Tag Archives: Cormac McCarthy

America’s Political Violence Problem

Some see Trump as a “stochastic terrorism,” inciting others to violence. Cormac McCarthy may understand as well as anyone what’s going on.

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McCarthy: Dark, Occasionally Hopeful

Although the late Cormac McCarthy had a very dark vision of humanity, one can find glimpses of hope within his novels.

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Faulkner’s Sanctuary, Trump’s Charges

Reading Sanctuary while awaiting a Trump indictment is a good counterweight to facile optimism. In Faulkner’s world, the courts can’t save us.

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Trumpism and the Violence Myth

Slotkin says that “the” American myth is regeneration through violence. That myth can be seen in the Western, including in “Lonesome Dove” and “Blood Meridian.”

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Read to Grapple with Climate Change

Sian Cain uses literature to grapple with her decision, in light of climate change, not to have children.

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License to Act with Impunity

Monday I’ve been reflecting upon a recent E.J. Dionne column about living in “an age of impunity.” Borrowing the phrase from International Rescue Committee head Dave Milland, Dionne looks at the horrors that arise when all moral inhibitions are swept away. Looking for an American author who depicts such a world, I settled upon Cormac […]

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From Frontier Racism to Wall Racism

Wednesday New Yorker writer Francisco Cantu has alerted me to an important book on the role that the frontier plays in the American imagination. Greg Gandin’s The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America, traces Donald Trump’s wall back to America’s frontier days. I describe the […]

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Be Afraid of Trump’s Fear of Being Mocked

Donald Trump is obsessed with the fear of being laughed at, as he revealed once again in vowing non-compliance with the Paris Climate Agreement. As Cormac McCarthy shows in “All the Pretty Horses,” such people are capable of unimaginable cruelty.

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How To Reflect upon the Death Penalty

Our motivations for executing prisoners too often have little to do with justice. Cormac McCarthy understands this well in “All the Pretty Horses.”

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