Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 3 - The Southwest

  • from Part I - Environments
  • Edited by Steven Frye, California State University, Bakersfield
  • Book:
    Cormac McCarthy in Context
    Published online:
    12 December 2019
    Print publication:
    02 January 2020, pp 23-32

  • Summary

    Cormac McCarthy’s five Western novels and Western screenplay, operating along the contested border between Mexico and the United States, are among his most masterful and iconic. The “American West” is not just a region of the US. In each of these works, McCarthy aesthetically renders the parched geography of the American Southwest, the complex political history of the contested region, and the more esoteric problems of nationalism, imperialism, and environmental destruction in brutal, vivid prose. This chapter explores, first, the significance of the American Southwest as a politically fraught and geographically distinctive region for McCarthy as a writer. Second, it examines the distinctive stylistics of McCarthy’s Southwestern works and how they shape his legacy as one of the greatest American writers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.