20 Contemporary Literature, 1970 to Present
Garry Wallace, “Meeting McCarthy,” Southern Quarterly, 30 (Summer 1992):
134–139.
Featuring a series of conversations with the author and friends, the topics of
this essay include McCarthy’s reading and faith.
Richard B. Woodward, “Cormac McCarthy’s Venomous Fiction,” New York Times
Magazine, 9 April 1992, pp. 28–31.
An often-cited essay in which McCarthy’s life and work is explored with an
emphasis on his violent themes.
Criticism
Edwin T. Arnold and Dianne C. Luce, eds., A Cormac McCarthy Companion: The
Border Trilogy ( Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001).
Essential collection of essays by nine scholars that explores issues related to
gender, the environment, style, history, the cowboy tradition, and spirituality.
Arnold and Luce, eds., Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy, revised edition ( Jackson:
University Press of Mississippi, 1999).
Essential book-length study containing in-depth criticism, thematic explana-
tions, and biographical information.
Vereen Bell, “Between the Wish and the Thing the World Lies Waiting,” South-
ern Review, 28 (October 1992): 920–927.
An examination of characters in All the Pretty Horses and their desire to live in
an uncomplicated world free from the struggles and demands of modern cul-
ture. Bell makes the typical comparison between the novel and Mark Twain’s
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
John Blair, “Mexico and the Borderlands in Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty
Horses,” Critique, 42 (2001): 301–307.
A discussion of the protagonist’s journey into Mexico as a journey from boy-
hood into manhood; analyzes the border as a symbol of passage from a world
that has been destroyed to one defined by “Otherness.”
Vince Brewton, “The Changing Landscape of Violence in Cormac McCarthy’s
Early Novels and the Border Trilogy,” Southern Literary Journal, 37 (Fall
2004): 121–143.
Insightful essay that presents the Border Trilogy as point of transition from
McCarthy’s previous works, noting the elements of hero and romance that are
absent in his early works.
John Cant, Cormac McCarthy and the Myth of American Exceptionalism (New York:
Routledge, 2007).
Essential overview of McCarthy’s life and work, including novels, short fiction
he published as a student, a play, and a television film script, with particular
emphasis on the way his work challenges America’s vision of its position as
exceptional.