S6 Ep. 40: In Memory of Cormac McCarthy: Oscar Villalon on an Iconic Writer’s Life, Work and Legacy

fiction/non/fiction

Editor and literary critic Oscar Villalon joins V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to celebrate the life and legacy of the novelist Cormac McCarthy, who died last month. The hosts and Villalon reflect on McCarthy’s vast vocabulary and cinematic descriptions, in which he juxtaposed lyrical prose with graphic violence. Villalon considers McCarthy’s use of regionally accurate Spanish in the Border Trilogy as evidence of the author’s broad understanding of the U.S.’s multilingual diversity. Villalon also reads and discusses a passage from McCarthy’s 1994 novel The Crossing, the second book in the trilogy.

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf and Todd Loughran.

Oscar Villalon

• ZYZZYVA
• LitHub
• “Barbarians at the Wall,” by Oscar Villalon, from Virginia Quarterly Review
• Oscar Villalon (@ovillalon) · Twitter

Cormac McCarthy

• The Orchard Keeper (1965)
• Outer Dark (1968)
• Child of God (1974)
• Suttree (1979)
• Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West (1985)
• All the Pretty Horses (1992)
• The Crossing (1994)
• Cities of the Plain (1998)
• No Country for Old Men (2005)
• The Road (2006)
• The Passenger (2022)
• Stella Maris (2022)

Others:

• “Cormac McCarthy, Novelist of a Darker America, Is Dead at 89,” by Dwight Garner, The New York Times
• “Cormac McCarthy Had a Remarkable Literary Career. It Could Never Happen Now,” by Dan Sinykin, The New York Times
• “Albert R. Erskine, 81, an Editor For Faulkner and Other Authors,” by Bruce Lambert, The New York Times
• Paul Yamazaki on Fifty Years of Bookselling at City Lights, by Mitchell Kaplan, Literary Hub
• “Crossing the Blood Meridian: Cormac McCarthy and American History,” by Bennett Parten, Los Angeles Review of Books
• Oprah's Exclusive Interview with Cormac McCarthy - Video - June 1, 2008
• Oprah on Cormac McCarthy’s Life In Books
• Oprah’s Book Club
• William Faulkner
• Cormac McCarthy, MacArthur Foundation Grant
• City Lights Booksellers and Publishers
• The Crystal Frontier by Carlos Fuentes
• Roberto Bolaño
• Larry McMurtry
• King James Version of the Bible/Old Testament/Apostle Paul
• Saul Bellow
• Ernest Hemingway
• Caroline Casey
• Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 1, Episode 7: What Was It Like to Care About Books 20 Years Ago?
• Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 1, Episode 24: Oscar Villalon and Arthur Phillips on Getting That Big, Fat Writer’s Advance
• Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 5, Episode 10: ‘How on Earth Do You Judge Books?’: Susan Choi and Oscar Villalon on the Real Story Behind Literary Awards

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices