Reading McCarthy

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

Episode 40 is a long ride through rough country as we dig into The CROSSING, McCarthy's masterful middle volume in the Border Trilogy.  My guests today are twin scholars Jonathan and Rick Elmore.  That's right, twins.  Jonathan Elmore is Associate Professor of English at Savannah State University and the Managing Editor of Watchung Review.. He is the editor of Fiction and the Sixth Mass Extinction: Narrative in an Era of Loss (Lexington) and co-author of An Introduction to African and Afro-Diasporic Peoples and Influences in British Literature and Culture before the Industrial Revolution (ALG). His scholarship has been published in The Cormac McCarthy Journal, Mississippi Quarterly, The British Fantasy Society Journal, Orbit, The Journal of Liberal Arts and Humanities, and The Criterion, among others.    His twin brother Rick Elmore is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Appalachian State University and Senior Managing Editor of book reviews at Symposium. He researches and teaches in the areas of twentieth-century French philosophy, critical theory, animal philosophy, and Cormac McCarthy Studies. He is the co-editor of The Biopolitics of Punishment: Derrida and Foucault (Northwestern University Press). His articles and essays have appeared in Politics & Policy, Symplokē, Symposium, Mississippi Quarterly, and The Cormac McCarthy Journal, among others. As always, readers should beware: there be spoilers here.Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society, although in our hearts we hope they’ll someday see the light.  We appreciate favorable reviews on your favorite podcasting platform.  If you enjoy this podcast you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt. To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Despite the evening redness in the west Reading McCarthy is also on Twitter.  The website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the webpage to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.Support the showStarting in spring of 2023, the podcast began accepting minor sponsorship offers to offset the costs of the podcast. This may cause a mild disconnect in earlier podcasts where the host asks for patrons in lieu of sponsorships. But if we compare it to a very large and naked bald man in the middle of the desert who leads you to an extinct volcano to create gunpowder, it seems pretty minor...

Cormac still types his novels on an Olivetti typewriter and your host can't figure out Facebook.  So for Episode 39 we bring in some expert help in the form of a lively discussion with Redditor supreme Joe Parslow.  He has moderated the Cormac McCarthy subreddit for over a decade and has seen it grow from its first post in April 2012 to its current position as the largest online community devoted to the works of Cormac McCarthy.  In March 2023 the membership of the subreddit approached 12,000 members. He is a professional writer and the former Senior Editor of the online literary journal Holy Cuspidor. Joe earned simultaneous bachelor’s degrees in English and philosophy from The College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York, where he also earned his Master’s degree in English. He lives in upstate New York with his wife, his daughter, and his dog, Pfeiffer.  Please join us for this discussion of the role of social media in getting the word out, a brief consideration of The Passenger and Stella Maris, and other things cormackian.   As always the discussion is far ranging, and beware: there be spoilers here.As always, thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their employers or the Cormac McCarthy Society, although in our hearts we hope they’ll someday see the light.  You can follow the podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.  If you’re agreeable it’ll help us if you provide favorable reviews on these platforms.  If you enjoy this podcast you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt. To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Despite the evening redness in the west Reading McCarthy is also on Twitter.  The website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the webpage to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.Support the showStarting in spring of 2023, the podcast began accepting minor sponsorship offers to offset the costs of the podcast. This may cause a mild disconnect in earlier podcasts where the host asks for patrons in lieu of sponsorships. But if we compare it to a very large and naked bald man in the middle of the desert who leads you to an extinct volcano to create gunpowder, it seems pretty minor...

 Today's guest is George Berridge. George began academic life as a journalist but like Hank Williams saw the light and also began digging deeply into American Literature.  He's now the American Literature editor of the Times Literary Supplement. He lives and works in London. His exceptional review of THE PASSENGER and STELLA MARIS was published in October of last year.  He joins me in a nice conversation about the role of the literary critic in modern journalism (with of course a focus on the works of McCarthy).  Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.   The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their employers or the Cormac McCarthy Society.  Download and follow on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.  If you’re agreeable it’ll help us if you provide favorable reviews on these platforms.  If you enjoy this podcast you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt.  To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Despite the evening redness in the west Reading McCarthy is also on Twitter.  The website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the webpage to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy. To read George Berridge's review of The Passenger, see: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-passenger-stella-maris-cormac-mccarthy-book-review-george-berridge/ Valerie Stivers' review is published in Compact Magazine and may be found here:https://compactmag.com/article/cormac-mccarthy-s-masterpieceSupport the showStarting in spring of 2023, the podcast began accepting minor sponsorship offers to offset the costs of the podcast. This may cause a mild disconnect in earlier podcasts where the host asks for patrons in lieu of sponsorships. But if we compare it to a very large and naked bald man in the middle of the desert who leads you to an extinct volcano to create gunpowder, it seems pretty minor...

Frequent guests Steven Frye and Stacey Peebles join me for another roundup of All the Pretty Horses, the National Book Award winning novel which finally forced the literary world to sit up and take notice of McCarthy.  We climb on and hold tight for this ride through this incredible novel.  Stacey Peebles is Chair of the English program, Director of Film Studies, and the Marlene and David Grissom Professor of Humanities at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky.  She is the author of Welcome to the Suck: Narrating the American Soldier's Experience in Iraq (Cornell Univ Press, 2011) and Cormac McCarthy and Performance: Page, Stage, Screen (Univ of Texas, 2017).  She is editor of the collection Violence in Literature and, with Ben West, is co-editor of the volume Approaches to Teaching the Works of Cormac McCarthy, published this past year by MLA.  She has published widely on the representation of contemporary war and on McCarthy, and has been editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal since 2010.   Steve Frye is professor and chair of English at California State University, Bakersfield and President of the Cormac McCarthy Society. He is the author of Understanding Cormac McCarthy (Univ. of South Carolina Press) and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Cormac McCarthy, and Cambridge UP’s Cormac McCarthy in Context. He has written numerous journal articles on Cormac McCarthy and other authors of the American Romanticist Tradition.  Additionally, he is the author of the novel Dogwood Crossing and the forthcoming book, Unguessed Kinships: Naturalism and the Geography of Hope in Cormac McCarthy, University of Alabama Press.  Listeners are reminded this is a show of approachable literary criticism and not a review show, and so we don't always shy away from spoilers; discussions of his novel may spoil other parts of the Border Trilogy. Thanks as well to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society. Download and follow us on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.  Listeners may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt.  To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Despite the evening redness in the west Reading McCarthy is also on Twitter; the website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com.  Correction: I made kind of a big deal in this and the other ATPH episode about how John Grady is not called a boy after he crosses into Mexico. I seem to have done the search wrong, because one excellent reader has found that he is, indeed, referred to as a boy after he’s in Mexico, but the collective group seems not to be called the boys in the after that point.  Support the showStarting in spring of 2023, the podcast began accepting minor sponsorship offers to offset the costs of the podcast. This may cause a mild disconnect in earlier podcasts where the host asks for patrons in lieu of sponsorships. But if we compare it to a very large and naked bald man in the middle of the desert who leads you to an extinct volcano to create gunpowder, it seems pretty minor...

Like Cormac McCarthy, Wes Morgan was born in the North—Albany, New York rather than Rhode Island—but came south at the age of 4.  Wes grew up in Atlanta and earned BS degrees in Physics and Applied Psychology at Georgia Tech.  In 1962 Wes moved to Knoxville and began working on his doctorate in psychology.  He went on to work as a staff psychologist at Palo Alto Veterans Administration Hospital in California, where he met Marian, who would become his wife, Wes and his family returned to Knoxville in 1970 to join the faculty in the Department of Psychology at the University of Tennessee, where he remained until his retirement from full-time teaching in 2007.  Wes has had a longstanding interest in the writings of Cormac McCarthy with particular focus on the early novels centered in Knoxville and East Tennessee.  He has developed a website called "Searching for Suttree" which shows photographs of the places mentioned in that novel and is working on a reader's guide to the book as well.  Wes has published articles and chapters on McCarthy in numerous places, including The Cormac McCarthy Journal, the Casebook series, Appalachian Heritage, and Puerto Del Sol. Support the showStarting in spring of 2023, the podcast began accepting minor sponsorship offers to offset the costs of the podcast. This may cause a mild disconnect in earlier podcasts where the host asks for patrons in lieu of sponsorships. But if we compare it to a very large and naked bald man in the middle of the desert who leads you to an extinct volcano to create gunpowder, it seems pretty minor...

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

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

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

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