Crossings (On Cormac McCarthy)

Harold Bloom once said that there were only four active great American novelists: Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, and Philip Roth. That was in 2003, and it was an absurd thing to say even back then (I won’t dignify it with an elaborate rebuke). Twenty years later, Roth has died; Pynchon is retired, or close to it; DeLillo continues to publish, but with diminishing readership and acclaim; and, as of a couple weeks ago, Cormac McCarthy has died.

Dalgarno's Inferno

A review of Falling Hour by Geoffrey D. Morrison (Coach House Books, 2023)

On many of the Big Questions of literary theory, I’m a centrist, or worse, a waffler. I tend to see both sides, probably to the point of not giving either of them their due. Politically, I’m a socialist, and I do find Marxist literary criticism generative, but I don’t think Marxist literary criticism has anything near the last word on the subject. I even find myself at times sympathizing with their diametrical opposite, the New Critics. To square this circle I tend then to lean heavily on those who forged a path between the two, the Auerbachs, the Fryes, the Kazins, even the Trillings (Lord forgive me)—yes, the liberals, more or less.

The Oceanic and the Rifle Woman

I recently read two crime thrillers published by NYRB Classics: In a Lonely Place (1947) by Dorothy B. Hughes and Fatale (1977) by Jean-Patrick Manchette. Both were remarkably fun reads, and quite thought-provoking, especially in terms of their gender politics.