Like Cormac McCarthy, Wes Morgan was born in the North—Albany, New York rather than Rhode Island—but came south at the age of 4.  Wes grew up in Atlanta and earned BS degrees in Physics and Applied Psychology at Georgia Tech.  In 1962 Wes moved to Knoxville and began working on his doctorate in psychology.  He went on to work as a staff psychologist at Palo Alto Veterans Administration Hospital in California, where he met Marian, who would become his wife, Wes and his family returned to Knoxville in 1970 to join the faculty in the Department of Psychology at the University of Tennessee, where he remained until his retirement from full-time teaching in 2007.  Wes has had a longstanding interest in the writings of Cormac McCarthy with particular focus on the early novels centered in Knoxville and East Tennessee.  He has developed a website called "Searching for Suttree" which shows photographs of the places mentioned in that novel and is working on a reader's guide to the book as well.  Wes has published articles and chapters on McCarthy in numerous places, including The Cormac McCarthy Journal, the Casebook series, Appalachian Heritage, and Puerto Del Sol. 

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New! A book adaptation of many of the episodes focusing on McCarthy's Southern novels is forthcoming in December, 2026.  Click the link for details on Reading Cormac McCarthy: Scholars Discuss the Southern Novels.

Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast began accepting minor sponsorship offers to offset the costs of the podcast.  This may cause a mild disconnect in earlier podcasts where the host asks for patrons in lieu of sponsorships.   But if we compare it to a very large and naked bald man in the middle of the desert who leads you to an extinct volcano to create gunpowder, it seems pretty minor...