A Bloody and Barbarous God
This book looks at the esoteric philosophical influences on six of Cormac McCarthy's novels. The author offers a fresh approach, investigating the relationship between Gnosticism, a system of thought that sees the cosmos as evil and holds that the human spirit must strive for liberation, and the Perennial Philosophy, a study of the common factor in all esoteric religions. She examines the ways these two traditions have influenced McCarthy's later novels. Mundik discusses six books: Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain, No Country for Old Men, and The Road, with a particular focus on Blood Meridian and The Crossing, a novel that has received less critical attention than the others. She argues that in all McCarthy's novels the author strives to evolve an explanation for the nature of God and that all the novels are concerned with the meaning of human existence in relation to good and evil. Blood Meridian is the subject of the first four chapters. The author examines the spiritual traditions embodied in the landscape and the characters and shows how the novel departs from traditional spirituality and moves toward rationalism, materialism, reductionism, and nihilism. Subsequent chapters look at the theology and philosophy of the other novels and trace McCarthy's preoccupations with fate and evil. In some of the novels she sees suggestions of the power of hope and redemption. Any reader of McCarthy's fiction will find her analyses accessible and useful. -- from dust jacket.