22 Contemporary Literature, 1970 to Present
James D. Lilley, ed., Cormac McCarthy: New Directions (Albuquerque: University
of New Mexico Press, 2002).
Collection of fourteen essays (of which five concern the Border Trilogy) that
demonstrate a variety of critical approaches and tackle such issues as gender and
race.
Dianne C. Luce, “Cormac McCarthy,” in Dictionary of Literary Biography, volume
143: American Novelists Since World War II, Third Series (Detroit: Bruccoli
Clark Layman/Gale, 1994): 118–136.
Provides biographical information and a summary of McCarthy’s life as well as
brief overviews of each of McCarthy’s books published prior to 1994.
Luce, Reading the World: Cormac McCarthy’s Tennessee Period (Columbia: Univer-
sity of South Carolina Press, 2009).
Discussion of works written from 1959 to 1979 (his “Tennessee period”), placing
them within historical, geographical, and philosophical contexts; for the advanced
student.
Wallis R. Sanborn III, Animals in the Fiction of Cormac McCarthy ( Jefferson,
N.C.: McFarland, 2006).
Examination of representations of animals in McCarthy’s novels, plays, and short
stories. Sanborn argues that animals reinforce a vision of a world organized by
biological determinism, observing that animal survival in the works depends on
distance from humans.
John Sepich and Edwin T. Arnold, Notes on Blood Meridian, Southwestern Writ-
ers Series, second edition (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008).
Revised and expanded from the 1993 edition. This study explores key issues and
themes and traces the historical context of the novel’s events.
Ched Spellman, “Dreams As a Structural Framework in McCarthy’s All the Pretty
Horses,” Explicator, 66 (Spring 2008): 166–170.
Short essay that analyzes the use of dreams as a way to bind together the major
plot elements of the story.
Walter Sullivan, “The Last Cowboy Song: Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy,”
Sewanee Review, 108 (Spring 2000): 292–297.
Review of the Border Trilogy, providing a useful summary of the novels and
assessment of McCarthy’s literary skills.
Stephen Tatum, “Cormac McCarthy,” in Updating the Literary West, sponsored
by Western Literature Association (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University
Press, 1997), pp. 475–488.
Explores the ways McCarthy’s novels set in the Southwestern borderlands revise
the traditional Western novel.
—Magi I. Smith and Linda Trinh Moser