Reading McCarthy

Full disclosure time here on the READING MCCARTHY podcast. When Ridley Scott’s film The Counselor arrived in theaters with its very own shiny McCarthy screenplay, I was underwhelmed. We’d been waiting for over half a decade for The Passenger and had no idea we’d be almost another ten years waiting for that project (and of course we had no concept of Stella Maris at the time). I found interesting elements in the film but didn’t think it held together. But people smarter than me (su...

Episode 60 of READING McCARTHY sees the return of one of my favorite guests, Dr. Stacey Peebles. In addition to her many other roles described below, she is the preeminent expert on McCarthy’s work in screenplays. Please join us for a consideration of his various screenplays, both produced (The Counselor) and unproduced (Cities of the Plain, No Country for Old Men, Men and Whales) as well as a brief discussion of the film adaptations of his work thus far. Stacey Peebles is the HW...

This past December your not-so-intrepid host was able to make a pilgrimage to San Marcos, Texas, to visit the Wittliff Collection in the Alkek Library at Texas State University and plumb its treasure trove of McCarthy archives. My guest in this episode is Katie Salzmann, who has been Lead Archivist at The Wittliff Collections at Texas State since 2004. Prior to that, she worked with literary and historical manuscript collections at Southern Illinois University and Howard University. She...

Episode 55 is a discussion with award winning novelist, short story writer, poet, and big-time McCarthy fan, Ron Rash. Ron attended Gardner Webb University in Boiling Rock NC and then earned his master’s in English at Clemson University. He is a writing and English faculty member at Western Carolina in Cullowhee, NC, where he serves as the John and Dorothy Parris Distinguished Professor of Appalachian Cultural Studies. Ron has won many (I mean, many) honors and awards, inclu...

This 53rd 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 boo...

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 ...

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...

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, performe...

This is our final of 3 tribute episodes in the wake of Cormac McCarthy's passing this past June. Guests on this final tribute episode include: Dr. Steven Frye, professor and chair of English at California State University in Bakersfield. Steve has just stepped down as President of the Cormac McCarthy Society. He is the author of Understanding Cormac McCarthy (Univ. of South Carolina Press) and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Cormac McCarthy, and Cambridge UP’s Cormac Mc...

On June 13, 2023, we lost a literary giant. Cormac McCarthy, the greatest writer of our time (in this podcast's completely unbiased opinion) passed away in Santa Fe, New Mexico, his home these past couple of decades. E-mails and queries started pouring in, mostly asking, "are you going to do a special tribute podcast? And the answer to that, is yes. Episode 43 is the first of 3 planned tribute episodes to McCarthy. Joining us for this first panel is a roundup of ...

Episode 41 is our second excursion over the border as the Brothers Elmore and I finish our conversation about THE CROSSING. Returning as the guests are twin scholars Jonathan and Rick Elmore. That's right, twins. Jonathan Elmore is Associate Professor of English at Savannah State University and the Managing Editor of Watchung Review.. He is the editor of Fiction and the Sixth Mass Extinction: Narrative in an Era of Loss (Lexington) and co-author of An Introduction to African...

Cormac still types his novels on an Olivetti typewriter and your host can't figure out Facebook. So for Episode 39 we bring in some expert help in the form of a lively discussion with Redditor supreme Joe Parslow. He has moderated the Cormac McCarthy subreddit for over a decade and has seen it grow from its first post in April 2012 to its current position as the largest online community devoted to the works of Cormac McCarthy. In March 2023 the membership of the subreddit ap...