No Country for Old Men (2005)Mammon’s greatest power is the influence he can exert over the human mind and heart. He inspires envy, greed, and lust so potent that even good men can be driven to corruption. Usually, Mammon’s evil grip leads to obsession; once you fall under his spell, you will struggle to focus on anything other than the treasure he has used to tempt you, and you will do almost anything to get your hands on it. Because of this ability to monopolize a person’s energy, many theologians described Mammon as “enslaving” men.While it was often claimed that Cormac McCarthy's novels were unfilmable, the Coen brothers version of No Country for Old Men was immediately hailed as a classic. This mystery was cleared up when it was revealed that the work began life as a film script, which the author converted to a novel when no studio was interested. It not only reads that way but Mr. mcCarthy told the Wall Street Journal that when Ethan Coen returned to his seat after winning the Academy Award for best screenplay he said, “Well, I didn’t do anything, but I’m keeping it." Both novel and film move propulsively forward with set pieces of violence before arriving at more elegaic final sections (longer in the book). The story amalgamates elements of the Western--particularly the setting--and horror--Anton Chighur is essentially a monster--but it is essentially a noir. Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is a decent enough man, but he makes a terrible mistake. While out hunting antelope--using the sniper skills that had served him in Vietnam--he stumbles across the wreckage of a drug deal gone bad: seven dead men and one dying; shot up vehicles; numerous guns; a bale of heroin and two million dollars in cash. While the dying man pleads for "agua," Llewelyn takes the money and heads home to hide it in his trailer. In one variation from the film noir trope, his young wife, Carla Jean turns out to be a thoroughly devoted and decent woman. And Llewelyn retains his own decency to the degree that he returns to the scene with water, even knowing the danger he's placing himself in. Where are you goin' baby?Sure enough, once there he has a confrontation with cartel members and has to leave his truck behind so both the crooks and the cops know who has the money and the chase is on. Llewelyn's fatalism and the inevitability of all that follows reminded me of nothing so much Walter Neff in Double Indemnity, who likewise knows that he's not likely to get away with his fateful decision. Sure, there is no femme fatale in this story, but there is greed and Mr. McCarthy is not subtle about the temptation to evil that the money exercises. He invokes Mammon more than once (see the definition above) and then, if that's not blunt enough, the Devil himself: I think if you were Satan and you were settin around tryin to think up somethin that would just bring the human race to its knees what you would probably come up with is narcotics.Llewelyn, having succumbed, is Fallen and the evil he brings into his world--in the form of the underworld enforcer Chigurh--is every bit as terrifying and relentless as the demon in The Exorcist. Part of the genius of the novel/film is that, while it is grounded in this Biblical territory, it does nod to horror movie conventions by giving Chigurh a gimmick, the captive bolt gun powered by an oxygen tank with which he commits several murders and which he repeatedly uses to shoot out door lock mechanisms. It is his version of Leatherface's chainsaw, Michael Meyer's knife, Freddy Kreuger's claw. Carson Wells, the other enforcer in the story is recognizably human and almost decent seeming, but not Chigurh. As he pursues Llewelyn across West Texas he leaves a string of corpses in his wake and in the most memorable scene in book or movie he forces a gas station owner to wager his life on a coin flip for no other reason than that he doesn't like a too personal question he's asked. Nearly anyone else who witnesses him in action is doomed. In the hands of a writer aiming for lesser game, Chigurh might be nothing more than a psychopath, who kills for no comprehensible reason. But Chigurh in not simply immoral or amoral; he actually lives to a code. As Wells explains to Llewelyn when he catches up to him in a Mexican hospital after a shootout with Chigurh: This man won't stop looking for you. Even if he gets the money back. It won't make any difference to him. Even if you went to him and gave him the money he would still kill you. Just for having inconvenienced him. [...] Here we arrive at a lynchpin of the novel. All long, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell has served as our narrator and conscience as he tries to track down Llewelyn before the bad guys, mostly on behalf of Carla Jean, who doesn't deserve to lose her husband over one mistake. It was Ed Tom who invoked Satan when decrying drugs and he is appalled by much of modernity, right down towards incivility and body piercings. But Ed Tom does not reserve blame for the drug dealers, he indicts those who choose to use the drugs. And, in a devastating passsage, he tells about a woman sitting next to him at a conference complaining: And she kept talking about the right wing this and the right wing that. I aint even sure what she meant by it. The people I know are mostly just common people.Common as dirt, as the sayin goes. I told her that and she looked at me funny. She thought I was sayin somethin bad about em, but of course that's a high compliment in my part of the world. She kept on, kept on. Finally told me, said: I dont like the way this country is headed. I want my granddaughter to be able to have an abortion. And I said well mam I dont think you got any worries about the way the country is headed. The way I see it goin I dont have much doubt but what she'll be able to have an abortion. I'm goin to say that not only will she be able to have an abortion, she'll be able to have you put to sleep. Which pretty much ended the conversation.In a lot of the criticism of McCarthy you see him accused of nihilism, but this is the exact opposite. Ed Tom, the hero of the story, is the anti-nihilist and he has just tied the lax morality of this woman directly to the devil Chigurh. Both, after all, have essentially adopted a set of "principles" that allow them to dispose of anyone who inconveniences them. That's rough stuff. Of course, the nihilism accusation also gets tossed around because Chigurh ultimately walk away (well, stumbles), having killed Llewelyn, Carlson & even Carla Jean. The Devil/Evil, literally, has prevailed. But given the Christian themes he is explicating here, what other conclusion would be true? As in any noir, once Llewelyn chose to act as he did, and embraced evil, there was no escape. The actions of men do not heal the world and drive out the Devil. This too is the import of the coda that ends both the film and the novel, Ed Tom's dream about his departed dad: [I]t was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin through the mountains of a night. Goin’ through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept goin. Never said nothin. He just rode on past me and he had this blanket wrapped around him and he had his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. About the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up.This is not the country for old men. It lies beyond this world. And the light of the Father illuminates the way... (Reviewed:) Grade: (A) Tweet Websites:-WIKIPEDIA: Cormac McCarthy -ENTRY: Cormac McCarthy (Encyclopedia.com) -TRIBUTE SITE: CormacMcCarthy.com (The Cormac McCarthy Society) -SYMPOSIUM: Cormac McCarthy Symposium (University Bookman, Jun 18, 2023) -FILMOGRAPHY: Cormac McCarthy (IMDB) -SCREENPLAY: Whales and Men< (Cormac McCarthy)[PDF] - -OBIT: Cormac McCarthy, spare and haunting novelist, dies at 89: With his savage western ‘Blood Meridian’ and post-apocalyptic Pulitzer winner, ‘The Road,’ he established himself as one of America’s most renowned writers, with a prose style that was lean, poetic and unsentimental (Harrison Smith, June 13, 2023, Washington Post) -OBIT: Cormac McCarthy, celebrated US novelist, dies aged 89: Author of Blood Meridian, The Road and No Country for Old Men died in his home of natural causes, publisher announces (Erum Salam, Alison Flood and Sian Cain, 13 Jun 2023, The Guardian) -OBIT: Cormac McCarthy, American novelist of the stark and dark, dies at 89 (Wade Goodwyn, 6/13/23, NPR: All Things Considered) -OBIT: Cormac McCarthy, Novelist of a Darker America, Is Dead at 89: “All the Pretty Horses,” “The Road” and “No Country for Old Men” were among his acclaimed books that explore a bleak world of violence and outsiders. (Dwight Garner, 6/13/23, NY Times) - -TRIBUTE: Cormac McCarthy, Riding Into a Bloodred Sunset: He was the last of a generational cohort of writers who redefined American prose (A.O. Scott, June 14, 2023, NY Times Book Review) -TRIBUTE: Cormac McCarthy’s deep Texas ties: ‘For him, it was a whole new world’ (Raul Alonzo, 6/16/23, Texas Standard) -PROFILE: Cormac Country (Richard B. Woodward, Aug. 1st, 2005, Vanity Fair) -ESSAY: Blood of a Thousand Christs: The Violent Faith of Cormac McCarthy (J.C. SCHARL, JULY 10, 2023, Religion & Liberty) -TRIBUTE: Cormac McCarthy’s Work Is Rooted in Science: Cormac McCarthy’s curiosity about science made him a great writer (Nick Romeo, June 23, 2023, Scientific American) -TRIBUTE: Harold Bloom on Cormac McCarthy, True Heir to Melville and Faulkner: On Violence, the Sublime, and Blood Meridian's Place in the American Canon (Harold Bloom, October 16, 2019, Library of America) -TRIBUTE: HOW CORMAC MCCARTHY USED CRIME FICTION’S TROPES TO MAKE MASTERPIECES: On the author's evolving style and journeys through the darkness. (NICK KOLAKOWSKI, 6/23/23, CrimeReads) -TRIBUTE: Cormac McCarthy, Riding Into a Bloodred Sunset: He was the last of a generational cohort of writers who redefined American prose. (AO Scott, , 6/14/23, NY Times)) -TRIBUTE: Cormac McCarthy’s Narrative Wisdom: In his novels, action and description were everything. (Ed Caesar, 6/14/23, The New Yorker) -TRIBUTE: A lyric poet of horror and chaos: the dark brilliance of Cormac McCarthy (Rob Doyle, 6/15/23, The Guardian) -TRIBUTE: Cormac McCarthy remembered: ‘His work will sing down the centuries’: The celebrated US author of Blood Meridian, The Road and No Country for Old Men has died. Here, leading contemporaries and critics pay tribute to him (Robert Macfarlane, Annie Proulx, Stephen King, Benjamin Myers, Ridley Scott, Anne Enright Sebastian Junger, Thomas Keneally and Travis Elborough, 14 Jun 2023, The Guardian) -TRIBUTE: Cormac McCarthy and the Possibility of Faith (Alexander Riley, 6/13/23, Public Discourse) -TRIBUTE: Cormac McCarthy is gone — but his works remain brilliantly alive: He leaves a literary legacy unlike any writer in my lifetime (Aaron Gwyn, June 13, 2023, Spectator) -TRIBUTE: The Three Punctuation Rules of Cormac McCarthy (RIP), and How They All Go Back to James Joyce (Open Culture, June 13th, 2023, Josh Jones) -TRIBUTE: Cormac McCarthy’s Death Is the End of an Era. Maybe Several. ( TOBIAS CARROLL, 6/13/23, Inside Hook) -TRIBUTE: Remembering Cormac McCarthy 1933-2023 (Literary Hub, June 13, 2023) -TRIBUTE: Cormac McCarthy, lone wolf among the last of the literary giants: The American novelist, who died Tuesday at 89, took grand stylistic chances that few others could — or would — dare (John Williams, June 14, 202, Washington Post) -TRIBUTE: On the Death of Cormac McCarthy: The worlds depicted in his novels are not built for mortal humans like you and me. (Graeme Wood, 6/14/23, The Atlantic) -TRIBUTE: ‘A man of miracles’: The Road director John Hillcoat on Cormac McCarthy: The film-maker, who is also set to adapt Blood Meridian, reflects on his friendship with the late author, ‘a monumental artistic force’ (John Hillcoat, 6/14/23, The Guardian)) -TRIBUTE: On Cormac McCarthy (The Paris Review, June 16, 2023) -TRIBUTE: Cormac McCarthy: a powerful writer who beautifully wrote about apocalypse and extinction (Andrew Dix, June 16, 2023, The Conversation) -TRIBUTE: Land of Unconscious Genius: Remembering Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) and the fading of an American tradition (Declan Leary, Jun 17, 202, American Conservative) -TRIBUTE: McCarthy, Joyce, and the ‘Culture of Death’: The long, dark road from James Joyce’s Ulysses to Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger and Stella Maris. (Nora Kenney, Jun 17, 2023, American Conservative) -TRIBUTE: Cormac McCarthy Saw the Extremes of Human Experience: The legendary author constructed beautifully grim worlds full of unpredictability and indifference (Brian Phillips, Jun 14, 2023, Ringer) -REMEMBRANCE: My final, unexpected conversation with Cormac McCarthy (David Kushner, Jun 18, 2023, Business Insider) -TRIBUTE: Cormac McCarthy Had a Remarkable Literary Career. It Could Never Happen Now. (Dan Sinykin, June 19, 2023, NY Times) -TRIBUTE: In the darkness, a home: Cormac McCarthy’s Catholic center: The novelist, who died on June 13th, was a “lapsed Catholic” and is widely considered an agnostic. And it is natural—and a fallacy—to want to possess a great artist as one’s own. But in this case the claim is borne out in the novels. (James Watson, Ph.D. 6/24/23m, Catholic World Reporter) -TRIBUTE: What Cormac McCarthy knew: The American novelist understood the bleak truth that the world defies human understanding or control. (John Gray, 6/20/23, New Statesman) -TRIBUTE: Cormac McCarthy’s Unforgiving Parables of American Empire: He demonstrated how the frontier wasn’t an incubator of democratic equality but a place of unrelenting pain, cruelty, and suffering. (GREG GRANDIN, 6/21/23, The Nation) - - - -TRIBUTE: Hero of a Cult of One: On Loving Cormac McCarthy’s Early Work: Jason K. Friedman Considers the Enduring Creative Influence of a Now-Beloved American Writer (Jason K. Friedman, May 1, 2024, LitHub) -TRIBUTE: What Cormac McCarthy knew: The American novelist understood the bleak truth that the world defies human understanding or control. (John Gray, 6/20/23, New Statesman) -TRIBUTE: Cormac McCarthy & the Vulnerable Style: Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) (PATRICK NATHAN, JUL 14, 2023, The Hobbyhorse) - -ESSAY: The Unimaginable Penitent: The Myth of American Innocence in Cormac McCarthy's Late Work D. Marcel DeCoste, July 02, 2024, Church Life Journal) -ESSAY: How Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian serves as a guide to living a better life (Joseph Anderson, 9th May 2024, The Scotsman) -VIDEO: Couldn't Care Less. Cormac McCarthy in conversation with David Krakauer (Santa Fe Institute) -AUDIO: Cormac McCarthy (RIP) and Werner Herzog Talk Science and Culture (NPR: Science Friday, April 14th, 2011) -BOOK LIST: Cormac McCarthy: where to begin reading his searing, brutal and unforgettable novels (Daniel Robert King, June 16, 2023, The Conversation) - -READING LIST: Outer Dark: A Cormac McCarthy Reading List: “Every man’s death is a standing in for every other. And since death comes to all there is no way to abate the fear of it except to love that man who stands for us.” (Longreads, June 13, 2023) -WIKIPEDIA: No Country for Old Men -WIKIPEDIA: No Country for Old Men(film) -ENTRY: No Country for Old men (Encyclopedia.com) -The Cormac McCarthy Journal (Penn State University Press -Cormac McCarthy Papers (Wittliff Collection, Albert B. Alkek Library, Texas State University) -Featured Author: Cormac McCarthy (From the Archives of The New York Times) -EXCERPT: No Country for Old Men (BookBrowse) -VIDEO INTERVIEW: Couldn't Care Less. Cormac McCarthy in conversation with David Krakauer (Santa Fe Institute (SFI), December 2017) -PODCAST: Cormac McCarthy Chris Ryan doesn’t want to hear your opinion about Cormac McCarthy’s new book (Chris Ryan, Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessey, and Tyler Parker Dec 9, 2022, The Ringer: Hottest Take) -PODCAST: Cormac McCarthy and Modernity with Nick Monk (Hermitix Podcast, 3/02/23) - - -PROFILE: The Road author Cormac McCarthy once removed all commas from a business paper (Clayton Purdom, January 5, 2017, AV Club) -READERS GUIDE: No Country for Old Men Reader’s Guide BY CORMAC MCCARTHY (Penguin Random House) -POEM: Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats (Poetry Foundation) -WIKIPEDIA: The Road -BOOK SITE: The Road (Random House) -GOOGLE BOOK: The Road by Cormac McCarthy -INTERVIEW: Rare Thoughts on Writing From Cormac McCarthy in This Unlikely Interview: It Only Took Two Arizona High School Students to Get Answers From the Legendarily Reclusive Author (Murray Carpenter, March 15, 2022, LitHub) -PROFILE: Cormac McCarthy's Venomous Fiction (Richard B. Woodward, 4/19/92, NY Times Book Review) - - -ESSAY: Cormac McCarthy’s Moral Imagination: A fondness for the freakish and forgotten (Matthew Boudway, November 2016, Commonweal) -REVIEW ESSAY: Cormac McCarthy’s surprising turn to spirituality: Two unexpected McCarthy novels prove to be his most religious yet (Jacob Lupfer, 3/06/23, RNS) -ESSAY: On War, Fatherhood, and the Half-Life of Cormac McCarthy’s Literary Fission: Will Cathcart Travels the Road From Kherson to a Delivery Room in Tbilisi (Will Cathcart, January 5, 2023, LitHub) -ESSAY: Reenchanted Science: How did Cormac McCarthy become a shill for libertarian utopianism? (Erik Baker, December 22, 2022, The Baffler) -ESSAY: What You Really Learn from Cormac McCarthy: On the publication of his first novels in 16 years, novelist Smith Henderson writes about why McCarthy is a modern master (Smith Henderson, December 15, 2022, huckberry) -ESSAY: the macabre metaphysic and schizophrenic style of Cormac McCarthy (Paul Giles, Australian Catholic University, November 18, 2022, The Conversation) -ESSAY: The Kekulé Problem: Where did language come from? (CORMAC MCCARTHY, APRIL 20, 2017, Nautilus) -PROFILE: Cormac McCarthy Explains the Unconscious (Nick Romeo, 4/22/17, The New Yorker) -INTERVIEW: Cormac McCarthy on the Santa Fe Institute's Brainy Halls (NICK ROMEO, 2/12/12, Newsweek) -PROFILE: Cormac Country: Cormac McCarthy would rather hang out with physicists than other writers. He doesn’t do blurbs, book tours, or even Oprah. But with the publication of his blood-spattered new novel, No Country for Old Men, he gives his first interview in 13 years—since All the Pretty Horses turned him from cult figure into literary star. (RICHARD B. WOODWARD, AUGUST 1, 2005, Vanity Fair) -ESSAY: Cormac McCarthy’s Coda: The Last Breath Of An Agnostic Materialist (Tyler Hummel, 7/23/23, Voegelin View) -ESSAY: Cormac McCarthy's Confrontation with Evil (Titus Techera, 6/22/23, Law & Liberty) -ESSAY: Cormac McCarthy’s Poetics of Being: Depicting life in the border country between cosmic order and immanent futility. (Christopher Yates, 6/22/23, Hedgehog Review) -ESSAY: What Cormac McCarthy knew: The American novelist understood the bleak truth that the world defies human understanding or control. (John Gray, 6/20/23, New Statesman) - -BOOK LIST: Curious About Cormac McCarthy? Start With These Five Books.: On the publication of his first novel in 16 years, we're offering a primer on one of our favorite authors. (Huckberyy Journal) -ESSAY: Cormac McCarthy’s new novels revolve around Jewish siblings named ‘Western’: First new books from author since 2006’s ‘The Road’; reviewer speculates that protagonists’ Judaism may be a stand-in for novelist’s Catholicism (ANDREW LAPIN, 29 October 2022, Times of Israel) -ESSAY: Cormac McCarthy’s irrational apocalypse: In his world, mankind is nothing without bloodshed (PARK MACDOUGALD, 10/31/22, UnHerd) -ESSAY: Cormac McCarthy, brutal but brilliant: The harshness and hope of an American master (Chilton Williamson, Jr., 7/25/20, Spectator USA) -PROFILE: Hollywood's Favorite Cowboy: Author Cormac McCarthy, 76, talked about love, religion, his 11-year-old son, the end of the world and the movie based on his novel 'The Road.' He was just getting going. (John Jurgensen, Nov. 13, 2009 , WSJ) -VIDEO: Looking for Cormac -ESSAY: DARKNESS LAUGHABLE: THE COMIC GENIUS OF CORMAC MCCARTHY: As one of our greatest living writers has his work lifted into the ivory tower, let’s reflect on how it’s the light, not the darkness, that keeps us going back for more. (JAMES MCWILLIAMS, JUL 2, 2014, Pacific Standard) -INTERVIEW: Harold Bloom on Blood Meridian (Leonard Pierce, 6/15/09, AV Club) -ESSAY: Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium" and McCarthy's "No Country for Old Men": Art and Artifice in the New Novel (Steven Frye, The Cormac McCarthy Journal) -ESSAY: Cormac and Oprah, Revisited (AUSTIN ALLEN, 16 January, 2012, Big Think) -VIDEO LECTURE: 17. Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (Professor Hungerford, Nov 21, 2008, The American Novel Since 1945, Yale Courses) -ESSAY: No God for Anton Chigurh? (Jim Emerson March 28, 2008, RogerEbert.com) -ESSAY: No Country for Old Literalists (Jim Emerson, November 09, 2007, RogerEbert.com) -PROFILE: Cormac McCarthy: America's great poetic visionary: He is the ultimate pessimist, a reclusive soothsayer who makes even Hemingway look touchy-feely. Now, his apocalyptic novel, The Road, is coming to the big screen, bringing his bleak vision to a wider audience (Tim Adams, 19 Dec 2009, The Guardian) -ESSAY: Cormac McCarthy doesn't know the American south-west: Despite what he has said, plenty of writers before him had written about this region, and many did so a lot better (Christine Granados, 14 Apr 2010, The Guardian) -ESSAY: Who is the greatest American novelist? 3: Cormac McCarthy v John Fante (Matthew Spencer, 19 Dec 2013, The Guardian) -ESSAY: No Country For Old Men: 7 Big Differences Between The Book And Movie (HUGH SCOTT, JUN. 19. 2019, Cinema blend) -ESSAY: Book vs. Movie: No Country for Old Men (Matt Matros, Ploughshares) -ESSAY: The Antiwar Theme in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men (ANQ A Quarterly Journal, October 2016 -ESSAY: Cormac McCarthy's Venomous Fiction (Richard B. Woodward, April 19, 1992, NY Times Magazine) -ESSAY: In the Country of “No Country for Old Men” and On the Trail of Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian”: What I Did for My Summer Vacation (William J. Cobb, August 25, 2017) -ESSAY: "As Full of Grief as Age": "King Lear" as Tragic Ancestor to "No Country for Old Men" (Alexander L. Barron, The Cormac McCarthy Journal) -ESSAY: Cormac McCarthy’s "No Country for Old Men": Narrative Elements in Film and Novel (INESE ROMANOVA, Master's Thesis, 2013) -ESSAY: Amphora: American Furies: Justice in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men And the Oresteia Trilogy (Karen Rosenbecker, 05/25/2018, Society for Classical Studies) -THESIS: Amoral Antagonists: Interrogating the Myth of the West in Cormac McCarthy's Fiction (John Thomas Arthur, University of Denver, 1-1-2017) -ESSAY: No Country for Old Men (Ryan Parker, october 2007, Journal of Religion and Film) -ESSAY: DEMOCRACY, JUSTICE, AND TRAGEDY IN CORMAC MCCARTHY'S "NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN" (Benjamin Mangrum, Autumn 2011, Religion & Literature) -PROFILE: Ten things that make Cormac McCarthy special: Novelist, recluse... guest on Oprah. Welcome to Cormac McCarthy country (Christopher Goodwin, 1/20/2008, Times of London) -PROFILE: A conversation between author Cormac McCarthy and the Coen Brothers, about the new movie No Country for Old Men (TIME, 10/18/07) -PROFILE: Writer Cormac McCarthy confides in Oprah Winfrey (Michael Conlon, 6/05/07, Reuters) -PROFILE: When Oprah Met Cormac: He's no Salinger. (Troy Patterson, June 6, 2007, Slate) -PROFILE: Way out, west: The novelist Cormac McCarthy is the best-kept secret of American letters, but his new book could change all that (GORDON BURN, 4/04/93, Independent) -PROFILE: Cormac McCarthy (BLAKE MORRISON, 14 August 1994, Independent) -PROFILE: Cormac McCarthy: American literature’s great outsider: Few writers have captured the grandeur and cruelty of the American frontier more vividly than Cormac McCarthy. As the film of his novel 'No Country for Old Men' sweeps the Oscars (Boyd Tonkin, 26 February 2008, Independent) -ARTICLE: 'The Road' as Outreach? (Lillian Kwon, 11/13/09, Christian Post) -ESSAY: Faith, Fear & Cormac McCarthy (Christopher Badeaux, January 7, 2009, The City) -ESSAY: The Hugo award winner that spawned a Pulitzer prize winner: Walter M Miller Jr's A Canticle for Leibowitz is a direct ancestor of Cormac McCarthy's The Road (Sam Jordison, 10/28/08, The Guardian) -ESSAY: Cormac McCarthy’s Paradox of Choice: One Writer, Ten Novels, and a Career-Long Obsession (Scott Esposito , Quarterly Conversation) -ESSAY: The New Nuke Porn: Our nuclear fantasies have gotten more hard-core. (Ron Rosenbaum, May 8, 2009, Slate) -ESSAY: Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy: John Crace saddles his horse and heads into the desert to hunt down Cormac McCarthy's 1985 XXX-rated western, Blood Meridian (John Crace, 9/24/09, guardian.co.uk) -ARCHIVE: The First Reviews of Every Cormac McCarthy Novel: FROM THE ORCHARD KEEPER TO THE ROAD (Bookmarks) -ARCHIVES: cormac mccarthy (London Review of Books) -ARCHIVES: Cormac McCarthy (The Guardian) -ARCHIVES: cormac mccarthy (The Guardian) -ARCHIVES: Cormac McCarthy (Oxford American) -ARCHIVES: Cormac McCarthy (Texas Monthly) -ARCHIVES: Cormac McCarthy (New Statesman) -ARCHIVES: cormac mccarthy (Paris Review) -REVIEW ARCHIVE: Read the first reviews of every Cormac McCarthy novel. ( Dan Sheehan, July 20, 2023, LitHub) -ARCHIVES: Blood Meridian (LitHub) -ARCHIVES: Cormac McCarthy (The Guardian) -REVIEW: of All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy (Irving Malin, Commonweal) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy (James Wood, The New Yorker) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men (Walter Kirn, NY Times Book Review) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men (Keith Phipps, AV Club) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men (Annie Proulx, The Guardian) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men (Julie Hale, BookPage) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men (Alan Cheuse, NPR) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men (Clive Sinclair, The Independent) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men (Kirkus) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men (Dean Polling, Valdosta Times) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men (Eric iles Williamson, LA Times) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men (James Tipton, Mexconnect) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men (William Deresiewicz, The Nation) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men (Richard A. Blake, America) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men (Publishers Weekly) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men (Bun Rutter, N+1) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men (William J. Cobb, Houston Chronicle) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men (Ira Boudway, Salon) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men (Sean Michaels, The Skinny) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men (Where Pen Meets Paper) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men (Cult of the New) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men (Beaverton City Library, OregonLive) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men (Diana Mican, Pajiba) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men (Andrew Bannon, The Roundup) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men (Medium) -ARCHIVES: cormac mccarthy (Daily Telegraph) -ARCHIVES: cormac mccarthy (Independent) -ARCHIVES: "cormac mccarthy (Slate) -ARCHIVES: Cormac McCarthy (Find Articles) -ARCHIVES: Cormac McCarthy (THe Guardian) - -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men: All the Pretty Corpses: Cormac McCarthy’s latest—part blood-drenched crime spree, part dark meditation on the state of the world—grabs hold of you and won’t let go. (Don Graham, August 2005, Texas Monthly) -REVIEW ARCHIVE: for The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Metacritic) -REVIEW: of The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Phil Christman, Books & Culture) -REVIEW: of The Road (Janet Maslin, NY Times) -REVIEW: of The Road (William Kennedy, NY Times Book Review) -REVIEW: of The Road (Ron Charles, Washington Post) -REVIEW: of The Road (Chris Cleave, Daily Telegraph) -REVIEW: of The Road (Todd Shy, Christian Century) -REVIEW: of The Road (Michael Moorhead, Christian Ethics Today) -REVIEW: of The Road (Joseph Kugelmass, The Valve) -REVIEW: of The Road (Ten O'Clock Scholar) -REVIEW: of The Road (Image) -REVIEW: of The Road (Jennifer Egan, Slate) -REVIEW: of The Road (Slate Audio Book Club) -REVIEW: of The Road () -REVIEW: of The Road (John Holt, California Literary Review) -REVIEW: of The Road (Michael Chabon, NY Review of Books) -REVIEW: of The Road (Alan Cheuse, NPR) -REVIEW: of The Road (Clive Sinclair, Independent) -REVIEW: of The Road (Ed Caesar, Independent) -REVIEW: of The Road (Adam Mars-Jones, The Observer) -REVIEW: of The Road (Mark Holcomb, Village Voice) -REVIEW: of The Road (Alan Warner, Guardian) -REVIEW: of The Road (George Monbiot, The Guardian) -REVIEW: of The Road (Victoria Hoyle and Paul Kincaid, Strange Horizons) -REVIEW: of The Road (Fl;orence Williams, Outside) -REVIEW: of The Road (Benjamin Whitmer, Modern Word) -REVIEW: of The Road (Dierdre Donahue, USA TODAY) -REVIEW: of The Road (Chris Barsanti, PopMatters) -REVIEW: of The Road (David Hellman, SF Chronicle) -REVIEW: of The Road (The New Yorker) -REVIEW: of The Road (Gail Caldwell, Boston Globe) -REVIEW: of The Road (Niall Griffiths, Daily Telegraph) -REVIEW: of The Road (Charles McGrath, The Scotsman) -REVIEW: of The Road () -REVIEW: of The Road (Gordon Hauptfleisch, Blog Critics) -REVIEW: of No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy (James Wood, The New Yorker) -REVIEW: of No Country (John Freeman, The Scotsman) -REVIEW: of -REVIEW: of -REVIEW: of The Crossing (Anthony Quinn, Independent) -REVIEW ESSAY: Deliverance Is Seldom: On Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Passenger’ and ‘Stella Maris’ (Seth L. Riley, October 25, 2022, The millions) -REVIEW: of The Passenger (GABINO IGLESIAS, NPR) -REVIEW: of The Passenger (Modern Novel) -REVIEW: of The Passenger and Stella Maris (Rob Doyle, The Observer) -REVIEW: of The Passenger (Ross Collin, Chicago Review of Books) -REVIEW: of The Passenger (Dan Jones, The Spectator) -REVIEW: of The Passenger (Justin Taylor, BookForum) -REVIEW: of The Passenger (Laura Miller, Slate) -REVIEW: of The Passenger (Max Bindernagel, Washington Free Beacon) -REVIEW: of The Passenger and Stella Maris (Luke Warde, Independent ie) -REVIEW: of The Passenger (James Wood, The New Yorker) -REVIEW: of The Passenger (Peggy Ellsburg, LA REview of Books) -REVIEW: of Stella Maris (Modern Novel) -REVIEW: of Stella Maris (Christopher J. Scalia, Free Beacon) -REVIEW: of The Passenger and Stella Maris (Brent Walter Cline, University Bookman) -REVIEW: of The Passenger and Stella Maris (Michael P. Federici, University Bookman) -REVIEW: of Passenger & Stella Maris (Christopher C. King, Oxford American) -REVIEW: Of The Passenger (Joy Williams, Harper's) -REVIEW: of The Passenger and Stella Maris (Phil Christman, Commonweal) -REVIEW: of The Passenger and Stella Maris (Alan Noble, Plough) -REVIEW: In a World of Speed and Power, Cormac McCarthy Wasn’t Afraid of Depth: The late novelist’s final books are ambitious portraits of the Western world and the human soul. (JASON M. BAXTER, SEPTEMBER 8, 2023, Christianity Today) -REVIEW: Cormac McCarthy’s Last Novels (Lin Atnip, The Point) -REVIEW ESSAY: The Dam and the Bomb: On Cormac McCarthy (Walker Mimms, n+1) -REVIEW: of The Passenger & Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy (Michael Gorra, NY Review of Books) -REVIEW: of The Passenger & Stella Maris (Graeme Wood, The Atlantic) Blood Meridian -WIKIPEDIA: Blood Meridian -SUBSTACK: The Night Does Not End (Aaron Gwynn) -ENTRY: Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West (Maria del Pilar Blanco, Encyclopaedia Britannica) -EXCERPT: Chapter One of Blood Meridian (Penguin Random House) -BOOK SITE: Blood Meridian (Penguin Random House) -VIDEO LECTURE: Lecture 17 - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (ENGL 291: The American Novel Since 1945) -PODCAST: Episode 69: Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian" w/ Aaron Gwynn (Jennifer Frey, Sacred and Profane) -PODCAST: The Dark Room: Blood Meridian w/ Aaron Gwyn (Art of Darkness) -PODCAST: Voidcast #10 – Cormac McCarthy: Blood Meridian (Vegan Voidcast) -ESSAY: Blood Meridian is Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece: It may be the Great American Novel critics have searched for (Aaron Gwynn, 6/17/23, The Spectator) -ESSAY: Episode VIII: The Fire Which God Has Put There The Meaning of Blood Meridian's Epilogue (AARON GWYN, JAN 28, 2023, The Night Does Not End) -ESSAY: Cormac McCarthy: Conservative Novelist (Alexander Riley, National Association of Scholars) Whatever the acuity of his analysis of the Judge, Bloom’s disregard of the Kid’s importance is shortsighted. He fails to see how the latter’s story is echoed in those of the other heroes of the Westerns. The Judge’s charge as to the justification for the Kid’s death is that he abandoned two other members of the Glanton gang, but one must remember the source of the charge. It is demonstrably false, mouthed by an inveterate liar, and he levels it only because he realizes the Kid’s moral core registers such a thing as the worst of crimes, i.e., the imputation of his moral failing causes the Kid psychological suffering, which is the Judge’s real goal. But he committed no such crime. Shelby and Tate, the two men the Kid is accused of abandoning, in fact received acts of compassionate kindness from the Kid. -ESSAY: Blood Meridian: Inspired by an Other Life Discussion with Justin Murphy (O.G. Rose, Aug 24, 2023, the Breaking of the Day) BOOK LISTS: Blood Meridian recommendations (5 Books) -ESSAY: Crossing the Blood Meridian: Cormac McCarthy and American History (Bennett Parten, February 9, 2022, LA Review of Books) -ESSAY: The weirdness of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (ALEXANDER LARMAN, 6/16/23, Englesberg Ideas) -ESSAY: Harold Bloom on Cormac McCarthy, True Heir to Melville and Faulkner: On Violence, the Sublime, and Blood Meridian's Place in the American Canon (Harold Bloom, October 16, 2019, LitHub) -ESSAY: Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian Was Almost a Plain Old Western: The Sneaky Literary Influences Behind a Modern American Classic (Michael Lynn Crews, September 6, 2017, LitHub) What seems to have turned the book into something new and strange is the emergence of the judge as the frightening center of a metaphysical work concerned with the nature of evil, and featuring a struggle between a tempter devil and a boy who, though bereft of moral guidance in his young and troubled life, resists the pull of the judge’s call. -ESSAY: Cormac McCarthy Cuts to the Bone: Blood Meridian used to be a much different novel. McCarthy’s early drafts reveal how an American masterpiece was born. (NOAH GALLAGHER SHANNON, OCT 05, 2012, Slate) -ESSAY: Blood Meridian’s 10 most McCarthian sentences. (Dan Sheehan, April 28, 2021, LitHub) -ESSAY: The Dance of History in Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian" (John Emil Sepich, Fall 1991, The Southern Literary Journal) -ESSAY: Cormac McCarthy's Definition of Evil: Blood Meridian and the Case of Judge Holden (Brent Edwin Cusher, 29 Sep 2014, Perspectives on Political Science) -ESSAY: “Witness to the Uttermost Edge of the World”: Judge Holden's Textual Enterprise in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian (Joshua J. Masters, 26 Mar 2010, Critique) -ESSAY: American irregular: frontier conflict and the philosophy of war in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West (Michael Evans, 20 Sep 2011, Small Wars and Insurgencies) -ESSAY: Blood Meridian and Its Implications (Andrew Hartman, 1/14/14, US Intellectual History Blog) -ESSAY: Reading Cormac McCarthy: The good, the bad and the ugly (Claudio D'Andrea, Sep 25, 2015, Medium) -ESSAY: The Brutal Beauty of Cormac McCarthy’s ‘Blood Meridian’: The western by the author who died Tuesday perfectly encapsulates his trademarks: riveting prose, unflinching portrayals of violence and all-too-human reckonings with mortality. (Brian P. Kelly, June 16, 2023, WSJ) -ESSAY: "They Rode On": "Blood Meridian" and the Art of Narrative (BERNARD A. SCHOPEN, Summer 1995, Western American Literature) -ESSAY: The weirdness of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (Alexander Larman, JUNE 16, 2023, Englesberg Ideas) -ESSAY: Cormac McCarthy’s bloodiest book is also his most beloved. Why?: In “Blood Meridian,” anything sweet the author introduces is destined to be bludgeoned a few pages later. (Zac Black, July 5, 2023, Toronto Star) -ESSAY: Demystifying the Judge: Law and Mythical Violence in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian (James Dorson, Winter 2013, Journal Book-related and General Links: |
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