Adventures in Reading Cormac McCarthy

By (author) Peter Josyph

Not available to order

Publication date:

08 July 2010

Length of book:

256 pages

Publisher

Scarecrow Press

ISBN-13: 9780810877085

Regarded by many as one of America's finest-living writers, Cormac McCarthy has produced some of the most compelling novels of the last 40 years. Through the increasing number of cinematic adaptations of his work, including the Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men, and the Pulitzer Prize for The Road, McCarthy is entering the mainstream of cultural consciousness, both in the United States and abroad. In Adventures in Reading Cormac McCarthy, Peter Josyph considers, at length, the author's two masterworks Blood Meridian and Suttree, as well as the novel and film of All the Pretty Horses, McCarthy's play The Stonemason, and his film The Gardener's Son.

The book also includes extended conversations with critic Harold Bloom about Blood Meridian; novelist and poet Robert Morgan about
The Gardener's Son; critic Rick Wallach about Blood Meridian; and Oscar-winning screenwriter Ted Tally about his film adaptation of All the Pretty Horses. Drawing on multiple resources of an unconventional nature, this book examines McCarthy's work from original and sometimes provocative perspectives. Proposing a new notion of criticism, Adventures in Reading Cormac McCarthy will become a useful tool for critics, students, and general readers about one of the great literary talents of the day.

Perhaps the next best thing to actually seeing Acting McCarthy...is to read Josyph's account of the film in Adventures in Reading Cormac McCarthy, complete with transcriptions, which is perhaps the main 'gift' this book offers. So of course the book is about 'Reading Cormac McCarthy' (beginning with two masterworks, Suttree and Blood Meridian), but it is also about understanding this Southern Gothic writer and about adapting his work to film.