Category Archives: Cormac McCarthy

Encounter With a Lawman in Kent Haruf's Fiction Country: Hats Off to Sheriff Ken Putnam

So I’ve just driven 900+ miles to reach the (shopping mall) mecca that is St. Louis, Missouri, and leaving Colorado I was tooling along at the wheel of my ultracool Subaru Forester (well, let’s say it’s nicely functional, which isn’t … Continue reading

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Review of Kent Wascom's "The Blood of Heaven," Plus a Mission Debrief

So my review of Kent Wascom’s impressive debut novel, The Blood of Heaven, appears today in the Dallas Morning News, here. It’s a rollicking book, and I have to say I keep thinking of that Hatfields & McCoys miniseries whenever … Continue reading

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On "The Road," Choking on Smoke

So I’ve owned a house in southern Colorado for ten years, and during that time have seen our summer weather go up and down, some years wet and some years dry, only it always seems to be trending toward hotter … Continue reading

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James Franco Does William Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying," Plus Cormac McCarthy & the Kiss of Death

So it’s buzz-building time for James Franco’s film version of William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, which has to be one of the goofiest Southern Gothic classics of all, published in 1930, early in Faulkner’s career. Famous for its image of … Continue reading

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"The Bird Saviors" as an Example of "Cli-Fi": The Hot, New Literary Subgenre—Climate Fiction

So I’m amused to see this piece on NPR books, which defines a new literary subgenre called Cli-Fi, for Climate Fiction, via a good friend (Thanks, Elizabeth!), here. I’ve noticed a number of novels that have elements of Climate Change … Continue reading

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On Reading T.R. Fehrenbach's "Comanches: The Destruction of a People" and Jared Diamond's "The World Until Yesterday": A World Without Laws

So while teaching Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian recently, I learned he’d been inspired by T.R. Fehrenbach’s Comanches: The Destruction of a People (1975), so I picked it up. Suffice to say it was a gripping read, as I had a … Continue reading

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Life Imitating Art, But Softly: Russian Meteor a Mini-Version of the Fireball That Ends Civilization in Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"

So I’ve been teaching Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (1985) for the last two weeks, although the more I know about the novel, the more I’m struck that it needs an entire semester to cover thoroughly—though if I did that, I … Continue reading

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Review of "The Bird Saviors" in the High Country News, and a Literary Find in Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian"

So there’s a nice review of The Bird Saviors in the High Country News (not to be confused with High Times, which is a fuzzy horse of a different color), a great journal about the West, here. I’ve been too … Continue reading

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Where Do You Live? What Do You Do? & Other Ways to Define a Person

So I’m working on a new novel, which is really the only part about being a writer I like. I was just visiting a friend who went to one of my readings and commented on how cool it was to … Continue reading

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At the Collected Works Bookstore in Santa Fe, in Cormac McCarthy Country

So last weekend I was in Santa Fe, one of the coolest cities in the U.S., and did a reading at the Collected Works Bookstore, which is a beautiful, old-fashioned, high-quality, brick-and-mortar bookstore right off the plaza, on Galisteo Street. … Continue reading

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