Reading McCarthy

This episode delves again into McCarthy's roots as we consider his intersections with Irish literature.  The guest in this episode is Tennessean by birth and now fully Texified, Richard R. Russell is Professor of English and director of graduate programs at Baylor University. He earned an M Phil at the University of Glasgow and his MA and PhD from the U of North Carolina.  Books include Seamus Heaney:  A Critical Introduction, Edinburgh University Press, Seamus Heaney's Regions. University of Notre Dame Press, June 2014. Modernity, Community, and Place in Brian Friel’s Drama. Syracuse University Press, Irish Studies series, 2013.  Poetry and Peace: Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney, and Northern Ireland. University of Notre Dame Press, 2010, and forthcoming James Joyce and Samaritan Hospitality by Edinburgh University Press.  He has published articles on McCarthy, including one on Beckett’s influences in English Studies and “Embodying Place: Ecotheology and Deep Incarnation in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road,” Christianity and Literature.Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the theme music and interludes for READING MCCARTHY.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society. To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; the website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the page to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.Support the 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...

The second part of our wonderful panel discussion of Cormac McCarthy’s masterful and shattering novel Blood Meridian.  Our returning guests include: Steve Frye, who 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 recently published novel Dogwood Crossing. 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 (2011) and Cormac McCarthy and Performance: Page, Stage, Screen (2017).  She is co-editor of Approaches to Teaching the Works of Cormac McCarthy.  She has been editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal since 2010.   Rick Wallach is one of the founders of the Cormac McCarthy society, and recently retired after some few years teaching English at the University of Miami, He is senior editor of the Cormac McCarthy Society casebook series, and editor of the two-volume collection of essays Sacred Violence as well as Myth, Legend Dust: Critical Responses to Cormac McCarthy, and co-editor with Lynnea Chapman King and the late James Welsh of From Novel to Film: No Country for Old Men. He has written widely and extensively on numerous topics in literature, film, media and contemporary music.  Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the theme music and interludes for READING MCCARTHY.   Music in this episode includes: "The World to Come," "Toadvine," Running with Wolves," "Much Like Yourself," and "Blues for Blevins."The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society. To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; the website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the page to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.Support the 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...

Three returning guests join us for this first part of our interesting and engaging discussion of Cormac McCarthy’s magnum opus Blood Meridian.  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 recently published novel Dogwood Crossing. 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 (2011) and Cormac McCarthy and Performance: Page, Stage, Screen (2017).  She is co-editor of Approaches to Teaching the Works of Cormac McCarthy.  She has been editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal since 2010.   Rick Wallach is one of the founders of the Cormac McCarthy society, and recently retired after some few years teaching English at the University of Miami, He is senior editor of the Cormac McCarthy Society casebook series, and editor of the two-volume collection of essays Sacred Violence as well as Myth, Legend Dust: Critical Responses to Cormac McCarthy, and co-editor with Lynnea Chapman King and the late James Welsh of From Novel to Film: No Country for Old Men. He has written widely and extensively on numerous topics in literature, film, media and contemporary music.  Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the theme music and interludes for READING MCCARTHY.   The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society. To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; the website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the page to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.Support the 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 28 brings back previous guest Nell Sullivan to discuss a thorny subject: McCarthy’s women characters, with digressions into the ways the author tiptoes through the landscape of homosocial desire.  Nell Sullivan earned a BA in English from Vanderbilt University and earned her PhD in English from Rice University.  She is currently Professor of English at University of Houston-Downtown, where she teaches courses in American literature and the literature of the American South.  A former editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal, she has published extensively on gender and class representation in McCarthy’s novels, and has also published essays on Katherine Dunn, William Faulkner, and Nella Larsen, among others.  Her work has appeared in numerous essay collections and in such journals as Genre, Critique, The Southern Quarterly, Mississippi Quarterly, and African American Review.Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the theme music and interludes for READING MCCARTHY.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society. To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; the website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the page to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.Support the 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 27 of READING MCCARTHY is a thorough consideration of Race in the Works of Cormac McCarthy.  The guest for this thoughtful and engaging discussion is Lydia Cooper; Dr. Cooper is a professor of American literature at Creighton University. Her specializations include Native American literature, Western and Southwestern literature, gender studies, and Cormac McCarthy. Her most recent book is Cormac McCarthy: A Complexity Theory of Literature, published by Manchester University Press.  Other books includes Masculinities in Literature of the American West; No More Heroes: Narrative Perspective and Morality in the Novels (those novels being the ones by McCarthy); her work on McCarthy and on other modern and contemporary American and Native American writers has appeared in numerous academic journals such as Studies in the Novel, Studies in American Indian Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment.Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the theme music and interludes for READING MCCARTHY.  Included in this episode are “The World to Come,” “Toadvine,” “Running with Wolves,” and “Blues for Blevins.”  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society. To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; the website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the page to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.Support the 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...

Everything is topsy-turvy for this episode as returning guest Peter Josyph seizes control of the station and turns the tables on your regular host Scott Yarbrough, interviewing him.  Regular host Scott Yarbrough is the co-author of A Practical Introduction to Literary Study, co-editor with Rick Wallach of the two volume Carrying the Fire casebook collections of essays on The Road, and author of numerous essays on McCarthy, Faulkner, Hemingway, and others.  Peter Josyph is an Author, Actor, Artist, Auteur, musician and composer and more Peter Josyph’s books include The Wrong Reader’s Guide to Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses; Adventures in Reading Cormac McCarthy; Cormac McCarthy’s House: Reading McCarthy Without Walls; Liberty Street: Encounters at Ground Zero; The Way of the Trumpet; What One Man Said to Another: Talks With Richard Selzer; and The Wounded River, which was a New York Times Notable Book of 1993. His films include the award-winning Liberty Street: Alive at Ground Zero; Shakespeare in New York; Hell; Bardtalk; A Few Things Basquiat Did in School; and Acting McCarthy: The Making of Billy Bob Thornton’s All the Pretty Horses. As a painter his McCarthy-related exhibitions have shown in Sweden; England; Australia; and the far countries of Texas and Kentucky.  peter currently lectures on film for the Frick Estate Lectures at Nassau County Museum of Art on Long Island. Music includes (at 7:42 and 55:24) excerpts from “Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone” by the Carter Family, Victor 21638-A (1929), and as always original pieces by Thomas Frye, including the intro (“The World to Come”) interlude (“Toadvine”) and the outro (“Blues for Blevins”).   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 the host, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; the website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the page to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy. Support the 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...

Our returning guest for READING MCCARTHY is Stacey Peebles.  On this 25th episode of the podcast we venture out into the Darkening World to Come and Ride into the Evening Redness in the West.  Yes, that’s right—this is our first full-length consideration of McCarthy’s masterpiece, Blood Meridian.  Dr. 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 (2011) and Cormac McCarthy and Performance: Page, Stage, Screen (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 year.  She has published widely on the representation of contemporary war and on McCarthy, and has been editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal since 2010.  Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the theme music and interludes for READING MCCARTHY.  To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; the website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the page to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.Support the 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...

The guest for Episode 24 of READING MCCARTHY needs no introduction to any member of the Cormac McCarthy Society, visitors to the CormacMccarthy.com forums, or readers of McCarthy Criticism.  One of the founders of the Cormac McCarthy society, Rick Wallach survived a degree in theology and years teaching English in Miami, Florida, and is a founding member of the Cormac McCarthy Society. He is senior editor of the Cormac McCarthy Soci ety casebook series, and editor of the two-volume collection of essays Sacred Violence as well as Myth, Legend Dust: Critical Responses to Cormac McCarthy, and co-editor with Lynnea Chapman King and the late James Welsh of From Novel to Film: No Country for Old Men. He has written widely and extensively on numerous topics in literature, film, media and contemporary music. Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the theme music and interludes for READING MCCARTHY.  The opinions of the host and guests do not reflect opinions of any affiliated institutions or the Cormac McCarthy society.To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; the website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the page to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.Support the 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 23 of READING MCCARTHY brings us a great discussion with actor and audiobook narrator Richard Poe.  Poe is known to McCarthy fans as the audiobook narrator of McCarthy’s masterwork Blood Meridian.  Richard Poe has been a professional actor since 1970, when he left the army and was soon drafted into the chorus of William Ball’s production of Oedipus Rex at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Later that year he was cast as Rosencrantz in a production of Hamlet starring the 73-year-old Dame Judith Anderson, touring all the major theaters in America, including Carnegie Hall. He then played a variety of roles in many regional theaters before coming to New York in 1985. He has since appeared in thirteen Broadway shows, including the 1988 Best Play Tony Award winning M. Butterfly, 1992 Best Play Nominee Our Country’s Good, 2006 Best Musical Revival Winner The Pajama Game, and the 2007 Best Play Revival Winner Journey’s End. He created the roles of Father Dan (among others) in Paul Rudnick’s groundbreaking comedy Jeffrey, and Leonard in Christopher Durang’s Why Torture Is Wrong…And The People Who Love Them. Recently he returned to The American Conservatory Theater, where it all started, and created the role of Edgar Halcyon in the new musical, Tales Of the City, receiving a nomination for Best Actor in a Musical from the Bay Area Critics Association.  Additionally, Richard has had featured roles in several films, including Born on the Fourth of July, Presumed Innocent, Transamerica, Speechless, Burn After Reading, and Delivery Man.  For his performance as Roy in Teresa is a Mother he was named Best Actor in the 2012 New York City Independent Film Festival. On TV he’s had recurring roles on several series, including Frasier, A Whole New Ballgame and in several episodes of each of the latter-day Star Trek series.Most interesting for our audience, Richard is a prolific narrator of audiobooks, with over one hundred titles to his credit, including three novels by Cormac Mccarthy, His narration of BLOOD MERIDIAN was nominated for an “Audie” Award.  He won the award in 2004 for his narration of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. Richard is married to Claudia Howard and they live in Brooklyn.Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the theme music and interludes for READING MCCARTHY.  To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; the website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the page to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy Support the 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 is the second part of the round table discussion of one of McCarthy’s masterworks, the 1979 novel Suttree.  The guests for this wonderful discussion include Dianne Luce, who previously appeared in episodes about The Orchard Keeper and Suttree.  Dr. Luce is a founding member and past president of the Cormac McCarthy Society.  Together with Edwin Arnold, she has edited two collections of articles on McCarthy, and she is the author of Reading the World: Cormac McCarthy’s Tennessee Period (2009).  In the past decade, she has been writing a two-volume study, based on archival research, of McCarthy’s writing life at Random House, several portions of which have appeared as articles in Resources for American Literary Study and the Cormac McCarthy Journal.    She holds faculty emeritus status from Midlands Tech in Columbia, SC. Also rejoining us today for this round table on his favorite McCarthy novel is Author, Actor, Artist, Auteur, musician and composer and more Peter Josyph.  Peter Josyph’s books include The Wrong Reader’s Guide to Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses; Adventures in Reading Cormac McCarthy; Cormac McCarthy’s House: Reading McCarthy Without Walls; Liberty Street: Encounters at Ground Zero; The Way of the Trumpet; What One Man Said to Another: Talks With Richard Selzer; and The Wounded River, which was a New York Times Notable Book of 1993. His films include the award-winning Liberty Street: Alive at Ground Zero; Shakespeare in New York; Hell; Bardtalk; A Few Things Basquiat Did in School; and Acting McCarthy: The Making of Billy Bob Thornton’s All the Pretty Horses. As a painter his McCarthy-related exhibitions have shown in Sweden; England; Australia; and the far countries of Texas and Kentucky.  peter currently lectures on film for the Frick Estate Lectures at Nassau County Museum of Art on Long Island. Bryan Vescio joined us for a previous discussion on McCarthy and Faith.  Dr. Bryan Vescio is currently Professor and Chair of English at High Point University in North Carolina.  He has previously taught at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Missouri Southern State University, and DePaul University.  He is the author of the 2014 book Reconstruction in Literary Studies: An Informalist Approach, as well as numerous articles on American authors including Mark Twain, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, and Nathanael West. He has published articles on works by McCarthy including Suttree, Blood Meridian, and The Road. Thanks as always 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. Our website: https://readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com/And e-mail: readingmccarthy (@) gmail.com 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...