Cormac McCarthy, Philosophy and the Physics of the Damned

About the Book

This book explores Cormac McCarthy's literature (novels, plays, screenplays, philosophical essays and unpublished archive material) to uncover a distinct literary philosophy. More specifically, this study elucidates how McCarthy articulates a philosophical perspective which pivots on philosophical themes of mortality, the political, education, nihilism, materialism and language. Tracing these themes from the publication of his earliest novels to his most recent philosophical essays, this book argues that McCarthy offers a unique synthesis of spiritual, ethical and materialist concerns, the understanding of which is essential for coming to terms with his literature.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1. Older than Language: Cormac McCarthy on Language and Evolution in Whales and Men and "The Kekulé Problem’’ 2. Literature and Death: Suttree, McCarthy and Blanchot 3. Spirits in Cinderland: Blood Meridian’s Nietzsche 4. In the Shadow of the Forms: The Sunset Limited as Educational Encounter 5. Anti-Matters: Mortal Ethics in The Road 6. Saving Sheriff Bell: Derrida, McCarthy and the Opening of Mercantile Ethics in No Country for Old Men 7. A Maelstrom of Doing and Undoing: McCarthy’s Political Imaginary ConclusionBibliographyIndex

About the Author :
Patrick O’Connor is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy in the School of Digital, Technologies and Arts at Staffordshire University. He researches European Philosophy (especially Phenomenology), 19th and 20th Century European Philosophy and 20th Century French Philosophy. His published books include Atheism Reclaimed (2014) on atheism and existentialism and on phenomenology, ethics and the work of Jacques Derrida, Derrida: Profanations (2010). He has published several articles on philosophy, literature, education and film. He hosts the Thales’ Well philosophy podcast.

Review :
O’Connor’s navigation of the sea of philosophical themes across McCarthy’s corpus is exactly the intervention McCarthy studies needed. This lucid, path-breaking book does more than simply codify our sense of McCarthy’s personal philosophy. It also helps to clarify what it means for any writer to write philosophical literature. O’Connor presents a bold synthesis of traditions in the existing scholarship, turning them into something entirely new, illuminating powerfully the vital relationship between McCarthy’s profundity and his distinctive literary craft. Patrick O’Connor offers a new approach to examining philosophy and Cormac McCarthy. Much ink has been spilled on philosophy in the works of McCarthy. Into that ink-strewn field, Patrick O’Connor’s Cormac McCarthy, Philosophy and the Physics of the Damned enters the arena, a force to be reckoned with. McCarthy writes ‘literary philosophy’—as distinct from writing philosophical literature, O’Connor contends. His literary prose approaches philosophical concepts with attention to the material world reflective of the ancient Greek idea of physis. 　Dense with provocative insights and unified by a clarity of vision, this book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand McCarthy’s works and the ethos that drives them. Illuminated by extensive discussions of some of McCarthy’s most understudied works and new interpretations of some of his most challenging, O’Connor makes a strong case for McCarthy’s idiosyncratic and iconoclastic philosophical and literary vision. He finds in the pages of McCarthy’s works a philosophy perilously close to nihilism; but at the center of everything is a deep and essential mystery, and it is mystery that holds nihilism at bay. In his incisive analysis of Cormac McCarthy's blending of the material and the metaphysical and his work at the intersections of literature and philosophy, Patrick O'Connor illuminates some of the most compelling aspects of this fascinating author's writing. Technology, ethics, aesthetics, ecology, language, community-- O'Connor takes it all in, and the result is a nuanced, wide-ranging study that is eminently readable.