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This book was written to venture beyond interpretations of Cormac McCarthy's characters as simple, antinomian, and non-psychological; and of his landscapes as unrelated to the violent arcs of often orphaned and always emotionally isolated and socially detached characters. As McCarthy usually eschews direct indications of psychology, his landscapes allow us to infer much about their motivations. The relationship of ambivalent nostalgia for domesticity to McCarthy's descriptions of space remains relatively unexamined at book length, and through less theoretical application than close reading. By including McCarthy's latest book, this study offer the only complete study of all nine novels. Within McCarthy studies, this book extends and complicates a growing interest in space and domesticity in his work. The author combines a high regard for McCarthy's stylistic prowess with a provocative reading of how his own psychological habits around gender issues and family relations power books that only appear to be stories of masculine heroics, expressions of misogynistic fear, or antinomian rejections of civilized life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A dazzling work of scholarship and style.
Although the subtitle of this book might seem stilted--aimed at pedantic scholars and too narrow to garner much readership--I predict that this book will win over anyone who reads very far into it.

True, this is a work of astute scholarship, but it is argued in an engaging, winsome, and intelligent voice.It crackles with vitality, brimming with fresh insights and contagious enthusiasm for Cormac McCarthy's novels.Jay Ellis sees the light in the darkness, and he shines his own light on it so that the reader may see too, so that the puzzled McCarthy reader may look here and be puzzled no more.

Cormac McCarthy's new novel, THE ROAD, will be out soon, and reviewers everywhere will be comparing it to Hemingway and to Jose Saramago's BLINDNESS, which won the Nobel Prize for that deserving author.Jay Ellis could not possibly have known what was in the upcoming novel, yet his study anticipates the love and father/son relationship in THE ROAD, and he ties it to the earlier novels in a most remarkable way.

To praise NO PLACE FOR HOME is not to belittle the enormously valuable crit-lit that has gone before, and Jay Ellis is quick to give credit to others both in the notes and the text. But this volume is spectacular, a singular feat.It is a must-have, second only to John Sepich's rare NOTES ON BLOOD MERIDIAN on my own list of valuable McCarthy must-haves.And whereas Sepich dealt only with BLOOD MERIDIAN, this study illuminates all of McCarthy's novels--and those yet to come.

There are eight chapters that follow each other in a natural sequence, a complete bibliography, luscious notes, and a helpful index.All in all, a masterful work.

A Masterful Tribute to America's Best Novelist
Jay Ellis's delightfully original and urbane treatment of the finest American novelist since Faulkner and Hemingway exemplifies the best tradition of crossover criticism.

In a style that is edgy, electric, and intensely personal, Ellis probes into the complex worlds of McCarthy's fiction as if they were matters of life and death, which of course they are. Ellis's range of psychological, linguistic, literary and and cultural references doesn't ever appear forced or pretentious. In fact one of the book's achievements is to maintain a sense of spontaneity throughout.

A rare combination of insightful close readings, stimulating tangents and a number of very big and engaging ideas, the book reads as if Ellis (a novelist himself) decided to pour the same level of energy and feeling into a work of scholarship as he would into a work of his own fiction. The result is both provocative and passionate, a tribute of the sort that every great writer deserves but seldom sees in his or her lifetime.

I have not yet read a better guide to McCarthy's work for either the layman or the scholar. Wherever there are dedicated readers of McCarthy, NO PLACE FOR HOME will be there.
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Una impresionante e imaginativa fábula moral acerca de la naturaleza de la violencia y la justicia.
 
Una novela épica sobre la violencia y la depravación que acompañaron a la expansión de América hacia el oeste, Meridiano de sangre subvierte espléndidamente las convenciones de la novela occidental y la mitología del “salvaje oeste”. Basada en acontecimientos históricos ocurridos en la frontera de Texas y México alrededor de 1850, traza las fortunas del Chico, un muchacho de Tennessee, que tropieza con el horrible mundo del grupo de Glanton, y su líder espiritual, el llamado juez Holden: un hombre calvo, albino, sin barba, sin pestañas, ni cejas; un hombre violento y cruel que apenas duerme y afirma que jamás morirá. ... Read more

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Mary McCarthy's most celebrated novel portrays the lives, and aspirations of eight Vassar graduates. "The group" meet in New York following commencement to attend the wedding of one of their members¾and reconvene seven years later at her funeral. The woman are complicated, compelling, vivid, and, above all, determined not to become stuffy and frightened like "Mother and Dad" but to lead fulfilling, emancipated lives.

A classic of contemporary fiction, The Group is a dazzlingly outspoken novel, written with the trenchant, sardonic edge that is the hallmark of Mary McCarthy's prose. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (21)

Difficult to follow...
This book didnot hold my interest. It was very difficult to follow. I hung in there for almost 1/2 of the book and gave up.

Feminism across generations
I definitely agree with the other reviewers here on amazon.com that "The Group" has stood the "test of time." While it concerns eight young women, just graduated from Vassar College, in the early 1930s, the novel (published in 1963 and on the bestseller list for 2 years) also reflects the optimism and social aspiration of the 1960s. That is particularly evident by contrast today, in 2009, another time period, like the 30s, of economic contraction. Even though it includes many contemporary allusions to the economic hardship of the 1930s, "The Group" is a plucky manifesto for social change, especially for a redistribution of power between the sexes (which I suspect is partly responsible for its popularity in the 60s), and does not seem particularly shadowed by the hardship of the depression era.

I was especially struck by its gender politics, which feels to me more a product of the 60s than of the 30s. The arc of the plot suggests that marriage is a dead end (Betty Friedan's "The Feminist Mystique" was published in the same year). While McCarthy has a dry, even acerbic style, relationships between women, even those between mothers and daughters, are drawn with sympathy and affection. It is interesting, in this regard, that the (male) villain shares a first name (Harald) with McCarthy's first husband, and is like him a would-be playwright.

Fascinating Social History
I loved this book and its interesting take on the culture of a class of Vassar women in the 1930's.I tore through it quite quickly, it was an easy read.Certainly, this is a rarefied group, but McCarthy deftly brings out the class stereotypes and prejudices, while still bringing in events that effected the wider population. It's also an unflinching look at women's lives during this time - it has no agenda and doesn't gloss over the facets that don't jive with either typical conservative or feminist narratives of how a woman's place and sexuality has changed in the last century.

Disappointing...
While some of the reviews for this book create a tremendous level of intrigue, the book itself falls flat.McCarthy's writing style is just not enough to sustain any interest for the characters or plots surrounding their lives.There was no desire to learn what happened to these women; the only reason I kept reading was for a book club.

I would say that the only interesting thing about this novel (and the reason I gave it 2 stars and not 1) is that it gives the reader great insight into life as it was of the '30s to '50s.Not having been born during those periods, that was very interesting to experience.However, the social analysis is not enough to keep the book alive.

I would not recommend this book to anyone.

Excellent and engrossing
When I originally began "The Group", I was a bit out of the loop as to certain terms that were being thrown around -Kraft-Ebbing being one - and to my shame, I must admit going to the dictionary to look up both "peccary" and "pessary."But once I got into the groove of the book, the narrative flowed and I was able to put most things into context.Not knowing much about Mary McCarthy, I had expected a book more akin to a Rona Jaffe "Class Reunion" type-novel.But "The Group" is much more than that.It's a sophisticated, at times even satirical (in a "oh, look how silly they were!" kind of way), look at these women in their lives after college.

Each character in "The Group" gets their turn at bat as they deal with philandering husbands, first love, casual sex, child rearing and parental responsibility. McCarthy's story went by so quickly that before I knew it, I was done and wishing there had been more.

This past winter, I had the pleasure of attending a screening of the 1966 film version of "The Group" (attended by some of the actresses) and I was pleased to see how well the book had been adapted - despite Pauline Kael's misgivings.Seeing the movie made me go back to the book which I found more engrossing and enjoyable the second time around.Seeing as it will be a long, recessionary winter, I'm prepared to give it another read and why not?There's always something new to discover in this jewel of a novel.
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In this groundbreaking study, Gary M. Ciuba examines how four of the South's most probing writers of twentieth-century fiction—Katherine Anne Porter, Flannery O'Connor, Cormac McCarthy, and Walker Percy—expose the roots of violence in southern culture. Ciuba draws on the paradigm of mimetic violence developed by cultural and literary critic René Girard, who maintains that individual human nature is shaped by the desire to imitate a model. Mimetic desire may lead in turn to rivalry, cruelty, and ultimately community-sanctioned —and sometimes ritually sanctified—victimization of those deemed outcasts. Ciuba offers an impressively broad intellectual discussion that gives universal cultural meaning to the southern experience of desire, violence, and divinity with which these four authors wrestled and out of which they wrote. In a comprehensive analysis of Porter's semiautobiographical Miranda stories, Ciuba focuses on the prescribed role of women that Miranda imitates and ultimately escapes. O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away reveals three characters whose scandalous animosity caused by religious rivalry leads to the unbearable stumbling block of violence. McCarthy's protagonist in Child of God, Lester Ballard, appears as the culmination of a long tradition of the sacred violence of southern religion, twisted into his own bloody faith. And Percy's The Thanatos Syndrome brings Ciuba's discussion back to the victim, in Tom Moore's renunciation of a society in which scapegoating threatens to become the foundation of a new social regime. From nostalgia for the old order to visions of a utopian tomorrow, these authors have imagined the interrelationship of desire, antagonism, and religion throughout southern history. Ciuba's insights offer new ways of reading Porter, O'Connor, McCarthy, and Percy as well as their contemporaries who inhabited the same culture of violence—violence desired, dreaded, denied, and deified.AUTHOR BIO: Gary M. Ciuba is the author of Walker Percy: Books of Revelations and numerous articles on modern southern fiction.He is a professor of English at Kent State University. ... Read more

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This is part of a new series of guides to contemporary novels. The aim of the series is to give readers accessible and informative introductions to some of the most popular, most acclaimed and most influential novels of recent years – from ‘The Remains of the Day’ to ‘White Teeth’. A team of contemporary fiction scholars from both sides of the Atlantic has been assembled to provide a thorough and readable analysis of each of the novels in question. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

excellent insight
though need to get out the dictionary sometimes:
mythopoetic gestures, profundity, epitome....

this is really excellent; looking forward to rereading the 20 cent copy of all the preety horses i just ordered with my girlfriend and this book's insights into this great writer (my favorite) ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

Fiction and Philosophy together is priceless.
I was so incredibly inspired by someone that truly understands Kantian ethics, and how to apply them.Mary McCarthy was obviously very well educated and intelligent, this book was so good that I was wondering why she was not a part of the literature classes that I took in college.Her very endearing and intimate writing style has me in awe.I really want to send this book to my former philosophy professor and see what he thinks.If you like a good novel and philosophy both, read this book.

A really first-rate novel by a first-rate writer
Mary McCarthy has never gotten her due as a prose writer and this -- her best novel -- seems to have been overlooked.This is the story of a young man 's emancipation from his very much loved mother (with whom he has analmost romantic relationship based on her attractiveness and their sharedsensibility).They construct an ideal life together in which they eschewall "modern" conveniences for the niceties of the past.Sheremarries and he is launched as an adult, going to Paris to school, wherehe attempts to apply his interpretation of Kant's moral imperative to thevarious experiences he has (including one very funny-painful episode inwhich he invites a urine-soaked clochard to share his quarters).It is acompletely delightful book and can be reread with pleasure.She is amaster story teller. ... Read more

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Chapters: No Country for Old Men, the Road, All the Pretty Horses. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 43. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: No Country for Old Men is a 2007 American crime thriller film adapted for the screen and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, and starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, and Josh Brolin. Adapted from the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, No Country for Old Men tells the story of an ordinary man to whom chance delivers a fortune that is not his, and the ensuing cat-and-mouse drama, as three men crisscross each other's paths in the desert landscape of 1980 West Texas. The film examines the themes of fate and circumstance the Coen brothers have previously explored in Blood Simple and Fargo. No Country for Old Men has been highly praised by critics. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called it "as good a film as the Coen brothers...have ever made." The Guardian journalist John Patterson said the film proved "that the Coens' technical abilities, and their feel for a landscape-based Western classicism reminiscent of Anthony Mann and Sam Peckinpah, are matched by few living directors." The film was honored with numerous awards, garnering three British Academy of Film awards, two Golden Globes, and four Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Joel and Ethan Coen), Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem). West Texas in June 1980 is desolate, wide open country, and Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) laments the increasing violence in a region where he, like his father before him, has risen to the office of sheriff. Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), hunting pronghorn, comes across the aftermath of a drug deal gone awry: several dead men and dogs, a wounded Mexican begging for water, and two million dollars in a satchel that he t...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=3920193 ... Read more