Michael Lynn Crews

BOOKS ARE MADE OUT OF BOOKS

A guide to Cormac McCarthy's literary influences

342pp. University of Texas Press. $35.

978 1 4773 1348 0

Stacey Peebles

CORMAC MCCARTHY AND PERFORMANCE

Page, stage, screen

256pp. University of Texas Press. Paperback, $29.95.

978 1 4773 1231 5

In April 2017, the monthly science magazine Nautilus triumphantly published a piece entitled "The Kekule Problem". The essay--a consideration of the relationship between the unconscious mind and the formation of language --would probably have drawn little attention had it not been written by Cormac McCarthy, who, at eighty-three, was making a first foray into non-fiction. "Why is the unconscious so loathe to speak to us?" he asked. "Why the images, metaphors, pictures? Why the dreams, for that matter?" Sure enough, answers, comments and further queries came rushing in. Introducing the author's printed responses later that year, David Krakauer, President of the Sante Fe Institute, a non-profit research institute where McCarthy has spent the past two decades as a fellow, quelled any notions of further dialogue: "I would reckon that this contribution marks a close to Cormac's participation in this public debate". As, perhaps, should have been expected. McCarthy has made it clear that the spotlight holds little interest for him. Over the course of his career, reaching back to the publication of his first novel The Orchard Keeper (1965), he has given only a handful of interviews. He has no published letters or memoirs, and no biography has appeared. He does not attend book signings and only occasionally bothers with ceremonies; in the case of the National Book Award (for All the Pretty Horses, 1992) and the Pulitzer Prize (for The Road, 2006), he sent his publisher in his stead. Fair warning to the Swedish Academy.

McCarthy's idiosyncratic prose style--characterized by esoteric diction, sparse punctuation and a fascination with the biblical and the grotesque--is unlike anything else in contemporary fiction. In his rare public comments, he shows a reluctance to discuss his method or his influences, except for a few obvious names: Melville, Joyce, Dostoevsky and Flannery O'Connor. Chief among them stands Faulkner, to whom McCarthy was compared in his early career (and with whom he...