My friend edits a fine little journal out of Houston Baptist University called The City. The Winter number includes some excellent essays indeed, not least this review of the novelist Cormac McCarthy by another friend of mine, Christopher Badeaux. He presents McCarthy's work as an examination of sin and disorder, which in contrast point to what earlier ages called Natural Law. Well worth a read. You can sign up to receive The City for free here.
Badeaux on Cormac McCarthy
by Paul J Cella
Comments (4)
Paul,
Thanks for the reminder as I just found The City surfing the web recently and had book-marked their online website known as Civitate. It looks like it will be a regular stop for this web addict.
Posted by Jeff Singer | January 7, 2009 5:52 PM
That is a very fine piece on McCarthy's work -- one of the best I've read, actually. For those who haven't read his books, however, or seen the film of 'No Country...', the article does contain some spoilers.
For those interested, the film of 'The Road' was supposed to have been released this month, but I've heard it's been bumped back. IMDB shows no US release date as of this time.
As Badeaux implies, 'No Country...' and 'The Road', while not connected in any way by plot or character, are thematically related and can definitely be viewed as companion pieces. There is a sense in which they are both deeply conservative works.
Posted by Rob G | January 8, 2009 7:54 AM
I loved The Road and was impressed with the issues tackled in that story. I was thrilled to see a serious treatment of it, so thank you for the heads up.
Posted by Jay Watts | January 8, 2009 1:11 PM
Badeaux's treatment of McCarthy's fiction is so elegantly written that it can be considered literature in its own right. I only hope that an old undergrad roommate and friend, with whom I've lost touch, Dan Cook, will somehow or other happen upon it, as he greatly admired McCarthy's writing.
Posted by Maximos | January 8, 2009 1:20 PM