Reading McCarthy Scott Yarbrough and Guest Hosts

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 ...

The guest for our 50th episode is the OG himself, the redoubtable RICK WALLACH, who joins us for a rousing discussion of No Country for Old Men. Somehow both Batman and Godzilla are referenced as we consider both the novel and the Coen Bros. film. Rick Wallach has recently retired from teaching English at the University of Miami. He is a founder of the Cormac McCarthy society, the senior and primary editor of the Cormac McCarthy Society casebook series, and editor of the two...

In this episode we head across the border one more time for a consideration of the Border Trilogy as a whole. How does knowing how the story begins and ends change how we read any of the different parts? My guests on this filibuster over the border include Dr. Nell Sullivan, a Kentuckian who earned her BA in English from Vanderbilt University and earned her PhD from Rice University. She is currently Professor of English at University of Houston-Downtown, where she teaches co...

The guest for this episode is Dr. Nick Monk, who joins me for a consideration of perhaps McCarthy’s most idiosyncratic work. The 90s were an exciting time for McCarthy fans. In 92 he published the award winning All the Pretty Horses, followed two years later by the next installment in the Border Trilogy, The Crossing. Before he would go on to close out the trilogy in 98, however, in 1995 he also published a strange and fascinating play, The Stonemason. The play is about the Telfai...

Episode 47 of READING MCCARTHY considers the author’s references to and uses of disability in its many forms. My guest DR BRENT CLINE. 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. He teaches a seminar on McCarthy every two years.As always, readers should beware: there be spoilers here.Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed,...

In this episode we ride to the end of the road in the last episode of the Border Trilogy, CITIES ON THE PLAIN. My guest for this foray is Dr. Bryan Vescio, Professor and Chair of English at High Point University in North Carolina. A guest on former episodes on faith and Suttree, Dr. Vescio 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 Steinbec...