A brief overview of literary Darwinism and a Darwinian perspective on The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The first section of this paper presents in general terms the main ideas of literary Darwinism represented by Joseph Carroll, Jonathan Gottschall and other scholars concerning theory (literature as an adaptation) and interpretative practice. It also reviews the key arguments of this literary school’s critics focusing on the papers of Jonathan Kramnick and William Deresiewicz. The second section is an attempt at applying Darwinian methodology to the interpretation of The Road by Cormac McCarthy taking into account its reception, style, the behavioural systems (survival, parenting, and cognitive activity), the literary context and the author’s point of view.

Obiter Dicta

Stitched together over five years of journaling, Obiter Dicta is a commonplace book of freewheeling explorations representing the transcription of a dozen notebooks, since painstakingly reimagined for publication. Organized after Theodor Adorno’s Minima Moralia, this unschooled exercise in aesthetic thought—gleefully dilettantish, oftentimes dangerously close to the epigrammatic—interrogates an array of subject matter (although inescapably circling back to the curiously resemblant histories of Western visual art and instrumental music) through the lens of drive-by speculation. Erick Verran’s approach to philosophical inquiry follows the brute-force literary technique of Jacques Derrida to exhaustively favor the material grammar of a signifier over hand-me-down meaning, juxtaposing outer semblances with their buried systems and our etched-in-stone intuitions about color and illusion, shape and value, with lessons stolen from seemingly unrelatable disciplines. Interlarded with extracts of Ludwig Wittgenstein but also Wallace Stevens, Cormac McCarthy as well as Roland Barthes, this cache of incidental remarks eschews what’s granular for the biggest picture available, leaving below the hyper-specialized fields of academia for a bird’s-eye view of their crop circles. Obiter Dicta is an unapologetic experiment in intellectual dot-connecting that challenges much long-standing wisdom about everything from illuminated manuscripts to Minecraft and the evolution of European music with lyrical brevity; that is, before jumping to the next topic.

Anton Chigurh: o insólito vilão de No country for old men

Este trabalho tem por objetivo analisar a representação do insólito na obra No Country for Old Men (2005), de Cormac McCarthy, contemplando, de forma mais específica, o estudo do personagem Anton Chigurh, assassino de aluguel que surge na narrativa para cumprir uma missão e que deixa um rastro tenebroso de morte e violência. Esta persona assassina, envolta em uma aura de mistério e incredulidade, torna possíveis algumas interpretações que comungam com o insólito e o fantástico, tanto no texto literário quanto na adaptação cinematográfica dirigida pelos irmãos Cohen em 2007, e gera, com isso, um rico processo de intermidialidade, o que propiciou que esses produtos artísticos alcançassem reconhecimento de crítica e de público. Com efeito, utilizaremos como metodologia de pesquisa a análise de conteúdo; quanto à forma de abordagem, caracterizamos esta pesquisa como qualitativa, e, dessa forma, utilizaremos como referencial teórico estudos que abordam temas como o insólito, o fantástico e a violência, entre os quais destacamos Garcia (2008), Todorov (1980) e Ginzburg (2012). Como resultados, evidenciamos que Chigurh desponta como a representação da morte, visível somente por aqueles que a encontram, mas sem rosto e sem pistas para aqueles que não estiveram em sua presença, tendo ainda seu caráter insólito reconhecido pelo xerife Ed Tom Bell (personagem que, na trama, representa a lei e a ordem), o qual passa a considerá-lo como um fantasma, chegando a duvidar se o assassino é mesmo um homem real, dado os seus feitos chocantes, inquietantes e singulares.

Outras ilhas, outros desertos

O espaço desabitado desempenha um papel importante no imaginário moderno. Seu fascínio deriva do maravilhamento dos primeiros viajantes europeus a entrarem em contato com o Novo Mundo, e ele encontra uma de suas manifestações mais paradigmáticas na ilha deserta de Robinson Crusoé. Originalmente um espaço de abundância em que o indivíduo encontra uma oportunidade aparentemente ilimitada de se expandir, ele surge, no final do século XIX, como um território controlado e sombrio, de contornos distópicos. Neste artigo, discuto de que modos se dá essa virada negativa do espaço desabitado, primeiro em A ilha do Dr. Moreau (1896), de H. G. Wells, e depois no romance pós-apocalíptico A estrada (2006), de Cormac McCarthy. Desse modo, pretendo mostrar como a imagem do espaço desabitado se apresenta em diferentes momentos da modernidade e como ela está ligada à maneira como pensamos nossa posição no mundo.

Conclusion

This chapter concludes. Its aim is primarily summary and paraphrase, and placing the ideas developed in this book side by side. Cormac McCarthy is gratuitously quoted. And then the chapter brings reflection back to the metaphorical distinction between activity and passivity with which the book began. On the picture the book develops, agents become active by degree, in various ways. With the exercise of control, the passive becomes active, and plans give rise to intentional action. With the development of skill, capacities for planning and for exercising control and for executing intentional action begin to cover broad differences of circumstance. With the acquisition of knowledge, agents are able to impose their will on parts of the world that their practice may not have adequately prepared them for. In knowledgeable action, agents exert change in the world in part by figuring out the world they change.

“The deepest depths of human life”: existential motifs in the novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The implementation of the basic principles of existentialism in Cormac McCarthy’s novel “The Road” is studied in the article. The author states that this philosophical movement, which explores the problem of human existence, had a significant impact on the formation of world literature and origin of a new literary movement that bears the very same name. The works of American writer Cormac McCarthy are philosophical in nature and cover a great variety of themes such as life and death, freedom, relationship between parents and children, man and nature. The post-apocalyptic novel “The Road”, which brought the author worldwide fame, is considered the pinnacle of his writing skills, as it thematically, compositionally, and stylistically embodies the traditional features of McCarthy’s works. It does not have a large number of characters, which allows readers to pay more attention to the philosophical idea of the novel. The author tries to find answers to the essential questions of meaning and purpose of human existence, which makes it possible to identify a significant number of existential motifs, such as absurdity, forlornness, fear, freedom, alienation, individuality, and so on. The motif of absurdity is manifested through the depiction of an almost completely uninhabitable world, in which cruelty and death prevail. The personages of the novel are devoid of illusions and disappointed in life, especially the older generation; so they just try to survive and keep their individuality. The main characters have a dreadful fear of starvation or violent death, and they are also afraid of losing humanity and hope for a better future. Therefore, fear frees them from the conventions and laws of the hostile world and gives meaning to their existence.

El sueño en la penúltima escena en la película No country for old men de los Hermanos Coen y una interpretación del poema Sailing to Byzantium de William Butler Yeats

La presente investigación propone una lectura de la penúltima escena de la película: No country for old men (No es país para viejos) (2007) de los hermanos Joel y Ethan Coen. El filme es una adaptación de la novela homónima de Cormac McCarthy (2005), y ésta, a su vez, es una interpretación del poema Sailing to Byzantium de William Butler Yeats (1928). Si bien el resultado cinematográfico guarda una relación directa con la novela, también lo hace con el poema, pero no de manera evidente. De modo que el presente texto analiza tanto la penúltima escena de la película como el poema, para platear una relación entre ellos.

Flowers of Time

The literary lineage of postapocalyptic fiction — stories set after civilization's destruction — is a long one, spanning the biblical tale of Noah and Hesiod's Works and Days to the works of Mary Shelley, Octavia Butler, Cormac McCarthy, and many others. Traveling from antiquity to the present, this book reveals how postapocalyptic fiction differs from other genres — pastoral poetry, science fiction, and the maroon narrative — that also explore human capabilities beyond the constraints of civilization. The book places postapocalyptic fiction into conversation with such theorists as Aristotle, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Carl Schmitt, illustrating how the genre functions as political theory in fictional form. It shows that rather than argue for a particular way of life, postapocalyptic literature reveals what it would be like to inhabit that life. It considers the genre's appeal in our own historical moment, contending that this fiction is the pastoral of our time. Whereas the pastoralist and the maroon could escape to real-world hills and fashion their own versions of freedom, on a fully owned and occupied Earth, only an apocalyptic event can create a space where such freedoms are feasible once again. The book looks at how fictional narratives set after the world's devastation represent new conditions and possibilities for life and humanity.