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American literature Cormack McCarthy

Born July 20th 1933
Originally named Charles
Attended Catholic high school
One of the most significant authors working today in American
literature
Won national book award, Pulitzer prize 2007 for The Road
First 4 novels only sold 2000 copies
Rarely gives interviews
Wrote the movie, The Counselor
Gave first interview in 1992 to NY Times
Mostly promotes other peoples work in interviews
He is just a novelist and lets them speak for themselves
Does not go to award ceremonies
Born in Rhode Island, lived in Tennessee and new Mexico
McCarthy works at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico
Copy edits science fiction text books
He does not spend time with other authors, he spends his time with
scientists who influenced The Road
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The Orchard Keeper – 1965
Outer Dark – 1968
Child of god – 1973 – About a murderer and necrophilia
Suttree – 1979 – Novel about Knoxville – Most modernist – about the
down and outs in Knoxville - Urban novel – what it means to live in a city
in a deprived community

Writes a lot about Knoxville and Tennessee
Writes about mass movement and destruction of communities
Writes about people who try to live outside mainstream society
McCarthy himself lived as a down and out whilst at university and so
met a lot of similar people
First 4 books were written whilst living in Knoxville
Whilst living in Santa Fe – NM he wrote his western novels
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Blood Meridian – 1985
All the pretty horses – 1992
The Crossing – 1994
Cities of the Plain – 1998
McCarthy writes about the character John Grady in All the Pretty
Horses
He goes into detail when describing someone doing something skilled

- No Country for Old Men – 2005 – borderlands – up to date (mid 1980’s)
- The Road – 2006 – Future set – post apocalyptic novel, about a man and
boy trying to survive
...
He
also places the book in the Western Genre which is extremely
important in American literature and film
...

Epic of American west and westward expansion
All the people in it were real
Historical novel
Idiosyncratic
Blood Meridian is often called the anti western or the revisionist
western – moving away from the cowboy and Indian, John Wayne to
the barbarity of what happened during the westward expansion
See The Revenant, Unforgiven, High Plains Drifter, Bone Tomahawk,
The Searchers, Django, No Country for Old Men, The Hateful Eight
(Films)
The 1980’s – postmodernism – the grand narrative of the settling of
the west was going out of the window and people were realizing that
it was not so nice
We start to see the real cowboys and Indians story coming out in
literature
Blood Meridian is a reinterpreted historical novel
He does not name his character in this Blood Meridian and The Road
Referred to as ‘The kid’
Not given an ethnic identity and physical description – he is universal –
we can put ourselves in to the character
Uses biblical references
Borrows from Huckleberry Finn and travelling on a raft to New Orleans
Cartomancy – card reading – tarot
Used cartomantic traditions in a mysterious way
Does not translate the Spanish meanings and explain references, he
just puts it in there and lets you work it out

3

Fate is important and random events are never random
Fort griffin – real place – stop on buffalo trails – buffalo hunting
ultimately killed the Comanche’s by cutting off their food supply
Set in the mind 1800’s
Depicts Mexican-American war
Set in South west states and Mexico
White people mass scalping Native Americans
Bounties
Meridian – Vertical line which goes around the world
Blood – mass slaughter
The kid – runs away from home at 14
Narrative – Limited omniscient in the beginning
Tone – Naturalistic
Style – Dense and poetic
Power of language demonstrated though the Judge
Records what he destroys
Fatalism
Kid is illiterate – power of language
Good and evil
Kid is shown as violent from the start, not said if its conditioned or in
him already
Does show some compassion throughout the novel
Subject to the reader’s interpretation if he hold innate goodness or
not
Kid is a hero and anti-hero
Lacks morality and integrity
The Judge inhabits some of the same qualities
Difficult to determine who is the antagonist of the story
Judge Holden has the desire to kill and embrace death
Religion – kid carries bible with him at all times
Characters invoke god but no moral codes

4

Human race do not use their moral compasses but use religion as a
channel in which we keep pretending to be capable of good
When god made man the devil was at the elbow
Men cause violence through their own actions – parallel to Adam and
Eve
Glanton and Holden – share different approaches to violence
Judge in white and Glanton in black when they appear at the front
door in their suits – Holden is purer and Glanton is polluted by green
and madness and is obsessed with power and wealth
Glanton and his men – moral code which united them all
Glanton possesses a sense of loyalty
Evil but all have glimmers of some decency
Men are inherently violent
The Road 2006
Best selling of his novels
Mostly widely taught at schools and universities
Science fiction – post apocalypse
Won 2007 Pulitzer prize for fiction
Was featured on Oprah Winery’s book club
This lead to McCarthy’s only televised interview (YouTube)
Dedicated the book to his son, John Francis McCarthy
Book is about goodness and the fathers learned goodness and the
sons naive goodness
He first thought of the book when in El Paso, Texas
Speculative fiction
Future set (we don’t know the exact date)
The book is a retracing of the conquering of the west
American society has fallen
The father and boy are going east and south, they are returning from
the west

5

Un-doing of settlement
Tries to make readers see the common humanity of the monsters in
his novels
His previous novels are about westward expansion and the violence
which occurred during the process
McCarthy is said to be currently working on a book called The
Passenger
The Road was heavily researched
Spare style
Hemmingway-esc
Nameless characters
Carrying the fire
Trying to understand what goodness is
The future setting is important
Also see The Left Hand of Darkness ,Ursula K
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The road sees the attempt to survive and still live morally
The disaster which has occurred is unspecified
The father is dying
The film version of the book, parts were set in New Orleans post
Katrina so the devastation seen on screen is real
The ash in the book has blocked the sun and the days are getting
darker
The characters have no way of knowing what has happened
From the very beginning the man starts to survive, he fills the bath to
stock up on water
Mirrors the red scare and paranoia of that period

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The man’s quest in the book often takes on a sacred tone
The boy as a golden chalice, something that can house god
The book was going to be called the Grail
Similarities to Sir Gawain (King Arthur) and the father
There is evidence that the father is a doctor
Book is partly about hope, family and not giving up
The book shows the world’s last ever Coke, we take things like coke
for granted but, it’s important to the boy as he has never had one
before
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cormacmccarthy

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