Myth, Legend, Dust: Critical Responses to Cormac McCarthy ed. by Rick Wallach

Abstract

5 0 4 WAL 3 7 . 4 WINTER 2 0 0 3 Toms and his brother Georges problem was that they never really became “solid” citizens of anywhere. Tom had been in and out of the Wallowa area in the mid-1880s, buying and selling property, and the Skovlins found that he had “dabbled in stolen horses along with Hank Vaughan crossing this area between the Umatilla Indian Reservation and the Nez Perce Indian Reservation in Idaho” (276). That the McCartys were hardly ever captured for their misdeeds only makes them more noteworthy. Tom’s association with and influence on outlaws like Butch Cassidy and Matt Warner is noted, for the McCartys were outlaws to be reckoned with as much as were the murderous Daltons and Doolins, who were motley psychopathic lowlifes by comparison. The McCartys left their mark on the West as witnessed by the dozens of places that still bear their names. There are McCarty Creeks, Cabins, and Trails through­ out Colorado, Oregon, and Utah. As evident in this example, they were not just outlaws of the Northwest. At one time, nearly a quarter ofa million dollars in today’s monetary terms were offered in reward for their capture. What makes the book so readable is the amazing number of special interest incidents in the lives of the McCartys and the illustrations not only of people but of places and scenes connected with the characters. There is an extensive index, which shows literally hundreds of people the McCartys interacted with during the late 1880s and early 1900s. Names gleaned from years of research into court records, old newpapers, historical manuscripts, and books on local history add to the authenticity of the story. Subsequently, the Skovlins have offered the most comprehensive account written to date of the McCartys and Vaughans. Myth, Legend, Dust: Critical Responses to Cormac McCarthy. Ed. Rick Wallach. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 2001. 399 pages, $74.95/$27.95. Reviewed by Sara L. Spurgeon University of Arizona, Tucson Myth, Legend, Dust is, as editor Rick Wallach points out, the first compre­ hensive anthology of critical essays on Cormac McCarthy to arrive post-trilogy. Wallach has divided his text into sections— a large one dealing with McCarthy’s southern novels, what Wallach calls “The Appalachian Works,” another large section on “The Border Tetralogy,” and two smaller sections on McCarthy’s lesser-known dramas and the shared elements in the Appalachian and south­ western works. There is no overarching theme or particular school of criticism uniting these essays. They range from rather standard readings of narrative strategies in The Orchard Keeper (1965) to Marxist interpretations, feminist critiques, and an especially interesting essay on the ideology of representation in the south­ western novels by David Holloway. Some works, most notably Terri Witek’s Bo o k r e v ie w s 5 0 5 “He’s Hell When He’s Well,” have been published previously. Among the most fascinating and important of the essays included here are three discussing McCarthy’s euphonies and the evolution of his astonishing word play. Many of the big names in McCarthy criticism— Dianne Luce, Rick Wallach, Edwin Arnold— are present in the anthology, though mainly in the Appalachian section. Nevertheless, there are a number of strong essays dealing with the border tetralogy. Linda Townley Woodson’s ‘“ De los herejes y huerfanos’: The Sound and Sense of Cormac McCarthy’s Border Fiction” interrogates McCarthy’s use of language and narrative, especially in the hands (or mouths) of his various storyteller characters. In ‘“ Mexico para los Mexicanos’: Revolution, Mexico, and McCarthy’s Border Trilogy,” John Wegner examines the recurring motif of stories within stories contained in the metastory of the Mexican Revolution, and the power of myths and ideas able to leak through a dangerously permeable border. James Lilley’s fine “ ‘The Hands of Yet Other Puppets’: Figuring Freedom and Reading Repetition in All the Pretty Horses” wrestles with what is clearly one of McCarthy’s favorite metaphysical questions: “To what extent are we free to influence and control the patterns of our lives?” (272). Lilley employs Lacan’s theories of the inauthenticity of language and the hopelessness of human attempts to...