Books are made out of books : a guide to Cormac McCarthy's literary influences / Michael Lynn Crews.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Crews, Michael Lynn, author.

Series:

William & Bettye Nowlin series in art, history, and culture of the Western Hemisphere.

The William & Bettye Nowlin series in art, history, and culture of the Western Hemisphere

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

McCarthy, Cormac, 1933-2023--Criticism and interpretation.

McCarthy, Cormac.

McCarthy, Cormac, 1933-2023.

Physical Description:

1 online resource : illustrations

Edition:

Expanded edition.

Place of Publication:

Austin : University of Texas Press, 2024.

Summary:

"Cormac McCarthy told an interviewer for the New York Times Magazine that "books are made out of books," but he was famously unwilling to discuss how his own writing draws on the works of other writers. Yet his novels and plays masterfully appropriate and allude to an extensive range of literary works, demonstrating that McCarthy was well aware of literary tradition and deliberately situating himself in a knowing relationship to precursors. In Books Are Made Out of Books, Michael Lynn Crews thoroughly mines McCarthy's literary archive to identify over 150 writers and thinkers that McCarthy referenced in early drafts, marginalia, notes, and correspondence. Crews organizes the references into chapters devoted to McCarthy's published works, the unpublished screenplay Whales and Men, and McCarthy's correspondence. This updated edition now examines McCarthy's final publications: the novel The Passenger and its play-like coda Stella Maris. For each work, Crews identifies authors, artists, or other cultural figures that McCarthy referenced; gives the source of the reference in McCarthy's papers; provides context for the reference as it appears in the archives; and explains the significance of the reference to the novel or play that McCarthy was working on. This groundbreaking exploration of McCarthy's literary influences vastly expands our understanding of how one of America's foremost authors engaged with the ideas, images, metaphors, and language of other thinkers and made them his own." -- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction: Books out of books

The orchard keeper

Outer dark

Child of God

The gardener's son

Suttree

Blood meridian: or the evening redness in the west

The stonemason

The crossing

Cities of the plain

The road

Whales and men

Correspondence

The passenger.

Notes:

Expanded edition includes examinations of The Passenger and Stella Maris.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 346-370) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781477330869

1477330860

9781477330852

1477330852

OCLC:

1473771504