Where to Start with Cormac McCarthy (So You Don’t Accidentally Begin With the Hard One)
Updated: Jun 4
So you're wondering how or where to start with Cormac McCarthy ... that's what this blog post is for!
USING THE MAP
How to use the McCarthy map: You know in Dead Poet's Society how they just rip out the introductory chapter? That's you with Cormac McCarthy. Just read whichever novel appeals to you most. You don't need any background or context or special training. Just pick a novel and go for it! How hard can it be? Stop asking others what they think or what their professors said.
Listen, he loves desert, he loves wilderness, he loves hills and dirt and sky and water and mineral and the elements of the earth. He loves the bog and the horse and the wolf and the tree and the stick.
A MORE PREFERRED READING ORDER
Let's pretend: You just started your first year of boarding school or college back east. You're a real hardass and you wear your collar up high and your bangs are long. Some days you wear Jordan hi-tops, others you wear YSL. Either way you wear no belt and you keep one hand in your pocket. You've made a couple of buddies you love to row with or pump iron with. Now later in the school year, let's say it's close to Thanksgiving or Christmas, one of your buddies from Rhode Island or North Carolina or wherever invites you to come with him to the holidays since your parents are both dead. You get to your buddy's house. At dinner his dad gets drunk on beer and sniffing markers. After dinner his dad sneaks up behind you while playing video games and stuffs a paperback copy of Blood Meridian between your arm and rib cage. He says: "Best book you'll ever read. Read this at Yale." The dude offers you ten grand to come to a party with him and his friends after you've read the novel. You just have to blow them away with your knowledge of CMC and you get the money. You're not sure if it's a sex party or if it's really a book club. Your buddy assures you his dad won't try to seduce you.
Still, it doesn't sound like a fun intro to McCarthy and you already have plenty of money from when your mom and dad died from asbestos poisoning and you settled up with big plaster.
So here's my suggested reading order as you enter the world of CMC:
1. START EASY. The easiest book to read is The Road. Constructed of simple sentences like the great French authors of the early 20th century provided (Sartre, Camus, Gide, etc.). The action moves to the west, towards California, and there's Armageddon all around. Father and son. Survival mode.
2. START PRETTY. For most of us, CMC entered our lives with All the Pretty Horses. When I was in college, my mom or dad bought the hardback and put it there on the kitchen counter. The book sat there for three years. My mom and dad referred to it reverentially like a relic. I never saw them reading it nor did I hear them talk about it. The book sitting there quietly was a witness of its own greatness. Strangely I never spoke to my parents about this book. When my dad died in 2024, I found his copy in his library -- it was marked up pretty good with pen and highlighter.
3. START WITH SOMETHING THAT READS LIKE A MOVIE. For me, No Country for Old Men reads like a movie script more than a novel. I have no special training in literature or CMC but that's how it is to me. This novel doesn't fit with Blood Meridian or the border trilogy, for me. It feels like it was his shot to write a movie, maybe to write something popular to move some copies. The novel is easy to read, easy to follow, Some drug kings accidentally leave some money in the desert. Another guy finds the money. The drug lords pursue him to get their money back. That's all you need to know.
A CORMAC MCCARTHY PRIMER
CMC is a writer in the Southern Gothic tradition, meaning novels of tragedy and heaviness. He saw himself like Faulkner or Flannery O'Connor. CMC did not interact with his fans or the public and did not reveal his ideas and methods to many people. He seemed to take the view that his words should be like scripture come from on high, scripture that is just sitting there, with a voice of authority, but left to be interpreted by each in her own way and time. His method seemed to be to get out of the way of the writing so that the words were there naked on their own as witnesses to their own meaning for all to encounter.
He uses a lot of old words and words of other languages to create the feeling that words are organic or elemental. One can imagine him reviewing a huge dictionary or medical dictionary from time to time to find a word or two that would have a weight.
With respect to Blood Meridian at least, his edits show that he wanted to erase the idea of intention from the different characters. He wanted to just show their actions and words and wanted to eliminate or hide the idea of what their motive or objective might be. Similar to observing an animal move or a rock move and fall, one would see the action and hear the sound but would not know what the motivation was.
His use of commas and periods and such is non-standard. Many sentences are long and don't have commas as one might expect. Sometimes characters give long speeches or have ideas that are long to express. It seems like CMC wanted the focus to be on the words rather than the periods and commas. It seems like his idea was that each word was a rock so his way of writing a sentence or paragraph was to stack different rocks together. This makes it feel to the reader that the words are raw or naked or primordial.
QUICK POLL
You can answer this in the comments if you wish.
What CMC novel was your first?
A. Blood Meridian
B. All the Pretty Horses
C. The Road
D. No Country for Old Men
E. The Passenger
F. something else
Comments