Reading McCarthy

This 54th episode of READING MCCARTHY takes a long ramble down THE ROAD, McCarthy’s 2006 Pulitzer Prize winning novel of a father and son enduring life in a harrowing, ashen landscape after some undisclosed apocalypse. For this discussion I’m glad to welcome back guest Dr. Bryan Vescio. Professor and Chair of English at High Point University in North Carolina, Dr. Vescio has previously joined us for discussions on Suttree and Cities of the Plain, among others. He is the author of the 2014 book Reconstruction in Literary Studies: An Informalist Approach, as well as numerous articles on American authors including Mark Twain, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, and Nathanael West, and articles on works by Cormac Mccarthy  including Suttree, Blood Meridian, and The Road.

Thomas Frye composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  

The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society. If you’re agreeable it’ll help us if you provide favorable reviews on your favorite podcasting platforms.  If you enjoy this podcast, you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt. 

To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Despite the evening redness in the west Reading McCarthy is still nominally on X aka Twitter that was.  The website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the webpage to buy the show a cappuccino.

Support the show

Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast will accept 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...

Episode 52 is a round table considering the impact of Ernest Hemingway’s writing on the works of Cormac McCarthy.  Joining us for this discussion are Dr. Olivia Carr Edenfield, Professor of English at Georgia Southern University.  She is a founding member of the Society for the Study of the American Short Story and Director of the American Literature Association.  She has recently published a defense of the mother in The Road  in the CMJ.    

 Dr. Brent Cline is an associate professor of English at Hillsdale College.  He has published articles and chapters involving disability on Walker Percy, James Agee, and Daniel Keyes. His review of The Passenger/Stella Maris was published with The University Bookman. His article on The Mexican Revolution and All the Pretty Horses was just published in the CMJ.  

 Dr. Bryan Giemza is an Associate Professor of Humanities and Literature in the Honors College at Texas Tech University. He  is author or editor of  numerous books on American literary and cultural history, ten book chapters, and more than thirty published articles and reviews. His books include Irish Catholic Writers and the Invention of the American South, and more recently Science and Literature in Cormac McCarthy’s Expanding Worlds (2023), and the forthcoming Across the Canyons: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Divisive Communications in West Texas and Beyond, Texas Tech UP.  

 Dr. Allen Josephs joined us for a discussion of All the Pretty Horses.  A past president of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation and Society and the South Atlantic Modern Language Association in 2008, where he was awarded the continuing honorary membership.  He is the author of some 15 books, including On Hemingway and Spain: Essays and Reviews 1979 – 2013; White Wall of Spain: The Mysteries of Andalusian Culture; and For Whom the Bell Tolls: Ernest Hemingway’s Undiscovered Country. He is the author of four critical editions of the poetry of Federico García Lorca and a book of translations of Lorca’s poetry and prose, Only Mystery: Federico García Lorca’s Poetry in Word and Image. . His book On Cormac McCarthy: Essays on Mexico, Crime, Hemingway and God, was published in 2016. Dr. Josephs is professor emeritus from the University of West Florida where has taught for more than five decades and now resides in Spain.  

As always, readers are warned: there be spoilers here. 

 Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society, although in our hearts we hope they’ll someday see the light.  If you enjoy this podcast you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt. 

To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Despite the evening redness in the west Reading McCarthy is nominally still on Twitter/X.  The website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com.

Support the show

Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast will accept 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...

Although the fact often goes unacknowledged, it is a truth that sometimes an author’s residence within and endurance in the canon is a result of how that author is perceived and taught in the academy.  Most literary scholars are also professors and teachers.  For this episode of Reading McCarthy I round up some of the usual suspects for a panel discussion upon teaching the works of McCarthy to students.  The guests include Stacey Peebles, Chair of the English program, Director of Film Studies, and the Marlene and David Grissom Professor of Humanities at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky.  She is the author of Welcome to the Suck: Narrating the American Soldier's Experience in Iraq  and Cormac McCarthy and Performance: Page, Stage, Screen.  She is editor of the collection Violence in Literature and, with Ben West, co-editor of Approaches to Teaching the Works of Cormac McCarthy.  She has been editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal since 2010.      She is the President of the Cormac McCarthy Society. 

 Dr. Bill Hardwig is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Tennessee. He is author of Upon Provincialism: Southern Literature and National Periodical Culture, 1870-1900 ( UVA Press 2013).  He has edited critical editions of In the Tennessee Mountains by Mary Murfree and a forthcoming edition of Evelyn Scott’s Background in Tennessee and is co-editor with Susanna Ashton of Approaches to Teaching the Works of Charles W. Chesnutt in the MLA teaching series.   He is currently working on a study of McCarthy’s fiction tentatively titled How Cormac Works: McCarthy, Language, and Style. 

Bryan Giemza is an Associate Professor of Humanities and Literature in the Honors College at Texas Tech University.  Dr. Giemza is author or editor of  numerous books on American literary and cultural history, 10 book chapters, and more than 30 published articles and reviews, including  Irish Catholic Writers and the Invention of the American South, which received the South Atlantic Modern Language Association's Studies Award and features a  chapter on McCarthy, as well as Images of Depression-Era Louisiana: The FSA Photographs of Ben Shahn, Russell Lee, and Marion Post Wolcott ).  His most recent books are Science and Literature in Cormac McCarthy’s Expanding Worlds (2023), and Across the Canyons: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Divisive Communications in West Texas and Beyond, Texas Tech UP (2024).  

 As always, listeners should beware: there be spoilers here.  Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society. If you enjoy this podcast you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt. 

To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Despite the evening redness in the west Reading McCarthy is also still somewhat on X (Twitter).  The website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the webpage to buy the show a cappuccino.

Support the show

Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast will accept 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...

The guest for our 50th episode is the OG himself, the redoubtable RICK WALLACH, who joins us for a rousing discussion of No Country for Old Men.  Somehow both Batman and Godzilla are referenced as we consider both the novel and the Coen Bros. film.  Rick Wallach has recently retired from teaching English at the University of Miami.  He is a founder of the Cormac McCarthy society, the senior and primary editor of the Cormac McCarthy Society casebook series, and editor of the two-volume collection of essays Sacred Violence as well as Myth, Legend Dust: Critical Responses to Cormac McCarthy, and co-editor with Lynnea Chapman King and the late James Welsh of From Novel to Film: No Country for Old Men. He is currently working on a new book called "In Search of Godzilla: Myth, History, and Politics in Ishiro Honda's Masterpiece."  

As always, readers should beware: there be spoilers here.

Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society, although in our hearts we hope they’ll someday see the light.  We appreciate favorable reviews on your favorite podcasting platform.  If you enjoy this podcast you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt. 

To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Despite the evening redness in the west Reading McCarthy is also on Twitter.  The website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the webpage to buy the show a cappuccino.

Support the show

Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast will accept 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...

In this episode we head across the border one more time for a consideration of the Border Trilogy as a whole.  How does knowing how the story begins and ends change how we read any of the different parts?  My guests on this filibuster over the border include Dr. Nell Sullivan, a Kentuckian who earned her BA in English from Vanderbilt University and earned her PhD from Rice University.  She is currently Professor of English at University of Houston-Downtown, where she teaches courses in American literature and the literature of the American South.  A former editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal, she has published extensively on gender and class representation in McCarthy’s novels, and has also published essays on Katherine Dunn, William Faulkner, and Nella Larsen, among others.  Her work has appeared in numerous essay collections and in such journals as Genre, Critique, The Southern Quarterly, Mississippi Quarterly, and African American Review.  

 She’s joined by long time contributor Dr. Stephen Frye.  Steve Frye is professor and chair of English at California State University, Bakersfield and President of the Cormac McCarthy Society. He is the author of Understanding Cormac McCarthy (Univ. of South Carolina Press) and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Cormac McCarthy, and Cambridge UP’s Cormac McCarthy in Context. He has written numerous journal articles on Cormac McCarthy and other authors of the American Romanticist Tradition.  Additionally, he is the author of the novel Dogwood Crossing and the book, Unguessed Kinships: Naturalism and the Geography of Hope in Cormac McCarthy, University of Alabama Press.

 Bringing in a breath of non-academic fresh air is Marty Priola. Voracious reader, a sometime critic, and book collector, Marty attended the Christian Brothers University of Memphis, the Publishing Institute at the University of Denver, and earned his J.D. at the University of Memphis.  Marty’s website for McCarthy appreciation became the first website and a foundational part of the formation of the Cormac McCarthy Society, and he still maintains the Cormac McCarthy webpages and forums.  He has written two entries on McCarthy for the Dictionary of Literary Biography. His writing is also featured in exchanges with Peter Josyph in Cormac Mccarthy’s House: Reading Mccarthy Without Walls and The Wrong Reader’s Guide to Cormac Mccarthy: All The Pretty Horses, which he edited and published in its first (ebook) form.  

 As always, listeners should beware: there be spoilers here.

 Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society. We appreciate favorable reviews on your favorite podcasting platform.  If you enjoy this podcast you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt. 

 To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.comThe website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the webpage to buy the show a cappuccino.

Support the show

Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast will accept 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...

The guest for this episode is Dr. Nick Monk, who joins me for a consideration of perhaps McCarthy’s most idiosyncratic work.  The 90s were an exciting time for McCarthy fans.  In 92 he published the award winning All the Pretty Horses, followed two years later by the next installment in the Border Trilogy, The Crossing. Before he would go on to close out the trilogy in 98, however, in 1995 he also published a strange and fascinating play, The Stonemason. The play is about the Telfairs, a family of Black stone masons in Louisville, Kentucky.  The play examines the mystical and perhaps metafictional notion of stone masonry.  Using experimental techniques, we follow Ben Telfair in his worshipful relationship to his 100 year old stonemason grandfather, Papaw.  

The play was canceled both figuratively and literally before it was ever fully produced.  Was it shut down because of McCarthy’s appropriation of Black life? Or because the novelist included elements in the play which are more or less impossible to stage?  Both? 

Dr. Nick Monk is the author of True and Living Prophet of Destruction: Cormac McCarthy and Modernity, published in 2016 by the University of New Mexico Press, and he edited the collection Intertextual and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Cormac McCarthy: Borders and Crossings from 2012. Nick has also published on McCarthy and the ‘Desert Gothic,’ Native American literature – particularly Leslie Silko – intercultural communication, identity, and teaching and learning in higher education. Nick is currently Director of the Center for Transformative Teaching, and Honorary Professor in the Department of English, at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

As always, readers should beware: there be spoilers here.

Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society, although in our hearts we hope they’ll someday see the light.  We appreciate favorable reviews on your favorite podcasting platform.  If you enjoy this podcast you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt. 

To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Despite the evening redness in the west Reading McCarthy is also on Twitter.  The website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the webpage to buy the show a cappuccino.

Support the show

Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast will accept 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...

Episode 47 of READING MCCARTHY considers the author’s references to and uses of disability in its many forms.  My guest DR BRENT CLINE.  He has published articles and chapters involving disability on Walker Percy, James Agee, and Daniel Keyes. His review  of The Passenger/Stella Maris was published with The University Bookman. He teaches a seminar on McCarthy every two years.

As always, readers should beware: there be spoilers here.

Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society, although in our hearts we hope they’ll someday see the light.  We appreciate favorable reviews on your favorite podcasting platform.  If you enjoy this podcast you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt. 

To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Despite the evening redness in the west Reading McCarthy is also on Twitter.  The website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the webpage to buy the show a cappuccino.

Support the show

Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast will accept 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...

In this episode we ride to the end of the road in the last episode of the Border Trilogy, CITIES ON THE PLAIN.  My guest for this foray is Dr. Bryan Vescio, Professor and Chair of English at High Point University in North Carolina.  A guest on former episodes on faith and Suttree, Dr. Vescio is the author of the 2014 book Reconstruction in Literary Studies: An Informalist Approach, as well as numerous articles on American authors including Mark Twain, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Nathanael West, and, of course, Cormac McCarthy. 

As always, listeners should beware: there be spoilers here.

Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society, although in our hearts we hope they’ll someday see the light.  We appreciate favorable reviews on your favorite podcasting platform.  If you enjoy this podcast you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt. 

To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Despite the evening redness in the west Reading McCarthy is also on Twitter.  The website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the webpage to buy the show a cappuccino.

Support the show

Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast will accept 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...

This is our final of 3 tribute episodes in the wake of Cormac McCarthy's passing this past June.  Guests on this final tribute episode include:

 Dr. Steven Frye, professor and chair of English at California State University in Bakersfield.  Steve has just stepped down as President of the Cormac McCarthy Society. He is the author of Understanding Cormac McCarthy (Univ. of South Carolina Press) and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Cormac McCarthy, and Cambridge UP’s Cormac McCarthy in Context. His book Unguessed Kinships: Naturalism and the Geography of Hope in Cormac McCarthy was released this past summer.  

Dr.  Nell Sullivan earned a BA in English from Vanderbilt University and earned her PhD in English from Rice University.  She is currently Professor of English at University of Houston-Downtown, where she teaches courses in American literature and the literature of the American South.  A former editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal, she has published extensively on gender and class representation in McCarthy’s novels, and has also published essays on Katherine Dunn, William Faulkner, and Nella Larsen, among others.  Her work has appeared in numerous essay collections and in such journals as Genre, Critique, The Southern Quarterly, Mississippi Quarterly, and African American Review.

Dr.  Bill Hardwig is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Tennessee. His book Upon Provincialism: Southern Literature and National Periodical Culture, 1870-1900 was published by the University of Virginia Press in 2013.  He has written and published various essays on McCarthy and is currently working on a book-length study of McCarthy’s fiction tentatively titled How Cormac Works: McCarthy, Language, and Style.  He is also creator of the website Literary Knox (www.literaryknox.com), which presents the rich literary history of the city in which he lives and works, Knoxville, Tennessee. 

 Rick Wallach is one of the founders of the Cormac McCarthy society, and recently retired after some few years teaching English at the University of Miami, He is senior editor of the Cormac McCarthy Society casebook series, and editor of the two-volume collection of essays Sacred Violence as well as Myth, Legend Dust: Critical Responses to Cormac McCarthy, and co-editor with Lynnea Chapman King and the late James Welsh of From Novel to Film: No Country for Old Men. He has written widely and extensively on numerous topics in literature, film, media and contemporary music. 

 As always, listeners beware: there be spoilers here.

 All music for Reading McCarthy composed, performed, and produced by Thomas Frye.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society.  We appreciate favorable reviews on your favorite podcasting platform.  If you enjoy this podcast you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt. 

 To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com.   The website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the webpage to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/r

Support the show

Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast will accept 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...

In the wake of Cormac McCarthy's passing on June 13, 2023, a number of excellent tributes and discussion pieces were published.  In this second of three tribute episode, we've asked for permission for the authors to read some of those tributes to McCarthy here on the podcast and we have also solicited a couple of others.  

 The guests this episode include:

 Stacey Peebles, Chair of the English program, Director of Film Studies, and the Marlene and David Grissom Professor of Humanities at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, author of Cormac McCarthy and Performance: Page, Stage, Screen (2017) and co-editor  of Approaches to Teaching the Works of Cormac McCarthy (2022, MLA press); she has been editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal since 2010, and is now the President of the Cormac McCarthy Society; her tribute originally appeared in Publisher's Weekly. 

 Bill Hardwig, Associate Professor of English at the University of Tennessee. His book Upon Provincialism: Southern Literature and National Periodical Culture, 1870-1900 was published by the University of Virginia Press in 2013.  He has written and published various essays on McCarthy and is currently working on a book-length study of McCarthy’s fiction tentatively titled How Cormac Works: McCarthy, Language, and Style.  He is also creator of the website Literary Knox (www.literaryknox.com), which presents the rich literary history of the city in which he lives and works, Knoxville, Tennessee.  Previously published in The Conversation.

 Marty Priola launched the first McCarthy website (Cormacmccarthy.com) and is a founding member of the Cormac McCarthy society.  He has written two entries on McCarthy for the Dictionary of Literary Biography. His writing is also featured in exchanges with Peter Josyph in Cormac Mccarthy’s House: Reading Mccarthy Without Walls and The Wrong Reader’s Guide To Cormac Mccarthy: All The Pretty Horses, which he edited and published in its first (ebook) form.  He wrote this piece especially for the podcast.  

 Casey Spinks is a Ph.D. candidate in theology at Baylor University. He is writing a dissertation on Søren Kierkegaard’s ontology in his religious discourses. He writes from Waco, Texas.  His piece was published on the webzine Front Porch Republic. 

 Multitalented Peter Josyph has joined us for talks on Suttree and his own works, which include The Wrong Reader’s Guide to Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses; Adventures in Reading Cormac McCarthy; Cormac McCarthy’s House: Reading McCarthy Without Walls; Liberty Street: Encounters at Ground Zero; and The Wounded River, which was a New York Times Notable Book of 1993. His films include the award-winning Liberty Street: Alive at Ground Zero; as well as Acting McCarthy: The Making of Billy Bob Thornton’s All the Pretty Horses. Solicited for the podcast from a longer piece. 

 As always, readers should beware: there be spoilers here.

 All music for Reading McCarthy is composed, performed, and produced by Thomas Frye.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society.  We appreciate favorable reviews on your favorite podcasting platform.  If you enjoy this podcast you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL PODCAST, hosted by mys

Support the show

Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast will accept 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...