Chapter 2 - The South

Summary

For the first twenty-five years or so of his career, Cormac McCarthy was considered a writer of “Southern literature” by most readers. This term designates a literary genre as much as it does a region of origination. Based on paradigms established by the works of earlier Southern writers such as William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, among many others, certain aspects of setting, plot, and character become the expected norm for writers from the region. As is the case with these other writers, understanding the cultural realities of McCarthy’s South helps readers understand his Southern works. This chapter discusses the context of McCarthy’s Knoxville, from its Civil War history through Reconstruction to the advent of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). It considers how McCarthy’s works reflect this milieu as well as that of the greater South at large, trying to place McCarthy within the context of other Southern writers, and the cultural trends and currents which influenced their writing as well as his.