Archie Goodwin

Men of letters at work. —Jacques Barzun, W. H. Auden, and Lionel Trilling.

What fiction impressed Cormac McCarthy and what books did he recommend? In 5-page hand-written letter to “Jerry” [n.d. late summer/autumn 1979?], Cormac wrote that it was hard for him to find novels to read and that he read one novel for every fifty or so that he investigates (on the basis of a review, or advice of a friend). Cormac wrote that he liked 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, but likes other South American writers better. Cormac also wrote that he “loves” Borges and read a recent book by Brazilian author João Ubaldo Ribeiro titled Sergeant Getúlio (1971). Cormac mentioned that he had just started reading a novel called Desperadoes by Ron Hansen that he said “may be interesting.” He also referenced writer Carlos Castaneda and says if Castaneda’s books are novels, they are “high on my list.” In this letter to “Jerry”, Cormac also recommended Encounters with the Archdruid, The Pine Barrens, and Coming into the Country by John McPhee as well as The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe and The White Album and Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion. Cormac also mentioned being fond of Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey, and then mentions having a pretty good-sized collection of books on Texas and the Southwest. He mentions the books and accounts written by early travelers to the area and says they’re “exceptional books.” (Side Note: The way Cormac wrote the chapter headings in Blood Meridian matches exactly the style of chapter headings in John Russell Bartlett’s 2-volume 1854 published books Personal Narrative of Explorations and Incidents in Texas, New Mexico, California, Sonora, and Chihuahua, Connected with the United States and Mexican Boundary Commission During the Years 1850, '51, '52, and '53. This style of concise, dash-separated summaries as chapter headings was common in mid-19th century exploration and boundary survey reports and personal travel narratives, the exact types of books McCarthy is talking about in his letter to “Jerry”.) Also in his letter, Cormac also mentions Guy Davenport and specifically his book Tatlin!, the Michael Herr book Dispatches, and says he’s reading “with great enjoyment” Letters of Flannery O’Connor the Habit of Being (1979) edited by Sally Fitzgerald. (BTW, “Jerry” is almost definitely Reverend Gerald A. Krum, who led the St. Mark Lutheran Church in Hanover, PA from 1977-1980.) In another letter to “Jerry” [n.d. 1980?], Cormac says he read a review of Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, but he doesn’t comment of the book or its quality. Finally, in a 1985 letter also to “Gerry”, a week or so before Blood Meridian was released, Cormac expressed admiration for the work of Michael Ondaatje. He specifically mentioned Coming Through Slaughter. So, there you have it. Some books and authors CM enjoyed and recommended in his own words.

R. S. Thomas “Aside”

Through his review of Ann Hartle’s Flannery O’Connor and Blaise Pascal: "Recovering the Incarnation for the Modern Mind," Henry T. Edmondson III highlights the philosophical depth underlying O’Connor’s fiction. lawliberty.org/book-review/a-…

Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That’s all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die. I lift the glass to my mouth, I look at you, and I sigh. —W. B. Yeats poets.org/poem/drinking-…

@MattWalshBlog “Moby-Dick was Cormac’s favorite book without question, & Faulkner was more of an influence than he liked to admit. He loved Hemingway’s short stories, James Joyce, Dostoyevsky & Shakespeare of course.” Dennis McCarthy on brother Cormac

@oldhumanist Essay “Criticism and the Academy.” It’s from a compilation of essays. I have to look through my books to find the comp title.

“By segmenting the course of literature--in English and in other tongues--into specialized 'fields' defined as time spans, the Academy has made impossible precisely what should be its principal concern: literary history, a history that does not stop and start, or ring down the

Popper had his problems, especially in his dedcutivist views of the philosophy of science, but this is spot on.

"One of the saddest things about the modern world is that people live in a tiny time slice." We are part of a great tradition. Read old books. Listen to classical music. It's incredible. youtube.com/watch?v=xoybTk…

A Major New Kirk Book Announced and Available for Pre-Order How to Understand the Legacy of 1776: buff.ly/YN16ImT

What we hold out before them as the reward for such pusillanimous self-denial is the chance or certainty of their being impregnably secure, and therefore arrogant, within that short time span which they will agree to define as their 'field.'" --Donald Davie

may agree, lived dangerously; they took risks, knowing full well that they were not au fait with the latest scholarship, had not mastered "the secondary material." And we tell our graduate students they must never take such risks, construing as scruple what is in fact timidity.

“I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth.” William F. Buckley, Jr.

Reject the man cave, embrace the study

Thanks to @RealClearBooks for featuring @IvanKenneally on Twain’s absurd, noble America. hedgehogreview.com/web-features/t…

As a critic/editor Malcolm Cowley: rescued William Faulkner from obscurity, revised the reputation of Walt Whitman, discovered John Cheever and Ken Kesey, published Jack Kerouac’s On the Road when no one else would, and most importantly chronicled Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and the so-called Lost Generation of writers in Paris who led our national letters into modernism. I write about Cowley in @PorticoQtrly : porticoquarterly.com/book/the-last-…