These two books, both published last year, bring together new perspectives on some of the major debates surrounding McCarthy's work. The first, Sara Spurgeon's essay collection Cormac McCarthy, presents a wide variety of critical essays dealing accessibly with many of the major critical debates surrounding McCarthy's work, including the kinds of goodness and evil encountered in McCarthy's books, as well as engaging with the author's occasionally difficult endings and the depiction of women in his novels. The second, No More Heroes by Lydia Cooper, engages in depth with the linguistic features of McCarthy's style, arguing for the existence of a consistent moral framework across McCarthy's oeuvre.
In Cormac McCarthy, Sara Spurgeon has presented an excellent series of varied and incisive essays on three of McCarthy's novels – All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, and The Road – accompanied by an extremely thorough framing introduction by Spurgeon herself.
Spurgeon's introduction collects much of what is known about McCarthy's life, detailing his career and his many moves and including fascinating insights into McCarthy's background. Mention is also made of the McCarthy papers held at the University of Texas, although some detail is muddied here, for example the only partially true claim that “all the novels of the Border Trilogy were originally imagined as a single screenplay” (12).
The first section of the book deals with All the Pretty Horses. Linda Woodson's article attempts to “place … the novel in the context of the history and traditions of Mexico” (28). “Doing so,” Woodson argues, “demonstrates that McCarthy achieves more fully-developed women characters … than previously recognised” (28).Woodson's argument works especially well for Alejandra, although I would perhaps like to have seen greater use made of “the third dominant feminine symbol of Mexico, La Llorona (the weeping woman)” (32). Second in this section is Stacey Peeble's essay, an excellent comparison between the depictions of the horsebreaking scenes from the novel and film versions of All the Pretty Horses. The key difference, Peebles convincingly argues, is that in Thornton's film the “sequence demystifies John Grady as a character” (56), whereas it deepens his mystic connection with horses in McCarthy's novel. In the final essay in this section Andrew Husband applies class criticism to McCarthy's work, something which has been largely missed thus far in the majority of scholarship. The use of the critical framework of “multitudes,” networks of identity encountered in the text, is extremely productive, opening up a genuinely new area within McCarthy scholarship.
The second section of the book takes No Country for Old Men as its subject. Stephen Tatum argues that McCarthy “produces an internal corrido or Border Ballad” (79). This claim, accompanied by an examination of the figure of the narcotraficante, is a fascinating new angle on McCarthy's novel, more so than the economic argument accompanying it (93). Next, Jay Ellis's essay seeks to cast Chigurh as “a Socratic figure who engages in extended dialogue intended to help his victims see what they could not before” (96). This argument opens a new understanding of Chigurh's “dialogues” with his victims. Finally, Dan Flory writes that Chigurh's evil is a simple “attitude that violence is one option as good as any other when considering how to act in relation to other human beings” (131). Flory here engages with some important arguments around McCarthy's antagonist, offering a framework for understanding the kind of evil, or disaffectedness, that the writer attempts to depict.
The final section engages with The Road. First, Donovan Gwinner investigates the ethics at the heart of McCarthy's novel. Gwinner states that “from the father's perspective, that which is good depends only on the actual survival of his son” (139, original emphasis). Just as Flory provides a useful network for looking at the “evil” in No Country, so Gwinner provides an insightful way of looking at the “good” in The Road. Next, Susan Kollin draws intriguing parallels between The Road and The Grapes of Wrath, both narratives set in a world ravaged by “environmental blowback” following a period of destructive “hyperabundance” (160). Dana Phillips, in the last essay in the collection, deals with endings. Phillips's argument is especially compelling as it speaks to established arguments about the endings of McCarthy's novels, where characters often survive the climactic events of the narrative.
In No More Heroes, Lydia Cooper has produced a fascinating, ambitious and complex study of McCarthy's entire oeuvre. Cooper's book deploys technical linguistic terms and ideas to trace the development of McCarthy's style and moral understanding from his early Appalachian novels though to The Road. Cooper's study is occasionally complex but always accessible and makes a valuable contribution to the study of McCarthy's work, demonstrating the illuminating value of the linguistic, stylistic study of novels, especially when related to a more traditional thematic study of a writer's work.
The first chapter deals with McCarthy's three earliest works – The Orchard Keeper, Outer Dark and Child of God. It is here, and in her excellent introduction, that Cooper lays out her argument for an “aesthetic construction of empathy” (4). Cooper argues that McCarthy's most sympathetic characters, those who are most ethical in the sense that they empathize with other characters, are the ones whose thought processes are most often revealed. Cooper constructs this argument with great skill, drawing on the stylistic features of McCarthy's work, exploring the markers of interiority in a style bereft of the usual “thought tags” (115). Cooper convincingly argues that McCarthy tags interiority through “directional words and phrases” (8), which, by being clearly drawn from a particular character's perspective, flag up moments of interiority.
The second chapter deals with Blood Meridian and Suttree. Suttree for Cooper becomes McCarthy's most empathetic book and Suttree's journey becomes a quest for forgiveness, whose very attempt ennobles the character, despite any failings of its execution. This is where Cooper's understanding of “heroism” becomes clear. By attempting to redeem himself in the eyes of others, an inherently empathetic quest, Suttree evidences a kind of heroism in a world characterized by a stunning lack of empathy. By contrast, the “unrepentant characters” of Blood Meridian, even the highly educated and coherent ones like Judge Holden, receive no interior life. They offer no empathetic, moral engagement with other human characters, and by denying others this empathetic connection they themselves are dehumanized by McCarthy, demonstrated by the opacity of their thought processes.
The Border Trilogy is dealt with in the next section. Cooper argues that as John Grady's “motivations are clear and moral, the failure of his actions to live up to his intentions cannot fully eradicate his moral potential” (79). Cooper sees John Grady's quest as a “redemptive” one, undertaken to “save horses … and, later, prostitutes” (77). Cooper is also keen to include Billy in her understanding of heroism, arguing that “Billy's sorrow validates John Grady's moral acts, the narrator's observation of Billy validates his morality” (77). Accordingly, Cooper argues, the action of the books is often narrated from Billy's perspective.
No Country for Old Men, according to Cooper's argument, features two moral characters, flagged up by the kind of interior life rare in No Country's “stripped narrative” (111). Bell and Moss both have a much richer interior life than Chigurh, especially toward “the last third-person section of the novel, which takes place primarily in Bell's head” (111). Moss, on the other hand, is “an ambiguously moral character,” meaning that his interior life is revealed in those moments “he is conscious of a moral dilemma” (115).
The Road is the subject of the final chapter of Cooper's book. Cooper argues that “the prophetic, world-creating potential of storytelling” is a theme running throughout McCarthy's work (140). This is one of Cooper's most important claims, and could perhaps have been more explicitly introduced earlier in her book. It is in this chapter that Cooper most clearly spells out what she sees as McCarthy's understanding of ethical behaviour in a literary world which is often indifferent to its human inhabitants, as she writes that McCarthy can be understood to be arguing that in the course of history, “the human race may be less important than most people like to think, but in the immediate present, human beings are ethically obligated to recognize the value of life by behaving in ways that promote the well-being of others” (164).
Spurgeon's collection is an excellent, varied, and well-framed set of essays, contributing to the most pressing critical discussions surrounding McCarthy's work. It offers especially good essays on the often complex debates surrounding McCarthy's women and his depictions of good and evil. Spurgeon's collection would be of use both to interested undergraduates and as an excellent starting point for researchers interested in McCarthy. The linguistic approach Cooper adopts in her remarkable book is a welcome addition to the study of McCarthy, especially tied as it is to a thematic examination of the ethical frameworks at play in McCarthy's work. Cooper's impressive grasp of her material, along with a genuine gift for explanation, keeps the book accessible and, I think, extremely valuable for those interested in the linguistics of contemporary novelists as well as those researching McCarthy more specifically.
