title: Understanding Cormac McCarthy (Understanding Contemporary American Literature)
author:  Steven Frye 
description: Frye offers an excellent synthesis of all McCarthy's novels and a significant overview of the man himself as a means of understanding his creative output. . . . Anyone wishing to understand the significance of McCarthy and the aesthetic transformation of his work over the years will find this a foundational work. Choice
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  # ACCLAIM FOR _Cormac McCarthy_
  
  
  
  
  
  “[McCarthy] is a very fine writer—one of our best.”
  
  
  —Peter Matthiessen
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “Cormac McCarthy’s supple and stunning language, the breadth in his
  characters, his sense of the physicality of the landscape, an evocation of
  biblical themes to which he is equal, and a pure gift for conveyance
  distinguish him as a contemporary writer almost without equal.”
  
  
  —Barry Lopez
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “[McCarthy] puts most other American writers to shame. [His] work itself
  repays the tight focus of his attention with its finely wrought craftsmanship
  and its ferocious energy.”
  
  
  — _The New York Times Book Review_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “No other novelist in America seems to have looked the work of Faulkner in the
  eye without blinking and lived to write in his spirit without sounding like a
  parody of the master.”
  
  
  — _Dallas Morning News_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “McCarthy is a writer to be read, to be admired, and quite honestly—envied.”
  
  
  —Ralph Ellison
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![](../Images/McCa_97803077624