Novelist Cormac McCarthy's brilliant and
challenging work demands deep engagement from his
readers. In Cormac McCarthy's House, author, painter,
photographer, and actor-director Peter Josyph draws on a
wide range of experience to pose provocative, unexpected
questions about McCarthy's work, how it is achieved, and
how it is interpreted. As a visual artist, Josyph
wrestles with the challenge of rendering McCarthy's
former home in El Paso as a symbol of a great writer's
workshop. As an actor and filmmaker, he analyses the
high art of Tommy Lee Jones in The Sunset Limited and No
Country for Old Men. Invoking the recent suicide of a
troubled friend, he grapples with the issue of "our
brother's keeper" in The Crossing and The Sunset
Limited. But for Josyph, reading the finest prose-poet
of our day is a project into which he invites many
voices, and his investigations include a talk with Mark
Morrow about photographing McCarthy while he was writing
Blood Meridian; an in-depth conversation with director
Tom Cornford on the challenges of staging The Sunset
Limited and The Stonemason; a walk through the streets,
waterfronts, and hidden haunts of Suttree with McCarthy
scholar and Knoxville resident Wesley Morgan; insights
from the cast of The Gardener's Son about a
controversial scene in that film; actress Miriam Colon's
perspective on portraying the Duena Alfonsa opposite
Matt Damon in All the Pretty Horses; and a harsh
critique of Josyph's views on The Crossing by McCarthy
scholar Marty Priola, which leads to a sometimes heated
debate. Illustrated with thirty-one photographs,
Josyph's unconventional journeys into the genius of
Cormac McCarthy form a new, highly personal way of
appreciating literary greatness.
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