Reading the World

"In Reading the World, Dianne C. Luce offers an extensive treatment of the southern novels of the National Book Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy. Luce's study is as valuable as it is ambitious, blending with precision the local and historical with the universal and philosophical—and thus charting the process by which the literal content of individual experience is employed in McCarthy's fiction to both aesthetic and philosophical ends."—Steven Frye, California State University, Bakersfield, and author of Understanding Cormac McCarthy

"Luce goes well beyond examining the role of place in McCarthy's literary imagination and writing by emphasizing his extensive reading, especially in philosophy. This study reminds one of the powerful criticism that advanced William Faulkner in the 1960–70s. Highly recommended."—Choice

"The president of the Cormac McCarthy Society examines the historical-philosophical contexts of McCarthy's early fiction crafted during his Tennessee period (1959 to 1979), toward understanding his integration of realism and mysticism in portrayals of a changing Appalachian world. In reading how he presents characters' inner lives and spiritual/ecological theme Luce traces his developing gnosticism in drawing on mythic imagery and existentialism."—Book News