SOURCE: "Worlds Past and Future: A Christian and Several from the South," in The Sewanee Review, Vol. LXXIII, No. 4, October-December, 1965, pp. 719-26.

In the following excerpt, Sullivan discusses The Orchard Keeper and the triumph of technology over man in the novel.

The Orchard Keeper is Cormac McCarthy's first novel, but at thirty-three, McCarthy has a more mature mind and is a more finished craftsman than Miss Tyler. His prose is magnificent, full of energy and sharp detail and the sounds and smells of God's creation. The sense of fulfillment one gets from reading The Orchard Keeper is difficult to convey, because when the book is broken down to its bare bones it is likely to appear to be a trite contraption. It is written squarely in the middle of the agrarian influence, and reading it, one thinks of Faulkner here and Lytle there, or of Madison Jones or...