The Cambridge Companion to Cormac McCarthy

Steven Frye is Professor of English at California State University, Bakersfield, and President of the Cormac McCarthy Society. He is the author of Understanding Cormac McCarthy and Historiography and Narrative Design in the American Romance, as well as numerous articles on Cormac McCarthy, Herman Melville and other novelists of the American romance tradition and the literature of the American West.

• List of contributors; Acknowledgments; Chronology of McCarthy's life and works; 1. Introduction: histories, novels, ideas: McCarthy and the art of philosophy Steven Frye; Part I. Influence and Innovation: 2. McCarthy's heroes and the will to truth Linda Woodson; 3. Modernism, postmodernism, and language: McCarthy's style Phillip A. Snyder and Delys W. Snyder; Part II. Beginnings in the American South: 4. McCarthy, Tennessee, and the southern gothic Lydia R. Cooper; 5. McCarthy and the uses of philosophy in the Tennessee novels Brian Evenson; Part III. The Move Westward: 6. History and the problem of evil in McCarthy's western novels Timothy Parrish; 7. The Border Trilogy, The Road, and the Cold War Pierre Lagayette; Part IV. The Novels: 8. Outer Dark and romantic naturalism James R. Giles; 9. Blood Meridian and the poetics of violence Steven Frye; 10. All the Pretty Horses, the border, and ethnic encounter Nicholas Monk; 11. The quest for God in The Road Allen Josephs; Part V. Themes and Issues: 12. McCarthy and naturalism Eric Carl Link; 13. McCarthy and film Stacey Peebles; 14. McCarthy's heroes: revisiting masculinity John Dudley; Selected bibliography; Index.

'The collection works best when moving beyond the generalities of genre to the specificities of history and the singularities of style.' The Times Literary Supplement