Books Are Made Out of Books

Cormac McCarthy told an interviewer for the New York Times Magazine that “books are made out of books,” but he was famously unwilling to discuss how his own writing draws on the works of other writers. Yet his novels and plays masterfully appropriate and allude to an extensive range of literary works, demonstrating that McCarthy was well aware of literary tradition and deliberately situating himself in a knowing relationship to precursors. In Books Are Made Out of Books, Michael Lynn Crews thoroughly mines McCarthy’s literary archive to identify over 150 writers and thinkers that McCarthy referenced in early drafts, marginalia, notes, and correspondence. Crews organizes the references into chapters devoted to McCarthy’s published works, the unpublished screenplay Whales and Men, and McCarthy’s correspondence. This updated edition now examines McCarthy’s final publications: the novel The Passenger and its play-like coda Stella Maris. For each work, Crews identifies authors, artists, or other cultural figures that McCarthy referenced; gives the source of the reference in McCarthy’s papers; provides context for the reference as it appears in the archives; and explains the significance of the reference to the novel or play that McCarthy was working on. This groundbreaking exploration of McCarthy’s literary influences vastly expands our understanding of how one of America’s foremost authors engaged with the ideas, images, metaphors, and language of other thinkers and made them his own.

Michael Lynn Crews is an associate professor of English at Regent University. He specializes in American and contemporary literature.

- Acknowledgments - Chapter 1. Introduction: Books Out of Books - T Is for Texas, T Is for Tennessee: Cormac McCarthy’s Literary Journey - The Wittliff Collection - Literary Influence and the Novels of Cormac McCarthy - Chapter 2. The Orchard Keeper- Faulkner, William (1897–1962) [See also The Stonemason] - Frost, Robert (1874–1963) [See also The Road] - Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1804–1864 - Chapter 3. Outer Dark- Camus, Albert (1913–1960) [See also Whales and Men- Chapter 4. Child of God- Hitchcock, Alfred (1899–1980) - Chapter 5. The Gardener’s Son- Bealer, Alex (1921–1980) - Christian, William (b. 1944) - Dawley, Thomas Robinson (1862–1930) - Ginsberg, Allen (1926–1997) - Gurdjieff, George (1866–1949) - Huxley, Aldous (1894–1963) - Joyce, James (1882–1941) [See also Suttree; in addition, see entries for Joseph Gerard Brennan and Peter De Vries in Suttree] - McLaurin, Melton Alonza (b. 1941) - Rapoport, Amos (b. 1929 - Chapter 6. Suttree- Abbey, Edward (1927–1989) - Agee, James (1909–1955) - Algren, Nelson (1909–1981) - Bellow, Saul (1915–2005) - Beowulf (ca. eighth century) [See also Blood Meridian] - Brennan, Joseph Gerard (1910–2004) - Brown, Christy (1932–1981) - Cooke, Ebenezer (ca. 1667–ca. 1732) - Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) - Davidson, Donald (1893–1968) - De Vries, Peter (1910–1993) - Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns) (1888–1965) [See also The Road] - Ericson, Eric B. (dates unknown), and Goesta Wollin (1912–1995) - Farrell, James T. (1904–1979) - Flaubert, Gustave (1821–1880) - Foucault, Michel (1926–1984) - Graves, Robert (1895–1985) - Hoagland, Edward (b. 1932) - Hunting in the Old South: Original Narratives of the Hunters (1967) - Joyce, James (1882–1941) [See also The Gardener’s Son; in addition, see entries for Joseph Gerard Brennan and Peter De Vries in this chapter] - Jung, Carl Gustav (1875–1961) [See also entry for Tabula Smaragdina in this chapter] - Koestler, Arthur (1905–1983) - Lampedusa, Giuseppe Tomasi di (1896–1957) - Lewis, Wyndham (1882–1957) - Lissner, Ivar (1909–1967) - Mailer, Norman (1923–2007) - The Malleus Maleficarum (1487) - Maryland: A Guide to the Old Line State (1940) - Massinger, Philip (1583–1640) - Melville, Herman (1818–1891) [See also The Stonemason and Whales and Men] - Miller, Henry (1891–1980) [See also Correspondence] - Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de (1533–1592) [See also Whales and Men] 000 - Nordau, Max (1849–1923) - Pater, Walter (1839–1894) - Poe, Edgar Allan (1809–1849) - Shakespeare, William (1564–1616) [See also Blood Meridian and The Road] - Spengler, Oswald (1880–1936) [See also The Road; in addition, see entry for Wyndham Lewis in Suttree] - Steele, Wilbur Daniel (1886–1970) - Steinbeck, John (1902–1968) - Stephenson, Carl (1893–1954) - Tabula Smaragdina [See also entry for Carl Gustav Jung in this chapter] - Thompson, Francis (1859–1907) - Trumbo, Dalton (1905–1976) - West, Nathanael (1903–1940) - Weston, Jessie L. (1850–1928) - Wolfe, Thomas (1900–1938) - Xenophanes (ca. 570–ca. 478 BCE) [See also Heraclitus in Blood Meridian] - Chapter 7. Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West- Beowulf (ca. eighth century) [See also Suttree] - Boehme, Jacob (1575–1624) [See also Eugen Herrigel in this chapter] - Celine, Louis-Ferdinand (1894–1961) - Chaucer, Geoffrey (1343–1400) - Collinson, Frank (1855–1943) - Conrad, Joseph (1857–1924) - Dillard, Annie (b. 1945) - Dobie, J. Frank (1888–1964) - Doughty, Charles Montagu (1843–1926) - Durant, Will (1885–1981) - Fraser, Julius Thomas (1923–2010) - Gard, Wayne (1899–1986) - Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749–1832) - Heller, Joseph (1923–1999) - Heraclitus (ca. 535–ca. 475 BCE) - Herrigel, Eugen (1884–1955) [See also Jacob Boehme in this chapter] - James, William (1842–1910) - Kierkegaard, SØren (1813–1855) - Kinnell, Galway (1927–2014) - Krutch, Joseph Wood (1893–1970) - McGinniss, Joe (1942–2014) - Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900) - O’Brien, Tim (b. 1946) - O’Connor, Mary Flannery (1925–1964) - Pirsig, Robert M. (b. 1928) [See also The Road] - Salinger, J. D. (Jerome David) (1919–2010) - Shakespeare, William (1564–1616) [See also Suttree and The Road] - Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) - Tolstoy, Leo (1828–1910) - ValÉry, Paul (1871–1945) - Whitehead, Alfred North (1861–1947) - Wolfe, Tom (b. 1931) - Chapter 8. The Stonemason- Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106–43 BCE) - Faulkner, William (1897–1962) [See also The Orchard Keeper] - Frankl, Paul (1878–1962) - Gaines, Ernest J. (b. 1933) - Galsworthy, John (1867–1933) - Genovese, Eugene (1930–2012) - Gould, Robert Freke (1836–1915) - Herbert, Edward (1583–1648) - Langley, Batty (1696–1751) - Lesy, Michael (b. 1945) - Melville, Herman (1819–1891) [See also Suttree and Whales and Men] - Northrop, Filmer Stuart Cuckow (1893–1992) - Rilke, Rainer Maria (1875–1926) - Rosengarten, Theodore (b. 1944) - Rykwert, Joseph (b. 1926) - Chapter 9. The Crossing- Gandia, Manuel Zeno (1855–1930) - Leopold, Aldo (1887–1948) - Chapter 10. Cities of the Plain- Artemidorus (second century CE) - Bell, John Stewart (1928–1990) - Kanner, Leo (1894–1981) - Thorndike, Lynn (1882–1965) - Williams, James Robert (1888–1957) - Chapter 11. The Road- Beckett, Samuel (1906–1989) - Defoe, Daniel (1660–1731) - Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns) (1888–1965) [See also Suttree] - Frost, Robert (1874–1963) [See also The Orchard Keeper] - Kierkegaard, SØren (1813–1855) [See also Blood Meridian] - London, Jack (1876–1916) - Markson, David (1927–2010) - Martin, Paul - Ovsyanikov, Nikita - Pagels, Heinz (1939–1988) - Pirsig, Robert M. (b. 1928) [See also Blood Meridian] - Shakespeare, William (1564–1616) [See also Suttree and Blood Meridian] - Twain, Mark (Samuel Langhorne Clemens--1835–1910) - Chapter 12. Whales and Men- Arendt, Hannah (1906–1975) - Augustine of Hippo (354–430) - Beston, Henry (1888–1968) - Borges, Jorge Luis (1899–1986) - Camus, Albert (1913–1960) [See also Outer Dark] - Cervantes, Miguel de (1547–1616) - Dyson, Freeman (b. 1923) - Hemingway, Ernest (1899–1961) - Hoffer, Eric (1898–1983) - Hyde, Douglas (1860–1949) - Jeffers, Robinson (1887–1962) - Lopez, Barry Holstun (b. 1945) - Melville, Herman (1819–1891) [See also Suttree and The Stonemason] - Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de (1533–1592) [See also Suttree] - Moore, George Augustus (1852–1933) - Mowat, Farley (1921–2014) - Pound, Ezra (1885–1972) - Taylor, Gordon Rattray (1911–1981) - Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (1881–1955) - Thomas, Dylan (1914–1953) - Yeats, William Butler (1865–1939) - Chapter 13. Correspondence - Brinnin, John Malcolm (1916–1998) - Byron, George Gordon, Lord (1788–1824) - Chatwin, Bruce (1940–1989) - Clarke, Arthur C. (1917–2008) - Davenport, Guy (1927–2005) - Graves, John (b. 1920) - Hansen, Ron (b. 1947) - Hardy, Thomas (1840–1928) - Kundera, Milan (b. 1929) - Leone, Sergio (1929–1989) - Lowry, Malcolm (1909–1957) - McGuane, Thomas (b. 1939) - Miller, Henry (1891–1980) [See also Suttree] - Ondaatje, Michael (b. 1943) - Scarry, Elaine (b. 1946) - Chapter 14. The Passenger - CÉline, Louis-Ferdinand (1894–1961) [See also Blood Meridian] - Cioran, E.-M. (1911–1995) - Dillard, Annie (b. 1945) [See also Blood Meridian] - Fielding, Henry (1707–1754) - Ginsberg, Allen (1926–1997) [See also The Gardener’s Son] - Jeffers, Robinson (1887–1962) [See also Whales and Men] - Merton, Thomas (1915–1968) - Poe, Edgar Allan (1809–1849) [See also Suttree] - Sacher-Masoch, Leopold von (1836–1895) / Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) - Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788–1860) - Thomas, Dylan (1914–1953) [See also Whales and Men] - Waugh, Evelyn (1903–1966) - Wilson, Edward O. (1929–2021) - Notes - Bibliography - Index