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Frye, Steven. Understanding Cormac McCarthy. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2009. 205 pages. Hardcover, $39.95, ISBN 978-1-57003-839-6.
Towards the end of this satisfying book, Steven Frye quotes McCarthy, from the 1992 Robert Woodward interview: "'There's no such thing as life without bloodshed.... I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way ... is a really dangerous idea'" (159). Throughout his book, Frye acknowledges the bloodiness of McCarthy's literary landscape-and calls it one of the "formidable" challenges of reading the author. But he argues that McCarthy is "by no means devoid of hope" (5). On the contrary, according to Frye, he is a writer seeking truth and value, creating characters who won't succumb to despair but persist in quests for meaning. Frye seeks to guide the reader through the McCarthian darkness, analyzing the works in clear and rigorous prose, and arguing for the potential for heroism in a bleak, violent world.
The book is an entry in the Understanding Contemporary American Literature (UCAL) series. According to Matthew Bruccoli, the series editor, these books are meant to provide "instruction in how to read certain contemporary authors-identifying and explicating their material, themes, use of language, point of view, structures, symbolism, and responses to experience" (Preface). Bruccoli identifies the specific audience as "students as well as good nonacademic readers." But after reading the McCarthy volume, I wondered: What sort of students? Though a motivated undergraduate might find Understanding Cormac McCarthy useful, Frye's primary audience seems to be more experienced scholars. This work is readable and engaging survey, but it's also complex and sophisticated, and might be best appreciated by those committed readers who have put in substantial time with McCarthy.
Concerning the UCAL series, it seems strange that a McCarthy entry comes out only at the end of 2009. Earlier in the year volumes on T.C. Boyle and Lorrie Moore appeared; Tim O'Brien got his in 1995, Bobbie Ann Mason hers in 2000. Many writers who began publishing around the same time as McCarthy have previously made it in too: Thomas Pynchon in 1986, John...