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Hage, Erik. Cormac McCarthy: A Literary Companion. Jefferson, North Carolina, and London: McFarland, 2010. 200 pages. Paper $39.95, ISBN # 978-0786443109.
Review by Megan Riley McGilchrist
McCarthy studies is no longer the relatively open field of even a decade ago. Every new volume published runs the risk, even unbeknownst to its author, of covering material already broadly discussed. Erik Hage's Cormac McCarthy: A Literary Companion is an ambitious work with many good insights and much thoughtful commentary. The author has clearly immersed himself in McCarthy's works in a systematic and inclusive way, and his enthusiasm for his subject is evident. But it is hard to gauge the projected audience for this work. In his introduction, Hage suggests that, "McCarthy constitutes an entire universe waiting to be explored." In that case, I suggest, let the explorers explore.
It is unsurprising that McCarthy scholars already know much material in this volume. Few features of McCarthy's canon have not fallen under the scrutinizing academic gaze. However, rather than contribute further to academic research on McCarthy, the author has stated that his book is a guide, therefore, to the uninitiated reader of McCarthy's works. In his introduction, he writes,
As [Dana] Phillips put it, McCarthy's work sometimes "seems designed to elude interpretation, especially interpretation that would translate it into some supposedly more essential language." A critical companion to these novels should celebrate the language, the gifts, and the mystery at the heart of these books in a manner that most can appreciate at some level. McCarthy, who strikes that rare balance between commercial success and literary recognition, serves many readers, and this is most of all an "appreciation" of his work (6).
McCarthy's elusiveness is not something that can be taken lightly. There is no "translating" of McCarthy; rather there is an understanding, often inexpressible, which comes from immersion in the language of McCarthy's works. As there are different levels of meaning, so too there are different levels of understanding. Like poetry, "which should not mean, but be," as Archibald MacLeish states, McCarthy's works resist easy summation. I would also take issue with the suggestion that a critical companion should somehow make available "the mystery" of McCarthy's work to a wider audience. Surely the "mystery" at the heart of...