SOURCE: Cawelti, John G. “Cormac McCarthy: Restless Seekers.” In Southern Writers at Century's End, edited by Jeffrey J. Folks and James A. Perkins, pp. 164-76. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1997.

In the following essay, Cawelti presents an overview of Cormac McCarthy's career, stressing that his works connect the new Western and the new Southern literature genres through a concern for a sense of the failure of white American culture.

Southerners have a favorite set of self-images involving associations with stability, tradition, and dedication to local communities, all the symbology of “down-home.” But in fact the South was founded by a horde of restless seekers who left their home places behind them in pursuit of a plethora of dreams: wealth and grandeur, religious salvation, dreams of utopia, or all three in various combinations. Faulkner understood this well, and two of his most significant characters, Thomas Sutpen and Flem...