Literature and Death: McCarthy, Blanchot and Suttree

This chapter aims to use Maurice Blanchot’s theory of literature as an interpretive tool for explaining how McCarthy’s work operates in both philosophical and literary registers. Blanchot explains that literary meaning emerges from a resistance to generic classification. I expand upon Blanchot’s position to offer an innovative account of how McCarthy adopts a similar strategy. Pinpointing Suttree as the culmination of McCarthy’s early Appalachian period, I argue that McCarthy’s writing to this point, and Suttree especially, makes apparent the structure of McCarthy’s ontology and ethics through the novel’s execution of both form and content.