenges the idea that McCarthy sees no moral order in the world. His passage does not endorse the equivalency of all living and inanimate things but warns that the dazzling desert landscape of Blood Meridian is the terrain of moral confusion.
{"title":"The Bedazzled Eye: Cormac McCarthy, José Ortega y Gasset, and Optical Democracy","authors":"Dianne C. Luce","doi":"10.5325/CORMMCCAJ.17.1.0064","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/CORMMCCAJ.17.1.0064","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:In a letter to Robert Coles, McCarthy paraphrases Ortega y Gasset’s “Notes on the Novel,” which appears together with “On Point of View in the Arts” in The Dehumanization of Art. The latter essay proves to be McCarthy’s primary source for the concept of optical democracy in Blood Meridian. McCarthy’s reflection of Ortega’s optical democracy challenges the idea that McCarthy sees no moral order in the world. His passage does not endorse the equivalency of all living and inanimate things but warns that the dazzling desert landscape of Blood Meridian is the terrain of moral confusion.","PeriodicalId":126318,"journal":{"name":"The Cormac McCarthy Journal","volume":"195 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116699305","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 : 2019-04-15DOI: 10.5325/CORMMCCAJ.17.1.0070
W. Morgan
abstract:According to articles in the Knoxville News-Sentinel, a young Cormac McCarthy auditioned for a role in a film adaptation of The Yearling, a novel by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, in 1945. He was one of five finalists, though ultimately lost the role to a boy named Claude Jarman Jr.
{"title":"Cormac McCarthy and The Yearling","authors":"W. Morgan","doi":"10.5325/CORMMCCAJ.17.1.0070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/CORMMCCAJ.17.1.0070","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:According to articles in the Knoxville News-Sentinel, a young Cormac McCarthy auditioned for a role in a film adaptation of The Yearling, a novel by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, in 1945. He was one of five finalists, though ultimately lost the role to a boy named Claude Jarman Jr.","PeriodicalId":126318,"journal":{"name":"The Cormac McCarthy Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130422207","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 : 2019-04-15DOI: 10.5325/CORMMCCAJ.17.1.0027
Luke Mills
abstract:In Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy’s first Western novel, medieval fairy lore bears on both McCarthy’s description of the Mexico–U.S. borderlands and his creation of one of American literature’s most outstanding characters, “the judge.” The borderlands, or Southwest, are recast as another “perilous realm” charged with spiritual significance, and the judge’s Faerie-inflected inheritance gives another perspective on the nature of evil and American (and human) depravity.
{"title":"American Faerie: Medieval Fairy Lore in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian","authors":"Luke Mills","doi":"10.5325/CORMMCCAJ.17.1.0027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/CORMMCCAJ.17.1.0027","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:In Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy’s first Western novel, medieval fairy lore bears on both McCarthy’s description of the Mexico–U.S. borderlands and his creation of one of American literature’s most outstanding characters, “the judge.” The borderlands, or Southwest, are recast as another “perilous realm” charged with spiritual significance, and the judge’s Faerie-inflected inheritance gives another perspective on the nature of evil and American (and human) depravity.","PeriodicalId":126318,"journal":{"name":"The Cormac McCarthy Journal","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115186495","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 : 2018-10-02DOI: 10.5325/CORMMCCAJ.16.2.0170
J. Brummer
abstract:Cormac McCarthy's novels complicate the struggle of American men in search of themselves, seeking to shed the trappings of increasingly anachronistic masculine signifiers, reckon with the degree to which their conception of manhood has empowered and imprisoned them while often brutalizing others, and discover, perhaps, a way forward to a construction of masculinity that no longer threatens to make them men without a country. Like so many before him, Cormac McCarthy turned to the West and to the Western. This westward turn, after four novels that seemed to cement his status as a writer of the American South, represents an intentional generic shift and enables profound engagement with issues at the very center of American cultural life, particularly issues related to American manhood—many of which have gained cultural currency alongside McCarthy's writing career, which began in 1965. The revisionist, interrogative, and celebratory treatment of masculinity reaches a crescendo in The Crossing, a novel that demonstrates the surprising plasticity of a genre which McCarthy exploits to examine issues at the heart of contemporary American culture, specifically issues related to a perceived crisis (or series of crises) in American masculinity and the concomitant emergence of masculinity studies.
{"title":"Geography, Genre, and Gender: Billy Parham's Crossings and the Search for American Masculinity","authors":"J. Brummer","doi":"10.5325/CORMMCCAJ.16.2.0170","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/CORMMCCAJ.16.2.0170","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Cormac McCarthy's novels complicate the struggle of American men in search of themselves, seeking to shed the trappings of increasingly anachronistic masculine signifiers, reckon with the degree to which their conception of manhood has empowered and imprisoned them while often brutalizing others, and discover, perhaps, a way forward to a construction of masculinity that no longer threatens to make them men without a country. Like so many before him, Cormac McCarthy turned to the West and to the Western. This westward turn, after four novels that seemed to cement his status as a writer of the American South, represents an intentional generic shift and enables profound engagement with issues at the very center of American cultural life, particularly issues related to American manhood—many of which have gained cultural currency alongside McCarthy's writing career, which began in 1965. The revisionist, interrogative, and celebratory treatment of masculinity reaches a crescendo in The Crossing, a novel that demonstrates the surprising plasticity of a genre which McCarthy exploits to examine issues at the heart of contemporary American culture, specifically issues related to a perceived crisis (or series of crises) in American masculinity and the concomitant emergence of masculinity studies.","PeriodicalId":126318,"journal":{"name":"The Cormac McCarthy Journal","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121710230","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 : 2018-10-02DOI: 10.5325/CORMMCCAJ.16.2.0133
Rick Elmore, J. Elmore
abstract:Critics remain divided over the moral of The Road. Is McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel a Christian allegory, a critique of capitalism, or a meditation on the indifference of the universe? While all these accounts have their merits, this article argues that an investigation of the historical and cultural setting of The Road and a detailed reading of the novel's conclusion demonstrate that The Road is a didactic novel, laying out direct ethical imperatives. Through an analysis of the dream of the cave with which the novel begins and ends, we show that there never was any possibility of returning to the world or worldview of the novel's father, a worldview defined by an ethos of individual survival over communal sharing. Hence, in the figure of the son, McCarthy develops an ethos toward community and the alleviation of suffering, one that the novel suggests might be the only hope for humans at the end of the world.
{"title":"\"You can stay here with your papa and die or you can go with me\": The Ethical Imperative of The Road","authors":"Rick Elmore, J. Elmore","doi":"10.5325/CORMMCCAJ.16.2.0133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/CORMMCCAJ.16.2.0133","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Critics remain divided over the moral of The Road. Is McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel a Christian allegory, a critique of capitalism, or a meditation on the indifference of the universe? While all these accounts have their merits, this article argues that an investigation of the historical and cultural setting of The Road and a detailed reading of the novel's conclusion demonstrate that The Road is a didactic novel, laying out direct ethical imperatives. Through an analysis of the dream of the cave with which the novel begins and ends, we show that there never was any possibility of returning to the world or worldview of the novel's father, a worldview defined by an ethos of individual survival over communal sharing. Hence, in the figure of the son, McCarthy develops an ethos toward community and the alleviation of suffering, one that the novel suggests might be the only hope for humans at the end of the world.","PeriodicalId":126318,"journal":{"name":"The Cormac McCarthy Journal","volume":"110 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122255524","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 : 2018-10-02DOI: 10.5325/CORMMCCAJ.16.2.0104
Russell M. Hillier
abstract:The operation of Schopenhauerian ethics is perhaps nowhere more painstakingly expounded in McCarthy's oeuvre than in The Sunset Limited. When set within Schopenhauer's ethical system, the respective positions of Black and White readily yield to evaluation. On the one hand, White, who appears to be a classic embodiment of Schopenhauer's pessimism, is lacking according to Schopenhauer's standard of ethical excellence. White's egoistic standpoint on the world is devoid of substance and credibility and his disdain for and willful isolation from others betrays an unhealthy, narcissistic, and other-denying egoism. On the other hand, Black's ethical conduct not only satisfies the criteria of Schopenhauer's virtuous man, his way of life is also depicted as making significant progress on the path toward Schopenhauerian sainthood. Once an egoist himself and now a devoted altruist, Black has awoken from his "beggar's dream" to recognize a human fellowship of pain, the presence of his "innermost self "in all others, and the need to obey a moral imperative to be compassionate. Considered against the backdrop of Schopenhauer's ethical framework, The Sunset Limited plays out a fierce opposition between the troubled egoism of White, "a professor of darkness," and the saintly altruism of Black, "an emissary of Jesus."
{"title":"Two Men in a Trickbag: White, Black, and the Operation of Schopenhauerian Ethics in Cormac McCarthy's The Sunset Limited","authors":"Russell M. Hillier","doi":"10.5325/CORMMCCAJ.16.2.0104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/CORMMCCAJ.16.2.0104","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:The operation of Schopenhauerian ethics is perhaps nowhere more painstakingly expounded in McCarthy's oeuvre than in The Sunset Limited. When set within Schopenhauer's ethical system, the respective positions of Black and White readily yield to evaluation. On the one hand, White, who appears to be a classic embodiment of Schopenhauer's pessimism, is lacking according to Schopenhauer's standard of ethical excellence. White's egoistic standpoint on the world is devoid of substance and credibility and his disdain for and willful isolation from others betrays an unhealthy, narcissistic, and other-denying egoism. On the other hand, Black's ethical conduct not only satisfies the criteria of Schopenhauer's virtuous man, his way of life is also depicted as making significant progress on the path toward Schopenhauerian sainthood. Once an egoist himself and now a devoted altruist, Black has awoken from his \"beggar's dream\" to recognize a human fellowship of pain, the presence of his \"innermost self \"in all others, and the need to obey a moral imperative to be compassionate. Considered against the backdrop of Schopenhauer's ethical framework, The Sunset Limited plays out a fierce opposition between the troubled egoism of White, \"a professor of darkness,\" and the saintly altruism of Black, \"an emissary of Jesus.\"","PeriodicalId":126318,"journal":{"name":"The Cormac McCarthy Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134263446","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 : 2018-10-02DOI: 10.5325/cormmccaj.16.2.0189
D. Graham
abstract:One of the literary influences in No Country for Old Men is Robinson Jeffers's poem "Hurt Hawks." A passage involving Sheriff Bell's discovery of a dead hawk on the desert highway points clearly to echoes of Jeffers's moving account of a wounded hawk in his poem first published in 1928. McCarthy's literary models are impeccable.
{"title":"Robinson Jeffers's Presence in Cormac McCarthy's Imagination","authors":"D. Graham","doi":"10.5325/cormmccaj.16.2.0189","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/cormmccaj.16.2.0189","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:One of the literary influences in No Country for Old Men is Robinson Jeffers's poem \"Hurt Hawks.\" A passage involving Sheriff Bell's discovery of a dead hawk on the desert highway points clearly to echoes of Jeffers's moving account of a wounded hawk in his poem first published in 1928. McCarthy's literary models are impeccable.","PeriodicalId":126318,"journal":{"name":"The Cormac McCarthy Journal","volume":"286 5","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134322948","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 : 2018-04-11DOI: 10.5325/cormmccaj.16.1.0038
B. Bellamy
abstract:This article explores the gender dynamic of Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road (2006). It engages the novel’s post-apocalyptic survival narrative from three different perspectives within the novel: first, the man, whom the world seems to be set against; second, the boy, who has a fundamental openness to the world; and third, the woman’s aborted narrative. Though few critics take it up (Nell Sullivan is perhaps the most prominent), this article argues the woman offers a third interpretive path through the novel. Her story remains crucial to the cohesion and successful completion of the plot, yet the novel does not present its telling. Drawing on queer theory and Marxist-feminist analysis, this article explores an impasse: The Road effectively banishes the woman from its pages, despite the fact that she is necessary to the flourishing of the man and the boy. I argue that the novel works as narrative precisely because of the aborted emplotment of the woman and the appearance of the new woman at plot’s end. The Road creates a reproductive imperative that binds the fantasy of beginning anew with the ideology of gender. It insists that reaching any future whatsoever means women must have babies.
{"title":"The Reproductive Imperative of The Road","authors":"B. Bellamy","doi":"10.5325/cormmccaj.16.1.0038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/cormmccaj.16.1.0038","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article explores the gender dynamic of Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road (2006). It engages the novel’s post-apocalyptic survival narrative from three different perspectives within the novel: first, the man, whom the world seems to be set against; second, the boy, who has a fundamental openness to the world; and third, the woman’s aborted narrative. Though few critics take it up (Nell Sullivan is perhaps the most prominent), this article argues the woman offers a third interpretive path through the novel. Her story remains crucial to the cohesion and successful completion of the plot, yet the novel does not present its telling. Drawing on queer theory and Marxist-feminist analysis, this article explores an impasse: The Road effectively banishes the woman from its pages, despite the fact that she is necessary to the flourishing of the man and the boy. I argue that the novel works as narrative precisely because of the aborted emplotment of the woman and the appearance of the new woman at plot’s end. The Road creates a reproductive imperative that binds the fantasy of beginning anew with the ideology of gender. It insists that reaching any future whatsoever means women must have babies.","PeriodicalId":126318,"journal":{"name":"The Cormac McCarthy Journal","volume":"18 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132747046","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 : 2018-04-11DOI: 10.5325/CORMMCCAJ.16.1.0055
Mitchell Ploskonka
abstract:This article seeks to situate James Robert, the idiot in Blood Meridian, within the larger contextual and literary history of idiocy. The robust field of disability studies is employed to help interpret a conspicuously overlooked character in McCarthy scholarship. In order to stress Robert’s conformity to and deviation from the novel’s ableist social constructions, physical disability is discussed in relation to the scalp hunters. Next, a history of idiocy in America and a discussion on literary idiots leads to a discussion of James Robert’s function in the text, his relationship with Judge Holden, and the question of personhood in the novel.
{"title":"“See the Wild Man Two Bits”: James Robert, Disability, and Personhood in Blood Meridian","authors":"Mitchell Ploskonka","doi":"10.5325/CORMMCCAJ.16.1.0055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/CORMMCCAJ.16.1.0055","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article seeks to situate James Robert, the idiot in Blood Meridian, within the larger contextual and literary history of idiocy. The robust field of disability studies is employed to help interpret a conspicuously overlooked character in McCarthy scholarship. In order to stress Robert’s conformity to and deviation from the novel’s ableist social constructions, physical disability is discussed in relation to the scalp hunters. Next, a history of idiocy in America and a discussion on literary idiots leads to a discussion of James Robert’s function in the text, his relationship with Judge Holden, and the question of personhood in the novel.","PeriodicalId":126318,"journal":{"name":"The Cormac McCarthy Journal","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122010386","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}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：