This definitive assessment of Cormac McCarthy’s novels captures the interactions among the literary and mythic elements, the social dynamics of violence, and the natural world in The Orchard Keeper, Child of God, Outer Dark, Blood Meridian, and The Road. Elegantly written and deeply engaged with previous scholarship as well as interviews with the novelist, this study provides a comprehensive introduction to McCarthy’s work while offering an insightful new analysis. Drawing on René Girard’s mimetic theory, mythography, thermodynamics, and information science, Markus Wierschem identifies a literary apocalypse at the center of McCarthy’s work, one that unveils another buried deep within the history, religion, and myths of American and Western culture.
ContentsAcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroduction. An American Apocalypse?Chapter 1. Sanguinary Signifiers: The Dis|Orderly Language of Myth, Violence, and EntropyChapter 2. Dissolved in a Pale and Broken Image: Pastoralism, Mimesis, and Dis|Order in The Orchard KeeperChapter 3. Order in the Woods and in Men’s Souls: Gothic Psychomythology and Scapegoating in Child of GodChapter 4. A Sense of Judgment: Myth, Christianity, and Cosmic Disorder in Outer DarkChapter 5. Degeneration through Violence: The Apocalyptic Logic of Blood MeridianChapter 6. An Apocalyptic Journey: Revelation, Conversion, and the Different Ends of The RoadConclusion. At the Crossroads of Life and DeathNotesBibliographyIndex
