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Reading Cormac McCarthy
One of today's most important novelists, Cormac McCarthy is at the peak of a long and productive career. The film adaptation of his No Country for Old Men is a major motion picture, and his fiction is widely read in book clubs. This volume looks at his works, characters, themes, and contexts and relates his writings to current events and popular culture. Chapters include sidebars of interesting information, along with questions to stimulate book club discussions and student research.
One of today's most important novelists, Cormac McCarthy is at the peak of a long and productive career. He won the Pulitzer Prize for The Road in 2007 and the National Book Award for All the Pretty Horses in 1992. This book is a guide to his works and their relevance.
The volume begins with a look at his life and his use of the novel as a means of expressing his ideas. The book then looks at his works, themes, characters, and contexts. It then discusses his exploration of current events and the presence of his fiction in popular culture. Chapters include sidebars of interesting information and provide questions to stimulate book club discussion and student research.
One of today's most important novelists, Cormac McCarthy is at the peak of a long and productive career. He won the Pulitzer Prize for The Road in 2007 and the National Book Award for All the Pretty Horses in 1992. This book is a guide to his works and their relevance.
The volume begins with a look at his life and his use of the novel as a means of expressing his ideas. The book then looks at his works, themes, characters, and contexts. It then discusses his exploration of current events and the presence of his fiction in popular culture. Chapters include sidebars of interesting information and provide questions to stimulate book club discussion and student research.
- GenresNonfiction
152 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
12 people want to read
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November 20, 2015
You've obviously studied his works and written an intensive review. Very good overall. I've read every one of them, too. Unless you can find me a quote from him.or an inside source where he openly denounces Catholicism like Anne Rice who openly spouts off about hipocrisy and the church on twitter, I think you're falling into the trap of exactly the characters he has drawn. In WSJ McCarthy says most days he believes in God. Few people grasp the paradox of a benevolent God creating evil. And that mankind is evil since his fall from grace in the garden of Eden. The fish at the end of the Road represent such grace and beauty in His creation. As do the final sentences in the epilogue of the Border Trilogy. The true beauty of divine mercy simply cannot be described without defining true evil.One cannot exist without the other or how would you know just how immaculate it is? You mentioned environmental concerns with the fish. Interesting point, although I don't get the impression he will be hanging out with Al Gore any time soon.
The rooster crowing in the crossing is mankind's blatant denial of Christ and slow progression to depravity. Mankind really is as flawed as he writes. You only have to look around you or flip.on the TV. It is true as in The Crossing and NCFOM: mankind will only speak against small evils. It is not correct to speak against abortion just as so many turned their heads as men were hauled off during the halocaust. To think otherwise is delusional and why so many books and Hollywood movies fall flat and start to annoy oh after awhile. His characters are so authentically human, and this is precisely why we need salvation and God's grace and the starker the contrast between heaven and hell, the more beautiful it looks.
Many do question the paradox of a loving God creating evil.. McCarthys characters do and that is authentic.They even question their questioning of it which shows how well he knows religious theology. Catholic guilt cannot be removed from the blood.
To question God even a shred of doubt is to go straight to hell. He perfectly describes the fortune teller in the Crossing as a false God. And who is to say that a Lester Ballard shall not be saved from the fires of hell? It is incomprehensible to us. And nowhere does this paradox imply that God is not a loving, forgiving God. Academics just LOVE to denounce religion. They love to claim the church is full of hippocrites who start all the wars of the worlds. The theology of Catholicism is most certainly NOT hippocritical. Mankind is. Precisely why the hope of salvation sustains us if we should one day find ourselves walking in a barren wasteland status post nuclear haulocaust. McCarthy understands Catholic theology to a t. He strips mankind down to what we don't want to see in our own image when we look in the mirror or on the news.
You're part of the history that came before you, he says in Cities of the Plain...just as you don't erase the instinct of flawed humanity, an Irish Catholic also does not tend to reinvent his worldview when exposed to mass and Catholic education every week of his developing life save for some horrible relationship with parents or a priest or pull from college idealogues at a time when the young adult brain becomes most malleable from alcohol and rebellion and newfound freedom. Catholicism is ingrained in the soul as deeply as Universities often strive to brainwash it out of you. Mr. McCarthy, nor his character Sheriff Bell nor anyone from the greatest generation do not tend to strike me as folks who are easily swayed into rose goggled idealism. Yet nowhere in reading these novels do I detect an open rejection of Catholicism. He brings out questions we all have concerning God and that is also the nature of man that he understands so well. When the woman says I know who you are at the end of the Border Trilogy...after all the religious references...she may very well think she is opening her home to the possibility of Christ and not just a cowboy. But the reader doesn't get a lot of he thought she thought in his books which I admire. You must figure it out by what the characters say and do. Maybe you interpret it based on your own experience. Identify with the character's hopes.
When you discuss suffering in your thesis...this goes against what you are saying of him rejecting Catholicism: McCarthy writes suffering should not be taken as God's indifference or malevolence, perhaps affirming the most famous Biblical verse of John 3:16 that He loved the world so much that He gave his only son.
Mccarthy captures my love affair with Mexico in words mine will never hold a candle to. Despite the state department warnings, I keep going back because of those "smiles that can heal all the world".I love seeing the Dias de los muertes and the cathedral in Puerto Vallarta and the undying faith and hope and love of these people despite the bloody mess that is parts of Mexico.
Overall good review/ reading guide but I disagree with your statement that he renounces religion. That goes along with being unable to understand the paradox of a loving God creating evil but it is so and it will never be otherwise.
The rooster crowing in the crossing is mankind's blatant denial of Christ and slow progression to depravity. Mankind really is as flawed as he writes. You only have to look around you or flip.on the TV. It is true as in The Crossing and NCFOM: mankind will only speak against small evils. It is not correct to speak against abortion just as so many turned their heads as men were hauled off during the halocaust. To think otherwise is delusional and why so many books and Hollywood movies fall flat and start to annoy oh after awhile. His characters are so authentically human, and this is precisely why we need salvation and God's grace and the starker the contrast between heaven and hell, the more beautiful it looks.
Many do question the paradox of a loving God creating evil.. McCarthys characters do and that is authentic.They even question their questioning of it which shows how well he knows religious theology. Catholic guilt cannot be removed from the blood.
To question God even a shred of doubt is to go straight to hell. He perfectly describes the fortune teller in the Crossing as a false God. And who is to say that a Lester Ballard shall not be saved from the fires of hell? It is incomprehensible to us. And nowhere does this paradox imply that God is not a loving, forgiving God. Academics just LOVE to denounce religion. They love to claim the church is full of hippocrites who start all the wars of the worlds. The theology of Catholicism is most certainly NOT hippocritical. Mankind is. Precisely why the hope of salvation sustains us if we should one day find ourselves walking in a barren wasteland status post nuclear haulocaust. McCarthy understands Catholic theology to a t. He strips mankind down to what we don't want to see in our own image when we look in the mirror or on the news.
You're part of the history that came before you, he says in Cities of the Plain...just as you don't erase the instinct of flawed humanity, an Irish Catholic also does not tend to reinvent his worldview when exposed to mass and Catholic education every week of his developing life save for some horrible relationship with parents or a priest or pull from college idealogues at a time when the young adult brain becomes most malleable from alcohol and rebellion and newfound freedom. Catholicism is ingrained in the soul as deeply as Universities often strive to brainwash it out of you. Mr. McCarthy, nor his character Sheriff Bell nor anyone from the greatest generation do not tend to strike me as folks who are easily swayed into rose goggled idealism. Yet nowhere in reading these novels do I detect an open rejection of Catholicism. He brings out questions we all have concerning God and that is also the nature of man that he understands so well. When the woman says I know who you are at the end of the Border Trilogy...after all the religious references...she may very well think she is opening her home to the possibility of Christ and not just a cowboy. But the reader doesn't get a lot of he thought she thought in his books which I admire. You must figure it out by what the characters say and do. Maybe you interpret it based on your own experience. Identify with the character's hopes.
When you discuss suffering in your thesis...this goes against what you are saying of him rejecting Catholicism: McCarthy writes suffering should not be taken as God's indifference or malevolence, perhaps affirming the most famous Biblical verse of John 3:16 that He loved the world so much that He gave his only son.
Mccarthy captures my love affair with Mexico in words mine will never hold a candle to. Despite the state department warnings, I keep going back because of those "smiles that can heal all the world".I love seeing the Dias de los muertes and the cathedral in Puerto Vallarta and the undying faith and hope and love of these people despite the bloody mess that is parts of Mexico.
Overall good review/ reading guide but I disagree with your statement that he renounces religion. That goes along with being unable to understand the paradox of a loving God creating evil but it is so and it will never be otherwise.
Displaying 1 of 1 review