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Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy. Background:. Born: 1933 in Rhode Island Originally Charles, but changed name himself (Irish king or “son of Charles”) Studied at University of Tennessee, Liberal Arts degree US Airforce 1953, 4 years Published for first time in lit. arts magazine “The Phoenix” in 1957

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Cormac McCarthy

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  1. Cormac McCarthy

  2. Background: • Born: 1933 in Rhode Island • Originally Charles, but changed name himself (Irish king or “son of Charles”) • Studied at University of Tennessee, Liberal Arts degree • US Airforce 1953, 4 years • Published for first time in lit. arts magazine “The Phoenix” in 1957 • Married soon after, worked as an auto mechanic, one son, Cullen, divorced

  3. First novel The Orchard Keeper, 1965 • Married again in 1966, lived overseas (Ibiza) • Returned to Tennessee in 1967, divorced 10(ish) years later • Blood Meridian published in 1985, “turning point” in career/writing • Border Trilogy • Married again in 1998, son John Francis (conversations with “boy”) • Lives in Tesque, New Mexico, Writer in Residence at Santa Fe Institute • Very private http://www.cormacmccarthy.com/biography/

  4. McCarthy’s Style: “Dirty Realism” • North American, sub-genre of Realism. Term coined in 1983 by Bill Buford (of British literary magazine “Granta”)—Raymond Carver, Charles Bukowski, Carson McCullers and others. “…in The Road the same kind of minimalism comes alive. Dirty realism was sometimes unwittingly excruciating because one felt that the chosen fictional worlds -- even impoverished ones, all those motels and trailers -- deserved richer prose. But in The Road this dumbly questing, glacially heuristic approach matches its subject, a world in which nothing is left standing . . . Short phrasal sentences, often just fragments, savagely paint the elements of this voided world. Food and survival are the only concerns.” James Wood http://www.powells.com/review/2007_05_17.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_realism

  5. The Road: • Published 2006 • Oprah’s Book Club: http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Oprahs-Exclusive-Interview-with-Cormac-McCarthy-Video • Movie in 2009: • Trailer: http://www.theroad-movie.com/

  6. Critical Review: • “The combination of a hope-deprived world crumbling into nothingness and McCarthy’s astringent, horrifying prose imagining all too believably the depths to which a shattered humanity can sink, makes for an emotionally devastating experience, and one not quickly shed. But as with all great literature of the apocalypse, The Road is not just a litany of despair, it is a lament for all that was lost, and thusly, a celebration of the here and now.” Chris Barsanti http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/the-road-by-cormac-mccarthy/

  7. Postapocalyptic Writing: • Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, 1826—considered the first postapocalyptic novel • “In science fiction, the end of the world is usually triggered by other (or at least more specific) means: nuclear warfare (or disaster), biological warfare (or disaster), ecological/geological disaster, or cosmological disaster. But in the wake of any great cataclysm, there are survivors—and post-apocalyptic SF speculates what life would be like for them.” • Appeals to cultural imagination/fear. Popular genre in 1950s/Cold War era when nuclear war=real threat

  8. Targets/threats change, but focus on postapocalytic stories has not ebbed • "The Manhattan Phone Book (Abridged)" by John Varley: "We all love after-the-bomb stories. If we didn't, why would there be so many of them? There's something attractive about all those people being gone, about wandering in a depopulated world, scrounging cans of Campbell's pork and beans, defending one's family from marauders. Sure it's horrible, sure we weep for all those dead people. But some secret part of us thinks it would be good to survive, to start over. Secretly, we know we'll survive. All those other folks will die. That's what after-the-bomb stories are all about.” • http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10013

  9. Central Questions: • Are we fundamentally selfish or altruistic? • When the basic structures of society break down, how do people begin to rebuild? Morally? Physically? Socially? Can we rebuild or do we degrade? • When we are reduced to “survival mode” what social constructs develop, change, disappear? How does our definition of humanity alter? • Can we justify being less than fully truthful to someone we love to avoid causing them pain? • What toll does forced isolation take on a person? A group of people? • How does religion or a belief in a higher power alter in a postapocalyptic world?

  10. In a morally ambiguous world, who becomes a “good guy” or “bad guy”? • Does the power of memory help or hinder our survival? • How does our relationship with nature change in a naturally hostile world? • What happens to the nuclear family structure in a postapocalyptic social structure? • How does a human’s understanding/acceptance of life and death alter in a world of “survival mode”? http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Fiction-and-Scientific-Themes-in-The-Road-by-Cormac-McCarthy/1 http://www.shmoop.com/the-road-mccarthy/compassion-forgiveness-theme.html

  11. Help with McCarthy’s Extensive Vocabulary: • http://flippingpencils.typepad.com/blog/2007/09/the-road-to-a-b.html • Interview about his use (or lack thereof) of punctuation: http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Cormac-McCarthy-on-James-Joyce-and-Punctuation-Video

  12. Small group work: • In a group of 2-3, select one (or more) of the guiding questions and try to answer it using what we’ve read of the text thus far. How does McCarthy address the question? What passages support your ideas?

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