Last October while attending the American Literature Association fiction symposium in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I managed to sequester two live, dyed-in-the-wool employed philosophers who also happen to be Cormac McCarthy experts.  My AV guy (which is me) thought to handle the situation in some arm chairs near an elevator using a very expensive microphone rig ($28 at least) which attached to my phone.  So--the sound is challenging, but I hope that listeners will forge ahead to this excellent conversation.  

Returning to the podcast is Dr. Rick Elmore, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Appalachian State University and Senior Managing Editor of book reviews at Symposium. He researches and teaches in the areas of twentieth-century French philosophy, critical theory, animal philosophy, and Cormac McCarthy Studies. He is the co-editor of The Biopolitics of Punishment: Derrida and Foucault (Northwestern University Press), The Evolving Project of Cormac McCarthy (LSU) and, published after this recording, New Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy: Encountering The Passenger and Stella Maris (U. South Carolina Press). His articles and essays have appeared in Politics & Policy, Symplokē, Symposium, Mississippi Quarterly, and The Cormac McCarthy Journal, among others.

 Joining him is his good friend Dr. Vern Cisney,  the chair and associate professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Gettysburg College, where he teaches at the intersections of philosophy, religion, film, literature, politics, and popular culture.  He is the author of Deleuze and Derrida: Difference and the Power of the Negative (Edinburgh, 2014).  He is additionally the coeditor of Between Foucault and Derrida (Edinburgh, 2016), BioPower: Foucault and Beyond (Chicago, 2015), The Way of Nature and the Way of Grace: Philosophical Footholds On Terence Malick’s Tree of Life (Northwestern, 2016) and a number of other books.  Recent articles include work in Deleuze and Guattari Studies, and pieces in The Evolving Project of Cormac McCarthy, and New Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy: Encountering The Passenger and Stella Maris. 

Thanks as well 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 the platform of your choice.  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 

Support the show

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...

Rick Wallach, one of the founding members of the Cormac McCarthy Society and, indeed, of McCarthy studies in general, passed away on January 27th at the age of 75. A former president of the Cormac McCarthy Society, Rick taught English at the University of Miami.  He instituted and was the senior editor of the Cormac McCarthy Society casebook series, and was the 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 wrote on films, pop culture, music by bands like the Cowboy Junkies, and his final book was In Search of Godzilla: Myth, Stagecraft and Politics in Ishiro Honda’s Masterpiece, published by McFarland Press.  

 This episode is a tribute to Rick, with comments from friends and colleagues Stacey Peebles, Marty Priola, and Peter Josyph.  

Stacey Peebles is H. W. Stodghill, Jr. and Adele H. Stodghill Professor of English and Chair of Film Studies at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. She is the author of The War Comes with You: Enduring War in Life, Fiction, and Fantasy (2024), Cormac McCarthy and Performance: Page, Stage, Screen (2017), and Welcome to the Suck: Narrating the American Soldier’s Experience in Iraq (2011). She is the editor of the collection Violence in Literature (2014) and, with Ben West, co-editor of Approaches to Teaching the Works of Cormac McCarthy (2021). She has been editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal since 2010.

Marty Priola’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.  

Peter Josyph works concurrently as a writer, painter, actor, and an award-winning filmmaker. He was a frequent keynoter for the Cormac McCarthy Society; he played White in a production of THE SUNSET LIMITED in Danville, Kentucky; his painted tributes to McCarthy have exhibited around the world; and he has published five books on McCarthy, the most recent being CORMAC McCARTHY’S LAST OUTLAWS: THE COUNSELOR AND THE PASSENGER, and GLANTON’S HORSE.

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. To contact the host, please reach out to [email protected]. 

Support the show

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...

After a long break in which your intrepid host has contended with everything from eye surgery to accreditation, the second part of the panel discussion on The Counselor is finally here.

Returning for the second part of his first appearance on the podcast is Dr. Russell Hillier, whose consideration of the screenplay first sparked my interest in examining the text again.  He is Professor of English at Providence College, Rhode Island. He is the author of two books, Milton’s Messiah (Oxford University Press, 2011) and Morality in Cormac McCarthy’s Fiction: Souls at Hazard (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), and he is coeditor of Combined Lights: Comparative Essays on the Writings of John Donne and George Herbert (University of Delaware Press, 2021). Additionally, he has published articles on many authors in many journals. 

Returning as well is the excellent Dr. Dianne Luce. She is the author of Reading The World. Cormac McCarthy’s Tennessee Period, University of South Carolina Press, 2009, and Embracing Vocation: Cormac McCarthy's Writing Life, 1959-1974, U South Carolina Press 2023. She is currently working on a second volume of Cormac McCarthy's Writing Life, covering 1974-1985.  

Bryan A. Giemza is Professor of Humanities and Literature at the Texas Tech University Honors College. His work bridges literature, climate communication, and public-facing humanities. He has published widely on McCarthy’s engagement with science, theology, and the American West. His forthcoming edited volume, Sowing the West Texas Wind, examines the causes and consequences of misinformation through regional case studies. His work has been supported by major humanities funders including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Fulbright Program. His book Science and Literature in Cormac McCarthy’s Expanding Worlds was published by Bloomsbury in 2023. 

As always, listeners are warned: there be spoilers here.  Film trailer excerpts from The Counselor, directed by Ridley Scott, distributed by 20th Century Fox, 2013. 

 Thanks as always 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.  Download and follow this podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.  If you’re agreeable it’ll help us if you provide favorable reviews on these platforms.  To contact the host, please reach out to [email protected]. 

Support the show

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...

Full disclosure time here on the READING MCCARTHY podcast.  When Ridley Scott’s film The Counselor arrived in theaters with its very own shiny McCarthy screenplay, I was underwhelmed.  We’d been waiting for over half a decade for The Passenger and had no idea we’d be almost another ten years waiting for that project (and of course we had no concept of Stella Maris at the time). I found interesting elements in the film but didn’t think it held together. But people smarter than me (such as my three guests in this program) convinced me to return to it it and here we are in a 2-parter.    

Appearing for the first time is Dr. Russell Hillier, whose consideration of the screenplay sparked my interest in returning for another bout: he is Professor of English at Providence College, Rhode Island. He is the author of two books, Milton’s Messiah (Oxford University Press, 2011) and Morality in Cormac McCarthy’s Fiction: Souls at Hazard (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), and he is coeditor of Combined Lights: Comparative Essays on the Writings of John Donne and George Herbert (University of Delaware Press, 2021). Additionally, he has published articles on many authors in many journals. 

Returning as well is the excellent Dr. Dianne Luce. She is the author of Reading The World. Cormac McCarthy’s Tennessee Period, University of South Carolina Press, 2009, and Embracing Vocation: Cormac McCarthy's Writing Life, 1959-1974, U South Carolina Press 2023. She is currently working on a second volume of Cormac McCarthy's Writing Life, covering 1974-1985.  

Bryan A. Giemza is Professor of Humanities and Literature at the Texas Tech University Honors College. His work bridges literature, climate communication, and public-facing humanities. He has published widely on McCarthy’s engagement with science, theology, and the American West. His forthcoming edited volume, Sowing the West Texas Wind, examines the causes and consequences of misinformation through regional case studies. His work has been supported by major humanities funders including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Fulbright Program. His book Science and Literature in Cormac McCarthy’s Expanding Worlds was published by Bloomsbury in 2023. 

As always, listeners are warned: there be spoilers here.  Film trailer excerpts from The Counselor, directed by Ridley Scott, distributed by 20th Century Fox, 2013. 

 Thanks as always 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.  Download and follow this podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.  If you’re agreeable it’ll help us if you provide favorable reviews on these platforms.  To contact the host, please reach out to [email protected]. 

Support the show

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...

For the podcast's 60th episode we are finally able to develop a lengthy and thorough discussion of The Passenger, McCarthy's penultimate novel from 2022.  I'm joined by two returning guests of the podcast: Dr. Lydia Cooper is a professor of American literature and director of the core curriculum at Seattle University. Her specializations include Native American literature, Western and southwestern literature, and gender studies, and of course Cormac McCarthy. Her most recent book is Cormac McCarthy: A Complexity Theory of Literature, published by Manchester University Press.  Other books includes Masculinities in Literature of the American West, and No More Heroes: Narrative Perspective and Morality in the Novels, those novels being the books of Cormac McCarthy.  Her work on McCarthy and on other modern and contemporary American and Native American writers has appeared in numerous academic journals such as Studies in the Novel, Studies in American Indian Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment . She is the Vice President of the McCarthy Society. 

Also returning is Dr. Brent Cline. He is an associate professor of English at Hillsdale College.  He earned his PhD at Western Michigan University, where his dissertation focused on representations of mental disability and the modern novel. 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 published recently in the CMJ.

Corrections: I refer a few times to the siblings' grandmother and McCarthy's stretch regarding her ethnicity.  It should be their great grandmother.  Additionally, in the closing pages of the novels Bobby is not on Ibiza as we state but the nearby small island of Formentera, part of the same archipelago. 

Support the show

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...

Episode 60 of READING McCARTHY sees the return of one of my favorite guests, Dr. Stacey Peebles. In addition to her many other roles described below, she is the preeminent expert on McCarthy’s work in screenplays.  Please join us for a consideration of his various screenplays, both produced (The Counselor) and unproduced (Cities of the Plain, No Country for Old Men, Men and Whales) as well as a brief discussion of the film adaptations of his work thus far.  

Stacey Peebles is the HW Stodghill and Adele H Stodghill Professor of English and Director of Film Studies at Centre College. She's the author of The War Comes With You: Enduring War in Life, Fiction, and Fantasy (Dec. 2024), Welcome to the Suck: Narrating the American Soldier's Experience in Iraq, and Cormac McCarthy and Performance: Page, Stage, Screen. She has been editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal since 2010 and is the current President of the Cormac McCarthy Society.

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.  Download and follow this podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.  If you’re agreeable it’ll help us if you provide favorable reviews on these platforms.  To contact the host, please reach out to [email protected]. 

Support the show

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...

The 58th episode brings back the excellent Dr. Dianne Luce to discuss with us McCarthy’s 2006 play The Sunset Limited (or is it a novel in dramatic form?). Produced first by the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago in May of 2006, it later went on to open in New York.  Dianne Luce saw it in Chicago during that opening run and we’ve both seen the Tommy Lee Jones directed film version which aired on HBO in 2011.  The play shows two men, a cynical, atheist white professor and an evangelical Black ex-con, who debate faith, whether life has meaning or consequence, and whether suicide is a viable option.

Returning guest Dianne Luce has appeared previously on Reading McCarthy with discussions of The Orchard Keeper, Suttree, and McCarthy’s legacy, among others. She is a founding member and past president of the Cormac McCarthy society. Together with Edwin Arnold she edited two seminal collections of essays on McCarthy’s work, Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy and A Cormac McCarthy Companion: The Border Trilogy.  Additionally she is the author of Reading The World. Cormac McCarthy’s Tennessee Period, University of South Carolina Press, 2009, and Embracing Vocation: Embracing Vocation: Cormac McCarthy's Writing Life, 1959-1974, USC Press 2023. She is currently working on a second volume of Cormac McCarthy's Writing Life, covering 1974-1985.

Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY. Film trailer for The Sunset Limited, directed by Tommy Lee Jones, 2011.

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 follow along.  Download and follow us on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.  If you’re agreeable it’ll help us if you provide favorable reviews on these platforms.  To contact us, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. 

Support the show

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...

This past December your not-so-intrepid host was able to make a pilgrimage to San Marcos, Texas, to visit the Wittliff Collection in the Alkek Library at Texas State University and plumb its treasure trove of McCarthy archives.  My guest in this episode is Katie Salzmann, who has been Lead Archivist at The Wittliff Collections at Texas State since 2004. Prior to that, she worked with literary and historical manuscript collections at Southern Illinois University and Howard University. She holds a BA in English from The College of Wooster in Ohio, and a Masters in Library and Information Science from the University of Texas-Austin. Katie oversees all areas of The Wittliff's archival program, and her talented team process collections, provide reference and instruction, and digitize select materials. Katie processed the original Cormac McCarthy collection acquired in 2007 and is currently working on the latest accrual anticipated to open in Fall of 2025 .

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’re agreeable it’ll help us if you provide favorable reviews on your favored 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. The website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com.

Support the show

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...

This episode has a history that winds like a West Texas border road.  My guests are the Brothers Elmore, and we originally recorded it in April but one of the tracks went bad.  So finally at the end of our collective academic semesters, we once again discussed No Country for Old Men, speculating about its origins, its commentary on neo-liberalism, the film adaptation, and how some critics tried to read the author through the novel.  Twin brothers, the Elmores collaborate on their work on McCarthy.  

Jonathan Elmore is Associate Professor of English at Louisiana Tech University and the Managing Editor of Watchung Review.. He is the editor of Fiction and the Sixth Mass Extinction: Narrative in an Era of Loss (Lexington) and co-author of An Introduction to African and Afro-Diasporic Peoples and Influences in British Literature and Culture before the Industrial Revolution (ALG). His scholarship has been published in The Cormac McCarthy Journal, Mississippi Quarterly, The British Fantasy Society Journal, Orbit, The Journal of Liberal Arts and Humanities, and The Criterion, among others.    

Thanks as well 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 that like Hank Williams they will someday see the light.  Download and follow us on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.  If you’re agreeable it’ll help us if you provide favorable reviews on these 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.  The website is readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com.

Support the show

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...

Episode 55 is a discussion with award winning novelist, short story writer, poet, and big-time McCarthy fan, Ron Rash. Ron attended Gardner Webb University in Boiling Rock NC and then earned his master’s in English at Clemson University.  He is a writing and English faculty member at Western Carolina in Cullowhee, NC, where he serves as the John and Dorothy Parris Distinguished Professor of Appalachian Cultural Studies.  Ron has won many (I mean, many)  honors and awards, including the Academy of American Poets Prize in 1986, O’Henry short story awards in 2005, 2010, 2019, and the Frank O’Connor International short story award in 2010.  His collection of stories Chemistry and Other Stories was a finalist for the Pen/Faulkner award, as was his novel Serena.  His most recent novel is The Caretaker, a novel set during the Korean War but dealing primarily with class stratification and the home-front in Blowing Rock, North Carolina.  The Caretaker was selected by the New York Times as one of the Best Books of the Year for 2023.

Ron was the Keynote speaker at the McCarthy Conference in October, 2024 and was kind enough to sit for an interview and discuss our mutual passion for the works of Cormac McCarthy.

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 follow along.  Download and follow us on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.  If you’re agreeable it’ll help us if you provide favorable reviews on these platforms.  To contact us, please reach out to [email protected]. 

Support the show

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...