Cormac McCarthy's House: Reading McCarthy without WallsPeterJosyph. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013.

Abstract

Cormac McCarthy's House: Reading McCarthy without Walls Peter Josyph. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013.In the world of literary criticism, Peter Josyph's Cormac McCarthy's House is decidedly unconventional. Josyph, artist rather than academic, eschews the more traditional close readings associated with literary criticisms, instead creating a book of conversations and musings, by turns fascinating and exasperating. The book is divided into two parts. Part One, Excursions and Exchanges, constitutes about three-quarters of Cormac McCarthy's House. Part Two exhibits Josyph as painter, detailing the experience, the thought process, and the philosophy behind exhibit of paintings for a conference of the Cormac McCarthy Society in El Paso. The subject of the many paintings: the house once occupied by McCarthy, a house described as an image for how [Josyph] feel[s] about him, his work, the West, and writing in general (194).As its title suggests, Part One consists largely of dialogues. The opening chapter is a personal rumination on the full title and cover of McCarthy's Blood Meridian Or The Evening Redness in the West, which is highlighted by a conversation with McCarthy photographer Mark Morrow. Next, Josyph walks through Knoxville, Tennessee, the setting of McCarthy's Satire e> with psychology professor Wesley Morgan, then on to stage director Tom Cornford to discuss the production of The Sunset Limited. Part One concludes with a nearly one-hundred page letter exchange about The Crossing with Marty Priola, webmaster for and key member of the Cormac McCarthy Society. At least, this chapter is ostensibly about The Crossing. There are insights into the novel littered throughout this chapter, but they are relatively few and far between. Much of the chapter instead drifts off on what Priola calls wild Josyphian (92). This reviewer can think of no better phrase to characterize the nature of Cormac McCarthy's House. When Josyph badgers Priola for details of a long lost love, he seems to be urging Priola in the direction of his own rhetorical tendencies. Priola's romance may be interesting in itself, but one might well wonder how it relates to McCarthy. Other tangents are somewhat more evidently relevant, if still decidedly indirect as literary criticism. Indeed, Josyph often seems less interested in the texts produced by McCarthy, and more concerned with environments and artifacts, less interested in McCarthy and more concerned with his house, both literally and figuratively. Often enough, this interest in streets, buildings, cover art, poetryinscribed plaques, and first editions runs the risk of becoming fetishistic in such a way that makes the book rather distasteful as literary criticism. …