Cormac McCarthy and Performance

Cormac McCarthy is renowned as the author of popular and acclaimed novels such as Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, and The Road. Throughout his career, however, McCarthy has also invested deeply in writing for film and theater, an engagement with other forms of storytelling that is often overlooked. He is the author of five screenplays and two plays, and he has been significantly involved with three of the seven film adaptations of his work. In this book, Stacey Peebles offers the first extensive overview of this relatively unknown aspect of McCarthys writing life, including the ways in which other artists have interpreted his work for the stage and screen. Drawing on many primary sources in McCarthys recently opened archive, as well as interviews, Peebles covers the 1977 televised film The Gardeners Son; McCarthys unpublished screenplays from the 1980s that became the foundation for his Border Trilogy novels and No Country for Old Men; various successful and unsuccessful productions of his two plays; and all seven film adaptations of his work, including John Hillcoats The Road (2009) and the Coen brothers Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men (2007). Emerging from this narrative is the central importance of tragedythe rich and varied portrayals of violence and suffering and the human responses to themin all of McCarthys work, but especially his writing for theater and film.