Reading McCarthy (Scott Yarbrough and Guest Hosts)

This is the second part of the round table discussion of one of McCarthy’s masterworks, the 1979 novel Suttree. 

 The guests for this wonderful discussion include Dianne Luce, who previously appeared in episodes about The Orchard Keeper and Suttree.  Dr. Luce is a founding member and past president of the Cormac McCarthy Society.  Together with Edwin Arnold, she has edited two collections of articles on McCarthy, and she is the author of Reading the World: Cormac McCarthy’s Tennessee Period (2009).  In the past decade, she has been writing a two-volume study, based on archival research, of McCarthy’s writing life at Random House, several portions of which have appeared as articles in Resources for American Literary Study and the Cormac McCarthy Journal.    She holds faculty emeritus status from Midlands Tech in Columbia, SC.

 Also rejoining us today for this round table on his favorite McCarthy novel is Author, Actor, Artist, Auteur, musician and composer and more Peter Josyph.  Peter Josyph’s books 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; The Way of the Trumpet; What One Man Said to Another: Talks With Richard Selzer; 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; Shakespeare in New York; Hell; Bardtalk; A Few Things Basquiat Did in School; and Acting McCarthy: The Making of Billy Bob Thornton’s All the Pretty Horses. As a painter his McCarthy-related exhibitions have shown in Sweden; England; Australia; and the far countries of Texas and Kentucky.  peter currently lectures on film for the Frick Estate Lectures at Nassau County Museum of Art on Long Island.

 Bryan Vescio joined us for a previous discussion on McCarthy and Faith.  Dr. Bryan Vescio is currently Professor and Chair of English at High Point University in North Carolina.  He has previously taught at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Missouri Southern State University, and DePaul University.  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. He has published articles on works by McCarthy including Suttree, Blood Meridian, and The Road.

 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. 

Our website: https://readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com/

And e-mail: readingmccarthy (@) gmail.com

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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 23 of READING MCCARTHY brings us a great discussion with actor and audiobook narrator Richard Poe.  Poe is known to McCarthy fans as the audiobook narrator of McCarthy’s masterwork Blood Meridian.  Richard Poe has been a professional actor since 1970, when he left the army and was soon drafted into the chorus of William Ball’s production of Oedipus Rex at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Later that year he was cast as Rosencrantz in a production of Hamlet starring the 73-year-old Dame Judith Anderson, touring all the major theaters in America, including Carnegie Hall. He then played a variety of roles in many regional theaters before coming to New York in 1985. He has since appeared in thirteen Broadway shows, including the 1988 Best Play Tony Award winning M. Butterfly, 1992 Best Play Nominee Our Country’s Good, 2006 Best Musical Revival Winner The Pajama Game, and the 2007 Best Play Revival Winner Journey’s End. He created the roles of Father Dan (among others) in Paul Rudnick’s groundbreaking comedy Jeffrey, and Leonard in Christopher Durang’s Why Torture Is Wrong…And The People Who Love Them. Recently he returned to The American Conservatory Theater, where it all started, and created the role of Edgar Halcyon in the new musical, Tales Of the City, receiving a nomination for Best Actor in a Musical from the Bay Area Critics Association.  Additionally, Richard has had featured roles in several films, including Born on the Fourth of July, Presumed Innocent, Transamerica, Speechless, Burn After Reading, and Delivery Man.  For his performance as Roy in Teresa is a Mother he was named Best Actor in the 2012 New York City Independent Film Festival. On TV he’s had recurring roles on several series, including Frasier, A Whole New Ballgame and in several episodes of each of the latter-day Star Trek series.

Most interesting for our audience, Richard is a prolific narrator of audiobooks, with over one hundred titles to his credit, including three novels by Cormac Mccarthy, His narration of BLOOD MERIDIAN was nominated for an “Audie” Award.  He won the award in 2004 for his narration of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. Richard is married to Claudia Howard and they live in Brooklyn.

Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the theme music and interludes for READING MCCARTHY.  

To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; 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 page to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy 

Support the show

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 guest for Episode 24 of READING MCCARTHY needs no introduction to any member of the Cormac McCarthy Society, visitors to the CormacMccarthy.com forums, or readers of McCarthy Criticism.  One of the founders of the Cormac McCarthy society, Rick Wallach survived a degree in theology and years teaching English in Miami, Florida, and is a founding member of the Cormac McCarthy Society. He is senior editor of the Cormac McCarthy Soci ety 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. 

Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the theme music and interludes for READING MCCARTHY.  The opinions of the host and guests do not reflect opinions of any affiliated institutions or the Cormac McCarthy society.

To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; 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 page to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.

Support the show

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...

Our returning guest for READING MCCARTHY is Stacey Peebles.  On this 25th episode of the podcast we venture out into the Darkening World to Come and Ride into the Evening Redness in the West.  Yes, that’s right—this is our first full-length consideration of McCarthy’s masterpiece, Blood Meridian.  Dr. Peebles is 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 (2011) and Cormac McCarthy and Performance: Page, Stage, Screen (2017).  She is editor of the collection Violence in Literature and, with Ben West, is co-editor of the volume Approaches to Teaching the Works of Cormac McCarthy, published this year.  She has published widely on the representation of contemporary war and on McCarthy, and has been editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal since 2010.  

Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the theme music and interludes for READING MCCARTHY.  

To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; 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 page to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.

Support the show

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...

Everything is topsy-turvy for this episode as returning guest Peter Josyph seizes control of the station and turns the tables on your regular host Scott Yarbrough, interviewing him.  Regular host Scott Yarbrough is the co-author of A Practical Introduction to Literary Study, co-editor with Rick Wallach of the two volume Carrying the Fire casebook collections of essays on The Road, and author of numerous essays on McCarthy, Faulkner, Hemingway, and others.  Peter Josyph is an Author, Actor, Artist, Auteur, musician and composer and more Peter Josyph’s books 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; The Way of the Trumpet; What One Man Said to Another: Talks With Richard Selzer; 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; Shakespeare in New York; Hell; Bardtalk; A Few Things Basquiat Did in School; and Acting McCarthy: The Making of Billy Bob Thornton’s All the Pretty Horses. As a painter his McCarthy-related exhibitions have shown in Sweden; England; Australia; and the far countries of Texas and Kentucky.  peter currently lectures on film for the Frick Estate Lectures at Nassau County Museum of Art on Long Island.

 Music includes (at 7:42 and 55:24) excerpts from “Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone” by the Carter Family, Victor 21638-A (1929), and as always original pieces by Thomas Frye, including the intro (“The World to Come”) interlude (“Toadvine”) and the outro (“Blues for Blevins”).  

 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 readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; 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 page to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.

Support the show

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 27 of READING MCCARTHY is a thorough consideration of Race in the Works of Cormac McCarthy.  The guest for this thoughtful and engaging discussion is Lydia Cooper; Dr. Cooper is a professor of American literature at Creighton University. Her specializations include Native American literature, Western and Southwestern literature, gender studies, and 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; No More Heroes: Narrative Perspective and Morality in the Novels (those novels being the ones by 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.

Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the theme music and interludes for READING MCCARTHY.  Included in this episode are “The World to Come,” “Toadvine,” “Running with Wolves,” and “Blues for Blevins.”  

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 me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; 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 page to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.

Support the show

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 28 brings back previous guest Nell Sullivan to discuss a thorny subject: McCarthy’s women characters, with digressions into the ways the author tiptoes through the landscape of homosocial desire.  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.

Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the theme music and interludes 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 me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; 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 page to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.

Support the show

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...

Three returning guests join us for this first part of our interesting and engaging discussion of Cormac McCarthy’s magnum opus Blood Meridian.  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 recently published novel Dogwood Crossing.

 Stacey Peebles is 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 (2011) and Cormac McCarthy and Performance: Page, Stage, Screen (2017).  She is co-editor of Approaches to Teaching the Works of Cormac McCarthy.  She has been editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal since 2010.  

 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. 

 Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the theme music and interludes 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 me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; 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 page to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.

Support the show

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 second part of our wonderful panel discussion of Cormac McCarthy’s masterful and shattering novel Blood Meridian.  Our returning guests include:

 Steve Frye, who 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 recently published novel Dogwood Crossing.

 Stacey Peebles is 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 (2011) and Cormac McCarthy and Performance: Page, Stage, Screen (2017).  She is co-editor of Approaches to Teaching the Works of Cormac McCarthy.  She has been editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal since 2010.  

 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. 

 Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the theme music and interludes for READING MCCARTHY.   Music in this episode includes: "The World to Come," "Toadvine," Running with Wolves," "Much Like Yourself," and "Blues for Blevins."

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 me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; 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 page to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.

Support the show

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 delves again into McCarthy's roots as we consider his intersections with Irish literature.  The guest in this episode is Tennessean by birth and now fully Texified, Richard R. Russell is Professor of English and director of graduate programs at Baylor University. He earned an M Phil at the University of Glasgow and his MA and PhD from the U of North Carolina.  Books include Seamus Heaney:  A Critical Introduction, Edinburgh University Press, Seamus Heaney's Regions. University of Notre Dame Press, June 2014. Modernity, Community, and Place in Brian Friel’s Drama. Syracuse University Press, Irish Studies series, 2013.  Poetry and Peace: Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney, and Northern Ireland. University of Notre Dame Press, 2010, and forthcoming James Joyce and Samaritan Hospitality by Edinburgh University Press.  He has published articles on McCarthy, including one on Beckett’s influences in English Studies and “Embodying Place: Ecotheology and Deep Incarnation in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road,” Christianity and Literature.

Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the theme music and interludes 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 me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; 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 page to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.

Support the show

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 sixteen year wait, we finally have a new novel by Cormac McCarthy grasped in our greedy little podcasting clutches.  In this episode of the podcast, we break with form a bit.  There's no guest discussion this episode; instead we offer a quick review of THE PASSENGER.  Is it completely correct to call it McCarthy's "new novel" since we know he's been working on it since at least the early 90s?  Has the wait been worth it?  Will this prove a worthy finale to a remarkable career?  Do you have to be able to discuss string theory at length to understand it?  Where do the physical, the metaphysical, and the metafictional all meet?  The review tries to avoid big spoilers other than those provided by the book jacket and already leaked through other major reviews.

 As always, thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  

The views of the podcaster and his guests (when they are on the podcast) 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.  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 PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt. 

To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; 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/readingmccarthy.

Support the show

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 is a thorough discussion of McCarthy's use of the animal kingdom in his works.  My guest in this episode is Wallis Sanborn,  Chair of the Department of English, Mass Communication, and Drama, and Graduate Program Head of the Master of Arts-Master of Fine Arts in Literature, Creative Writing, and Social Justice Program at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas.
 Dr. Sanborn is the author of Animals in the Fiction of Cormac McCarthy (2006) and The American Novel of War: A Critical Analysis and Classification System (2012) and the editor of The Klondike Stampede (2017).

His work has appeared in They Rode On: Blood Meridian and the Tragedy of the AmericanWest, Gale’s Contemporary Literary Criticism, Harold Bloom’s Modern Critical Views, The Cormac McCarthy Journal, Southwestern American Literature, Texas Books in Review, Voices de la Luna, Iron Horse Literary Review, and Concho River Review.

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 they’ll 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 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 and Facebook; 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/readingmccarthy.  

Support the show

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...

Some six weeks or so after the publication of McCarthy's first novel in 16 years, The Passenger, we have its slim companion volume, the little sister, if you will, Stella Maris.  In this brief review, I again forego the normal conversation format to offer a quick first-take review of the newest McCarthy novel, one that many presume will be the last book of his published in his lifetime.  The novel is composed of the recording of 7 interviews conducted with Alicia Western, genius and sister to The Passenger's Bobby Western, at the Stella Maris psychiatric care facility in 1972.  

As always, thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  

The views of the podcaster and his guests (when they are on the podcast) 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.  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. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; 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/readingmccarthy.

Support the show

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 35 takes a first ride across the border with the novel that would elevate McCarthy's profile and career.  All the Pretty Horses won McCarthy the National Book Award following its publication in 1992 and was McCarthy's first best-selling novel. Our guest for this episode is Dr. Allen Josephs. A Hemingway scholar as well as a Cormackian, Allen Josephs is a past president of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation and Society and a past president of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association. He is the author of 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 has edited 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. He has published numerous articles on Spain and Hispanic culture in the Atlantic, the New Republic, the Virginia Quarterly, the North Dakota Quarterly, and New York Times Book Review, as well as many publications in scholarly journals.

Additionally he has published numerous essays on McCarthy, some of which have been collected in  On Cormac McCarthy: Essays on Mexico, Crime, Hemingway and God, published by New Street in 2016. Recently, he has translated with his daughter poet Laura Juliet Wood the work of Spanish poet Fernando Valverde, and their translation of The Insistence of Harm appeared in 2019 from the University Press of Florida. Future projects include a thematic memoir, centered on Josephs’ literary and taurine experiences from 1962 to the present. He is University Research Professor and Professor of Spanish at the University of West Florida where he has taught for more than five decades.  

Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the theme music and interludes 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 me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; 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 page to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.

 Correction: I made kind of a big deal in this about how John Grady is not called a boy after he crosses into Mexico. I seem to have done the search wrong, because one excellent reader has found that he is, indeed, referred to as a boy after he’s in Mexico, but the collective group seems not to be called the boys in the after that point. 

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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...

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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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...

Frequent guests Steven Frye and Stacey Peebles join me for another roundup of All the Pretty Horses, the National Book Award winning novel which finally forced the literary world to sit up and take notice of McCarthy.  We climb on and hold tight for this ride through this incredible novel. 

 Stacey Peebles is 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 (Cornell Univ Press, 2011) and Cormac McCarthy and Performance: Page, Stage, Screen (Univ of Texas, 2017).  She is editor of the collection Violence in Literature and, with Ben West, is co-editor of the volume Approaches to Teaching the Works of Cormac McCarthy, published this past year by MLA.  She has published widely on the representation of contemporary war and on McCarthy, and has been editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal since 2010.  

 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 forthcoming book, Unguessed Kinships: Naturalism and the Geography of Hope in Cormac McCarthy, University of Alabama Press. 

 Listeners are reminded this is a show of approachable literary criticism and not a review show, and so we don't always shy away from spoilers; discussions of his novel may spoil other parts of the Border Trilogy. 

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. Download and follow us on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.  Listeners 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.  

Correction: I made kind of a big deal in this and the other ATPH episode about how John Grady is not called a boy after he crosses into Mexico. I seem to have done the search wrong, because one excellent reader has found that he is, indeed, referred to as a boy after he’s in Mexico, but the collective group seems not to be called the boys in the after that point.  

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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...

 Today's guest is George Berridge. George began academic life as a journalist but like Hank Williams saw the light and also began digging deeply into American Literature.  He's now the American Literature editor of the Times Literary Supplement. He lives and works in London. His exceptional review of THE PASSENGER and STELLA MARIS was published in October of last year.  He joins me in a nice conversation about the role of the literary critic in modern journalism (with of course a focus on the works of 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 employers or the Cormac McCarthy Society.  Download and follow 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 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, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.

 To read George Berridge's review of The Passenger, see: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-passenger-stella-maris-cormac-mccarthy-book-review-george-berridge/

 Valerie Stivers' review is published in Compact Magazine and may be found here:

https://compactmag.com/article/cormac-mccarthy-s-masterpiece

Support the show

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...

Cormac still types his novels on an Olivetti typewriter and your host can't figure out Facebook.  So for Episode 39 we bring in some expert help in the form of a lively discussion with Redditor supreme Joe Parslow.  He has moderated the Cormac McCarthy subreddit for over a decade and has seen it grow from its first post in April 2012 to its current position as the largest online community devoted to the works of Cormac McCarthy.  In March 2023 the membership of the subreddit approached 12,000 members. He is a professional writer and the former Senior Editor of the online literary journal Holy Cuspidor. Joe earned simultaneous bachelor’s degrees in English and philosophy from The College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York, where he also earned his Master’s degree in English. He lives in upstate New York with his wife, his daughter, and his dog, Pfeiffer.  Please join us for this discussion of the role of social media in getting the word out, a brief consideration of The Passenger and Stella Maris, and other things cormackian.   As always the discussion is far ranging, and beware: there be spoilers here.

As always, 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 employers or the Cormac McCarthy Society, although in our hearts we hope they’ll someday see the light.  You can follow the 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.  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, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.

Support the show

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 40 is a long ride through rough country as we dig into The CROSSING, McCarthy's masterful middle volume in the Border Trilogy.  My guests today are twin scholars Jonathan and Rick Elmore.  That's right, twins.  Jonathan Elmore is Associate Professor of English at Savannah State 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.    

His twin brother Rick Elmore is 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). His articles and essays have appeared in Politics & Policy, Symplokē, Symposium, Mississippi Quarterly, and The Cormac McCarthy Journal, among others.

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, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.

Support the show

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 41 is our second excursion over the border as the Brothers Elmore and I finish our conversation about THE CROSSING.  Returning as the guests are twin scholars Jonathan and Rick Elmore.  That's right, twins.  Jonathan Elmore is Associate Professor of English at Savannah State 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.    

His twin brother Rick Elmore is 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). His articles and essays have appeared in Politics & Policy, Symplokē, Symposium, Mississippi Quarterly, and The Cormac McCarthy Journal, among others.

 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, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.

Support the show

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...

Like the rest of the world I learned this past Tuesday, June 13th, that Cormac McCarthy had passed away at the age of 89.  This episode had already been recorded, but I thought it would still serve as an initial and quick response to the need to offer a tribute: it's a compilation of the responses to the question What's your favorite McCarthy novel, and why? from the podcast's first 16 guests.

 The guests responding to the "favorite book and why" question this episode are: 

 Steven Frye, Dianne Luce, Bill Hardwig, Nell Sullivan, Brian Giemza, Dennis McCarthy, Stacey Peebles, Paulo Faria, Jay Watson, Marty Priola, Bryan Vescio, Michael Crews, Peter Josyph, Richard Poe, Rick Wallach, Lydia Cooper, and myself.  It is worth noting that at the time of the recording of each of these responses, The Passenger and Stella Maris had not yet been published.

 A more intentional tribute will be forthcoming soon. 

 As posted on the society website:

 Cormac McCarthy 
 1933-2023

It is with great sadness but also with deep gratitude that we mourn the loss of Cormac McCarthy. His contributions to literature, and to our lives, have been momentous. McCarthy was one of the most notable authors of his or indeed any generation. In his long, rich life, lived in places as various as Knoxville, Santa Fe, and Ibiza, his voracious curiosity led him equally to the most abstract ideas and the most downtrodden of barflies, all the cracks and corners of human thought and experience, our endless potential for both coming together and violently wrenching apart. He never compromised his devotion to the beauty of language and the necessary art of storytelling. He leaves behind an extraordinary body of work, tapestries of character, history, philosophy, environment, and the moral questions that pull at all of us.

 Stacey Peebles, President

Lydia Cooper, Vice President

 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.  Download and follow 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. 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, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.

Support the show

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...

On June 13, 2023, we lost a literary giant.  Cormac McCarthy, the greatest writer of our time (in this podcast's completely unbiased opinion) passed away in Santa Fe, New Mexico, his home these past couple of decades.  E-mails and queries started pouring in, mostly asking, "are you going to do a special tribute podcast?  And the answer to that, is yes.  Episode 43 is the first of 3 planned tribute episodes to McCarthy.

 Joining us for this first panel is a roundup of some of the usual suspects: 

Dianne Luce, founding founding member and past president of the Cormac McCarthy Society, author of Reading the World: Cormac McCarthy’s Tennessee Period (2009) and more recently Embracing Vocation: Cormac McCarthy's Writing Life, 1959-1974;

 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;

 Bryan Giemza's books include the literary history Irish Catholic Writers and the Invention of the American South.  Recently he has worked with the Texas Tech Climate Center and just out from Bloomsbury press is Science and Literature in Cormac McCarthy’s Expanding Worlds; 

 Lydia Cooper's most recent book is Cormac McCarthy: A Complexity Theory of Literature; other books includes Masculinities in Literature of the American West: and No More Heroes: Narrative Perspective and Morality in the Novels of books 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.  Download and follow 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 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, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.

Support the show

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...

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

Support the show

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 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.c

Support the show

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...

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 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 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 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 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 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...

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 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 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 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...

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 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 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 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 53rd 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.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Support the show

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 of READING MCCARTHY welcomes to the podcast for the first time Austin Smith.  Austin studied history and literature at the University of Georgia. He has worked as a photographer and a professional adventure photographer, following the art into aviation, mountaineering, and motorcycle racing. He now leads a human resources consulting business in Denver, Colorado. A couple of years ago he hooked up an Airstream fifth wheel RV to his truck and, armed with a load of McCarthy novels, followed the books’ trails across the southwest.  At one point things maybe even get a little Indiana Jones for Austin (or possibly Bobby Western).  Austin’s blog on the subject may be found here: http://www.austincameronsmith.com/photo-essay-cormac-mccarthys-borderlands

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.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Support the show

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 readingmccarthy@gmail.com. 

Support the show

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...

READING MCCARTHY is a podcast devoted to the consideration and discussion of the works of one of our greatest American writers, Cormac McCarthy.  Each episode calls upon different well-known Cormackian readers and scholars to help us explore different works and various essential aspects of McCarthy’s writing.  Scott Yarbrough is your host in these deep dives into the world of McCarthy. 

 The guest this episode  is Steve Frye.  Steve Frye is professor and chair of English at California State University, Bakersfield, and is the 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: The Literary Naturalism of Cormac McCarthy is currently under consideration at Cambridge UP, and he has written numerous journal articles on Cormac McCarthy and other authors of the American Romance Tradition.

 Music for READING MCCARTHY is composed and performed by Thomas Frye.  Interludes this week include “The World to Come,” “Running with Wolves,” “Toadvine” and “Blues for Blevins.”

 Reach out to us at readingmccarthy@gmail.com.  Download the podcast on i-Tunes, Spotify, Google Play, and many other places. 

Support the show

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...

READING MCCARTHY is a podcast devoted to the consideration and discussion of the works of one of our greatest American writers, Cormac McCarthy.  Each episode calls upon different well-known Cormackian readers and scholars to help us explore different works and various essential aspects of McCarthy’s writing.  Scott Yarbrough is your host in these deep dives into the world of McCarthy. 

 This second episode is in preparation of delving into McCarthy’s first novel, The Orchard Keeper.  The guest this week to prepare us for our journey back to 1930s Tennessee is Dianne Luce.  A founding member and past president of the Cormac McCarthy Society, Dianne Luce has been working in the field of McCarthy studies since it first emerged.  She co-edited with Edwin T. Arnold two collections of articles on McCarthy, and she is the author of Reading the World: Cormac McCarthy’s Tennessee Period (2009).  Currently she is writing a two-volume study, based on archival research, of McCarthy’s writing life at Random House. Her most recent article is “Creativity, Madness, and ‘the light that dances deep in Pontchartrain’: Glimpses of ‘The Passenger’ from Cormac McCarthy’s 1980 Correspondence” in the Cormac McCarthy Journal.  She holds faculty emeritus status from Midlands Technical College in Columbia, SC.  She will join us again for the upcoming third episode on The Orchard Keeper.

 Music for READING MCCARTHY is composed, performed, and produced by Thomas Frye.  Interludes this week include “The World to Come,” “Running with Wolves,” Much Like Yourself,” “Toadvine” and “Blues for Blevins.”

 Reach out to us at readingmccarthy@gmail.com.  Download the podcast on Apple iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music, and many other places. 

Support the show

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...

READING MCCARTHY is a podcast devoted to the consideration and discussion of the works of one of our greatest American writers, Cormac McCarthy.  Each episode calls upon different well-known Cormackian readers and scholars to help us explore different works and various essential aspects of McCarthy’s writing.  Scott Yarbrough is your host in these deep dives into the world of McCarthy. 

Episode 3 is a thorough consideration of McCarthy’s first novel, The Orchard Keeper.  Our guest from Episode 2, Dianne Luce, returns to help guide us through the book.  Dianne Luce is a founding member and past president of the Cormac McCarthy Society and has worked in the field of McCarthy studies since it first emerged.  She co-edited with Edwin T. Arnold two collections of articles on McCarthy and is the author of Reading the World: Cormac McCarthy’s Tennessee Period (2009).  Currently she is writing a two-volume study of McCarthy’s writing life at Random House. Her most recent article is “Creativity, Madness, and ‘the light that dances deep in Pontchartrain’: Glimpses of ‘The Passenger’ from Cormac McCarthy’s 1980 Correspondence” in the Cormac McCarthy Journal.  She holds faculty emeritus status from Midlands Technical College in Columbia, SC.

Music for READING MCCARTHY is composed, performed, and produced by Thomas Frye.  Interludes this week include “The World to Come,” “Running with Wolves,” “Toadvine,” “Much Like Yourself,” “Toadvine,” and “Blues for Blevins,” and then repeated, “The World to Come” and “Much Like Yourself,” ending with “Blues for Blevins.”

The opinions of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the opinions of their institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society. 

Reach out to us at readingmccarthy@gmail.com.  Download the podcast on Apple iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.  Find us on Facebook and Twitter. 

Support the show

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...

READING MCCARTHY is a podcast devoted to the consideration and discussion of the works of one of our greatest American writers, Cormac McCarthy.  Each episode calls upon different well-known Cormackian readers and scholars to help us explore different works and various essential aspects of McCarthy’s writing.  Scott Yarbrough is your host in these deep dives into the world of McCarthy. 

This episode considers the Southern Gothic and the Grotesque as it relates to the work of Cormac McCarthy.  Our guest is 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 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 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 works and lives, Knoxville, Tennessee.

Music for READING MCCARTHY is composed, performed, and produced by Thomas Frye.  Interludes this week include “The World to Come,” “Running with Wolves,” “Toadvine,” “Much Like Yourself,” and “Blues for Blevins.” 

The opinions of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the opinions of their institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society. 

Reach out to us at readingmccarthy@gmail.com.  Download the podcast on Apple iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts, and if you feel inclined please leave a favorable review.  Find us on Facebook and Twitter. 

Support the show

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...

READING MCCARTHY is a podcast devoted to the consideration and discussion of the works of one of our greatest American writers, Cormac McCarthy.  Each episode calls upon different well-known Cormackian readers and scholars to help us explore different works and various essential aspects of McCarthy’s writing.  Scott Yarbrough is your host in these deep dives into the world of McCarthy. 

This episode is a consideration of McCarthy’s second novel, Outer Dark.  Our guest is Nell Sullivan.  Dr. Sullivan grew up in Kentucky and 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 South.  A former editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal, she has published extensively on gender and class representation in McCarthy’s novels, as well as essays on Katherine Dunn, William Faulkner, and Nella Larsen, among others.  Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and in such journals as Genre, Critique, The Southern Quarterly, Mississippi Quarterly, and African American Review.

Music for READING MCCARTHY is composed, performed, and produced by Thomas Frye.  Interludes this week include “The World to Come,” “Toadvine,” “Running with Wolves,” “Much Like Yourself,” a refrain of “The World to Come,” and “Blues for Blevins.” 

The opinions of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the opinions of their institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society. 

Reach out to us at readingmccarthy@gmail.com.  Download the podcast on Apple iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts, and if you feel inclined please leave a favorable review.  Find us on Facebook and Twitter. 

Support the show

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...

READING MCCARTHY is a podcast devoted to the consideration and discussion of the works of one of our greatest American writers, Cormac McCarthy.  Each episode calls upon different well-known Cormackian readers and scholars to help us explore different works and various essential aspects of McCarthy’s writing.  Scott Yarbrough is your host in these deep dives into the world of McCarthy. 

This episode is a consideration of McCarthy in the context of Southern Literature.  Today’s guest is Bryan Giemza, who holds a Ph.D. and J.D. and is an Associate Professor of Humanities and Literature in the Honors College at Texas Tech University.  In addition to his teaching and research he serves as public scholar for the Sowell Family Collection in Literature, Community and the Natural World. Before coming to Texas Tech he was Director of the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dr. Geimza is author or editor of six academic books on American literary and cultural history, ten book chapters, and more than thirty published articles and reviews. His research shows wide-ranging interests in American history and literature, with articles on topics ranging from Cherokee literacy and women's religious orders during the Civil War to chirality in Cormac McCarthy's novels. His books include the literary history Irish Catholic Writers and the Invention of the American South, which received the South Atlantic Modern Language Association's Studies Award, as well as Images of Depression-Era Louisiana: The FSA Photographs of Ben Shahn, Russell Lee, and Marion Post Wolcott (2017).  Recently he has worked with the Texas Tech Climate Center and is currently working on a book on STEM and McCarthy's world.  His take on Southern Lit and McCarthy avoids the usual rutted traces and dives deep.  

Music for READING MCCARTHY is composed, performed, and produced by Thomas Frye.  Interludes this week include “The World to Come,” “Toadvine,” “Running with Wolves,” “Much Like Yourself and “Blues for Blevins.” 

The opinions of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the opinions of their institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society. 

Reach us at Readingmccarthy@gmail.com, or find us on Facebook or Twitter.

Support the show

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...

READING MCCARTHY is a podcast devoted to the consideration and discussion of the works of one of our greatest American writers, Cormac McCarthy.  Each episode calls upon different well-known Cormackian readers and scholars (and occasional other folks of interest)  to help us explore different works and various essential aspects of McCarthy’s writing.  Scott Yarbrough is your host in these deep dives into the world of McCarthy. 

The guest for this episode is a different member of the McCarthy gang, Dennis.  Dennis McCarthy is the author of the novel The Gospel According to Billy the Kid, published this past month by the University of New Mexico press and available everywhere.  A native of Knoxville, Tennessee, Dennis McCarthy has been a park ranger, ecologist, speechwriter, editor in chief, professor, and attorney.  For the listeners of the podcast saying to themselves right now, “Wait, I thought this was about the other McCarthy,” well, yes, this is Cormac’s brother; and after retiring out west after his long and varied career, he’s switched paths and written this excellent novel.  He’s currently at work on his second novel, and he and his wife and beagle live in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Music for READING MCCARTHY is composed, performed, and produced by Thomas Frye.  The Intro is “The World to Come”; other music includes (23:27) “Running with Wolves,” (28:38) “Toadvine,” (33:16) “Blues for Blevins,” (41:34) “Much Like Yourself,” and the Outro, as always, is “Blues for Blevins.” 

The opinions of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the opinions of their institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society. 

Reach us at Readingmccarthy@gmail.com, or find us on Facebook or Twitter.

Support the show

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...

READING MCCARTHY is a podcast devoted to the consideration and discussion of the works of one of our greatest American writers, Cormac McCarthy.  Stacey Peebles joins the podcast for this episode.  Dr. Peebles is 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 (published in 2011) and Cormac McCarthy and Performance: Page, Stage, Screen (published 2017).  She is editor of the collection Violence in Literature and, with Ben West, is co-editor of the volume Approaches to Teaching the Works of Cormac McCarthy, which is forthcoming this year.  She has published widely on the representation of contemporary war and on McCarthy, and has been editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal since 2010.  

Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  Music for today includes: Intro: “World to Come,” “ “Toadvine” (10:47), “Much Like Yourself” (23:45); “Running with Wolves” (32:16); Outro: “Blues for Blevins.”

The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac Mccarthy Society.  Available on Apple, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, 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. We’re on Twitter, and you can find us on Facebook.  

Support the show

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...

READING MCCARTHY is a podcast devoted to the consideration and discussion of the works of one of our greatest American writers, Cormac McCarthy.  Each episode calls upon different well-known Cormackian readers and scholars to help us explore different works and various essential aspects of McCarthy’s writing.  Scott Yarbrough is your host in these deep dives into the world of McCarthy. 

Episode 9 of Reading McCarthy welcomes back Dr. Steven Frye in a consideration of the influence of American author Herman Melville on Cormac McCarthy.  Steven 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. His book Unguessed Kinships: Naturalism and the Geography of Hope in Cormac McCarthy is near completion, and he has written numerous journal articles on Cormac McCarthy and other authors of the American Romance Tradition.  Additionally, he is the author of the recently published novel Dogwood Crossing, which I highly recommend.

Music for READING MCCARTHY is composed, performed, and produced by Thomas Frye.  The Intro is “The World to Come”; other music includes (16:46) “Running with Wolves,” (23:20) “Toadvine,” (43:26) “Much Like Yourself,” and the Outro, as always, is “Blues for Blevins.” 

The opinions of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the opinions of their institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society. 

Reach us at Readingmccarthy@gmail.com, or find us on Facebook or Twitter.

Support the show

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 10 of Reading McCarthy welcomes as a guest McCarthy’s translator into Portuguese, Paulo Faria. Paulo Faria was born in 1967, in Lisbon, Portugal. He graduated in Biology and teaches science, but he always had a passion for literature. He became a literary translator as a young man. In 2016 he published his first novel, «Strange war of common use», and his third novel has just been published in Portugal.  He has translated each of McCarthy’s novels into Portuguese.  This wide-ranging conversation touches upon the difficulties of translating complex authors, Paulo’s experience in meeting McCarthy, a consideration of Don Delillo, and much more. 

Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  His music includes “The World to Come” (intro), “Blues for Blevins” (Outro) and “Toadvine” (at 5:34).  Additionally we have songs from Peter Josyph in this episode: “Wesley’s Song” and “Suttree’s Song” from McCarthy Variations, at 19:44 and 38:56 (“Suttree’s Song” is repeated as a second outro).

Support the show

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 11 of READING MCCARTHY is a deep consideration  of perhaps McCarthy’s most troubling novel, CHILD OF GOD.  Our guest today is Dr. Bill Hardwig, who was with us before for a discussion of the southern gothic.  

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 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 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.

The music for READING MCCARTHY is composed, performed, and produced by Thomas Frye.  Songs for this podcast include “The World to Come” (intro), “Blues for Blevins” (Outro), “Toadvine” (at 9:20), “Running with Wolves” (22:17), and “Much Like Yourself” (the first half at 39:53, the second half at 51:27).  

Please reach out to readingmccarthy@gmail.com. 

Support the show

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 12 of READING MCCARTHY is a thorough rumination of the influences of Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner on the works and style of Cormac McCarthy.   Our guest today is Faulkner scholar and critic Dr. Jay Watson.  

Jay Watson is Distinguished Professor of English and Howry Professor of Faulkner Studies at the University of Mississippi, where he also directs the annual Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha conference. He is author or editor of thirteen books, most recently a monograph, WILLIAM FAULKNER AND THE FACES OF MODERNITY, and a coedited collection, FAULKNER AND SLAVERY.

 The music for READING MCCARTHY is composed, performed, and produced by Thomas Frye.  Songs for this podcast include “The World to Come” (intro), “Blues for Blevins” (Outro), “Much Like Yourself” (at 10:00), “Running with Wolves” (38:36), and “Toadvine” (53:35).  

Please reach out to readingmccarthy@gmail.com. 

Support the show

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 13 of READING MCCARTHY is a look behind the curtains of the Cormac McCarthy Society’s webpage with webmaster, writers, critic, book collector, and aficionado Marty Priola.  

Mary Priola holds a bachelor’s degree from Christian Brothers University and a JD from the University of Memphis. 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 started the Cormac McCarthy society website before there even was a society. 

The music for READING MCCARTHY is composed, performed, and produced by Thomas Frye.  Songs for this podcast include “The World to Come” (intro), “Blues for Blevins” (Outro), “Running with Wolves” (14:27), “Toadvine” (29:09), and “Much Like Yourself” (at 34:05).

Please reach out to us at readingmccarthy@gmail.com. 

Support the show

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 14 is a consideration of McCarthy and faith.  Today’s guest Dr. Bryan Vescio is Professor and Chair of English at High Point University in North Carolina.  He has previously taught at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Missouri Southern State University, and DePaul University.  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. He has published articles on works by McCarthy including Suttree, Blood Meridian, and The Road.  

Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  Included are Intro: “World to Come”;  @18:58, “Toadvine”; @30:32, “Much Like Yourself”; Outro: “Blues for Blevins.”

The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society.

Support the show

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 15 is a dive into McCarthy’s first produced and published screenplay, The Gardener’s Son. The guest on this episode is Dr. 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 (2011) and Cormac McCarthy and Performance: Page, Stage, Screen (2017).  She is editor of the collection Violence in Literature and, with Ben West, is co-editor of the volume Approaches to Teaching the Works of Cormac McCarthy, which is forthcoming this year.  She has been editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal since 2010.  

Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  Included are Intro: “World to Come”;  “Running with Wovlves” (29:38); “Much Like Yourself” (42:20); Outro: “Blues for Blevins.”

The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society.

Support the show

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...

Our guest for Episode 16 is Michael Crews, author of Books are Made out of Books: A guide to Cormac McCarthy’s Literary Influences, published by the University of Texas Press in 2017.  Dr. Crews is an Associate Professor of English and chair of English and Communication Studies at Regents University.  He explains his work delving into the McCarthy archives of the Wittliff Collection in his quest for the writers and texts who have influenced the works of Cormac McCarthy.  

Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  Included are (as Intro): “The World to Come”;  “Toadvine” (8:02); “Running with Wolves” (12:24); “Much Like Yourself” (31:51); and as the Outro: “Blues for Blevins.”

The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society.

Our website: https://readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com/

And e-mail: readingmccarthy (@) gmail.com

Support the show

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 17 is an epic consideration of McCarthy’s first great epic novel, Suttree. Our returning guest is Dr. Dianne Luce.  Dianne Luce is a founding member and past president of the Cormac McCarthy Society.  She has co-edited two collections of articles on McCarthy, and she is the author of Reading the World: Cormac McCarthy’s Tennessee Period (2009).  Recently she has been writing a two-volume study of McCarthy’s writing life at Random House through examination of archival research.  She holds faculty emeritus status from Midlands Tech in Columbia, SC.

The title of this episode, by the way, comes from the most excellent Wes Morgan, who has documented many of the places about Knoxville used in the novel on his "Searching for Suttree" website:  https://web.utk.edu/~wmorgan/Suttree/suttree.htm

Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  Included are (as Intro): “The World to Come” and as the Outro: “Blues for Blevins.”  Also included, by Peter Josyph and the mighty mighty band Corporal Punishment, “Suttree’s Song.”

The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society.

Our website: https://readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com/

And e-mail: readingmccarthy (@) gmail.com

Support the show

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 guest for Episode 18 is so interesting and diverse that he has sprawled into two episodes!   Author, Actor, Artist, Auteur, and more, Peter Josyph’s books 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; The Way of the Trumpet; What One Man Said to Another: Talks With Richard Selzer; 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; Shakespeare in New York; Hell; Bardtalk; A Few Things Basquiat Did in School; and Acting McCarthy: The Making of Billy Bob Thornton’s All the Pretty Horses. As a painter his McCarthy-related exhibitions have shown around the world, including Luleo, Sweden; Coventry, England; Sydney, Australia; and here in the states in in Berea, Kentucky; in El Paso; and in Santa Barbara. As an actor he has played, among many other roles, the character of White in The Sunset Limited at the Weisiger Theatre at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. He is a frequent keynote speaker for the Cormac McCarthy Society, and he currently lectures on film for the Frick Estate Lectures at Nassau County Museum of Art on Long Island.

Peter’s songs with band Corporeal Punishment, “Wesley’s Song” and “Suttree’s Song,” from his McCarthy Variations, are included in the show.  The intro and outro songs and other pieces are, as always, 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 are on Twitter and may be reached at Readingmccarthy@gmail.com.  Peter Josyph will rejoin us in the next episode. 

Support the show

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 is Part TWO of my excellent wandering conversation with the energetic and versatile Peter Josyph.  Author, Actor, Artist, Auteur, and more, Peter Josyph’s books 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; The Way of the Trumpet; What One Man Said to Another: Talks With Richard Selzer; 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; Shakespeare in New York; Hell; Bardtalk; A Few Things Basquiat Did in School; and Acting McCarthy: The Making of Billy Bob Thornton’s All the Pretty Horses. As a painter his McCarthy-related exhibitions have shown around the world, including Luleo, Sweden; Coventry, England; Sydney, Australia; and here in the states in in Berea, Kentucky; in El Paso; and in Santa Barbara. As an actor he has played, among many other roles, the character of White in The Sunset Limited at the Weisiger Theatre at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. He is a frequent keynote speaker for the Cormac McCarthy Society, and he currently lectures on film for the Frick Estate Lectures at Nassau County Museum of Art on Long Island.

Peter’s songs with band Corporeal Punishment, “Wesley’s Song” and “Suttree’s Song,” from his McCarthy Variations, are included in the show.  The intro and outro songs and other pieces are, as always, 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 are on Twitter and may be reached at Readingmccarthy@gmail.com. 

Support the show

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 20 brings back guest Bryan Giemza in a discussion which begins as a consideration of McCarthy and Irish Catholicism in the American South and ends with a quick dip into one of McCarthy’s less revered works, The Counselor.  Dr. Bryan Giemza is an Associate Professor of Humanities and Literature in the Honors College at Texas Tech University.  In addition to his teaching and research he serves as public scholar for the Sowell Family Collection in Literature, Community and the Natural World. He is author or editor of six academic books on American literary and cultural history, ten book chapters, and more than thirty published articles and reviews. His books include the literary history Irish Catholic Writers and the Invention of the American South, and Images of Depression-Era Louisiana: The FSA Photographs of Ben Shahn, Russell Lee, and Marion Post Wolcott (2017).  He is currently working on a book on STEM and McCarthy's world.

Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  Included are (as Intro): “The World to Come”; “Running with Wolves (25.25) and “Toadvine” (49.12), and as the Outro: “Blues for Blevins.”  

The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society.

Our website: https://readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com/

And e-mail: readingmccarthy (@) gmail.com

Support the show

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...

We kick off Season 2 of READING McCARTHY with a very special episode.  Instead of having only one guest today, we’ll have three in the first part of a  round table discussion of one of McCarthy’s masterworks, SUTTREE.  

 As part of the round table we welcome back our guest Dianne Luce, who previously appeared in episodes about The Orchard Keeper and Suttree.  Dr. Luce is a founding member and past president of the Cormac McCarthy Society.  Together with Edwin Arnold, she has edited two collections of articles on McCarthy, and she is the author of Reading the World: Cormac McCarthy’s Tennessee Period (2009).  In the past decade, she has been writing a two-volume study, based on archival research, of McCarthy’s writing life at Random House, several portions of which have appeared as articles in Resources for American Literary Study and the Cormac McCarthy Journal.    She holds faculty emeritus status from Midlands Tech in Columbia, SC.

 Also rejoining us today for this round table on his favorite McCarthy novel is Author, Actor, Artist, Auteur, musician and composer and more Peter Josyph.  Peter Josyph’s books 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; The Way of the Trumpet; What One Man Said to Another: Talks With Richard Selzer; 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; Shakespeare in New York; Hell; Bardtalk; A Few Things Basquiat Did in School; and Acting McCarthy: The Making of Billy Bob Thornton’s All the Pretty Horses. As a painter his McCarthy-related exhibitions have shown in Sweden; England; Australia; and the far countries of Texas and Kentucky.  peter currently lectures on film for the Frick Estate Lectures at Nassau County Museum of Art on Long Island.

 Bryan Vescio joined us for a previous discussion on McCarthy and Faith.  Dr. Bryan Vescio is currently Professor and Chair of English at High Point University in North Carolina.  He has previously taught at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Missouri Southern State University, and DePaul University.  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. He has published articles on works by McCarthy including Suttree, Blood Meridian, and The Road.

 Music today includes an excerpt from Peter Josyph’s “Suttree’s Song,” and as always also we offer special thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  Included in this episode are (Intro) “The World to Come,” “Toadvine,” “Running with Wolves,” and “Blues for Blevins.”

 The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society. 

Our website: https://readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com/

And e-mail: readingmccarthy (@) gmail.com

Support the show

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...