In the three decades leading to his sixtieth birthday, Cormac McCarthy produced six novels and a screenplay that are stunning in their originality and craftsmanship. Though McCarthy has been loath to court attention, especially in the academic arena, and slow to receive it, he has never truly gone without recognition, receiving the admiration -- even the championship -- of such contemporary American writers as Shelby Foote, Ralph Ellison, Annie Dillard, Larry Brown, Lee Smith, Saul Bellow, Robert Coles, and Madison Smartt Bell. McCarthy has also gathered nearly a dozen significant literary fellowships and awards. In 1988 Vereen M. Bell published the first book assessing McCarthy's works, calling him "our best unknown major writer by many measures." Since then the first six of McCarthy's novels have been published in paperback, and two more book-length studies of his works have appeared. An increasing number of scholars are writing dissertations or theses...