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

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

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

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

Support the Show.

Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast will accept minor sponsorship offers to offset the costs of the podcast. This may cause a mild disconnect in earlier podcasts where the host asks for patrons in lieu of sponsorships. But if we compare it to a very large and naked bald man in the middle of the desert who leads you to an extinct volcano to create gunpowder, it seems pretty minor...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Support the Show.

Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast will accept minor sponsorship offers to offset the costs of the podcast. This may cause a mild disconnect in earlier podcasts where the host asks for patrons in lieu of sponsorships. But if we compare it to a very large and naked bald man in the middle of the desert who leads you to an extinct volcano to create gunpowder, it seems pretty minor...

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

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

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

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

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

Support the Show.

Starting in spring of 2023, the podcast will accept minor sponsorship offers to offset the costs of the podcast. This may cause a mild disconnect in earlier podcasts where the host asks for patrons in lieu of sponsorships. But if we compare it to a very large and naked bald man in the middle of the desert who leads you to an extinct volcano to create gunpowder, it seems pretty minor...