SOURCE: "Inner Dark: or, The Place of Cormac McCarthy," in The Southern Review, Vol. 26, No. 2, April, 1990, pp. 293-309.

In the following essay, Winchell maintains that the "pyrotechnical use of language that is McCarthy's distinctive signature as a writer" is the author's greatest achievement. Winchell also discusses the influence of Faulkner on McCarthy's work and comments at length on the "revulsion" and "horror" found in the novels.

Cormac McCarthy may be the most highly respected unknown writer in contemporary southern letters. Vereen Bell estimates that McCarthy's five novels have sold no more than fifteen thousand copies in their various editions, and two of those novels (Child of God and Blood Meridian) are listed as "out-of-stock" by their publisher. If McCarthy has been shunned by the public, he has steadfastly resisted that sure refuge of the "serious" writer—academic patronage. (In fact, he flunked out of the University of Tennessee...