The Orchard Keeper Annotated Bibliography

Arnold, Edwin T. “The Mosaic of McCarthy's Fiction.” Hall and Wallach 17.23: 45–69. Print.

This is a critical essay that discusses Cormac McCarthy’s overarching artistic vision revealed by his body of work in its entirety. Arnold suggests that McCarthy’s novels are not independent entities. Rather, each leads into or reflects upon the one that comes before. He constructs his argument by going through McCarthy’s books in order of publication, and revealing the tie-ins to both the one immediately before or after and the body as a whole. Arnold’s approach differs from most other criticism on McCarthy by addressing all of the works as a single unit instead of dividing them into South and West or by specific book. The biggest weakness in the essay is that McCarthy has published works since the writing of the article which obviously were not included.

---- “Naming, Knowing and Nothingness: McCarthy's Moral Parables.” Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy (1999): 45-69. Print.  

In this critical essay, part of a collection, Arnold again addresses Cormac McCarthy’s body of work in its entirety. It seems he’s trying to validate McCarthy as an artist despite many critics. Arnold attempts to dispel the assertion by Vereen M. Bell that McCarthy’s works are ultimately nihilistic and devoid of morals. In fact, Arnold suggests just the opposite, that the strength of McCarthy lies in his ability to demonstrate the necessity of morality and the ability of good morals to shine through even the most devastatingly bad circumstances. The essay is particularly strong when he quotes Bell then references text that contradicts Bell’s assertions. His analysis seems to go a bit far in that Arnold ultimately seems to suggest that every character in a McCarthy novel has some redeemable quality. However, the essay does fit Arnold’s tendency to focus on McCarthy’s works in their entirety instead of focusing on one or a few. Again, this essay was published before the publication of several more recent McCarthy novels.

Brickman, Barbara. “Imposition and Resistance in The Orchard Keeper.” Myth, Legend, Dust: Critical Responses to Cormac McCarthy (2000): 55-67. Print.

In this critical essay, Barbara Brickman attempts to characterize the struggle between tradition and modernity in Cormac McCarthy’s The Orchard Keeper as a recreation of the historical struggle in Ireland of Gaelic tradition against the colonizing British. She cites many similarities between traditional Gaelic culture and the culture of the Appalachian society in which this novel takes place. Most interesting, however, is her assertion that Marion Sylder’s symbolic adoption of John Wesley Rattner occurs in such a way as to directly mimic the Gaelic idea of fosterage. Brickman also discusses the Irish heritage of McCarthy himself. This essay is takes quite a different approach than much McCarthy criticism, and is one of the few to employ any sort of biographical approach.

Frye, Steven. Understanding Cormac McCarthy. Columbia, S.C: University of South Carolina Press, 2009. Print.

In this book Steven Frye addresses Cormac McCarthy and every novel he’s written to date. Though he makes a few umbrella statements with regard to the body of work as a whole, Frye treats each novel individually offering his own deep reading of them. Though many of the readings are bogged down with summary, he offers several interesting insights such as his assertion that The Orchard Keeper is a celebration of memory. Like Edwin T. Arnold, Frye attempts to address the works of McCarthy in their entirety, but distinguishes himself with the individual treatment of each.The Orchard Keeper is a celebration of memory. Like Edwin T. Arnold, Frye attempts to address the works of McCarthy in their entirety, but distinguishes himself with the individual treatment of each.

Grammer, J. M. “A Thing Against Which Time Will Not Prevail: Pastoral and History in Cormac McCarthy’s South.” Cormac McCarthy : 9–22. Print.  

Grammer’s critical essay discusses McCarthy’s Southern novels as pastoral histories in an  essay on gnosticism. He compares the books to other Southern pastorals, particularly George Tucker’s The Valley of Shenandoah, and describes the similarities. However, he then explores the ways in which McCarthy goes beyond pastoralism in gnosticism. The Orchard Keeper, Grammer suggests, contains characters who seek the pastoral as a “refuge from time,” and exist in an order outside the bounds of normal human interaction. Grammer is not alone in exploring the mystic and the natural in McCarthy as both are themes that occur quite frequently in criticism.

Hall, Wade. “The Human Comedy of Cormac McCarthy.” Cormac McCarthy : 53–64. Print.  

In Wade Hall’s critical essay on Cormac McCarthy he argues that McCarthy should, really, be considered a humorist to be grouped with the many Southern/Southwestern humorists o the past. Hall starts by discussing humor generally, refreshing the readers mind of what comedy is and isn’t. He then highlights several specific scenes from McCarthy’s novel— some obviously humorous, some not—and demonstrates how they’re comedy. The essay is particularly poignant when Hall attempts to glean humor from some of the very darkest moments in McCarthy’s books, arguing that the human condition must be comedy and that’s what McCarthy knows. He says that only humans have the capacity to be humorous, and there’s no material for humor in heaven. Because heaven is perfect, there would be nothing in the realm of comedy. Therefore comedy must exist below it. Hall argues that this is something the characters in McCarthy’s novels, and McCarthy himself, are sensitive too. This essay is interesting and unique amongst other McCarthy criticism because it does deal with the humor of McCarthy. Many scenes exist in his works that are truly laugh-out-loud material, but many people seem afraid to address this because of the overall gravity the books seem to carry.

Jarrett, Robert L. Cormac McCarthy. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1997. Print.

Jarrett’s book, like Frye’s after him, attempts to tackle McCarthy’s work in its entirety. He too treats each book individually. However, afterwards he spends significant time applying thoughts and criticism to the whole body of work. Particularly interesting is his assertion that landscapes function as characters similar to Fate in Greek tragedies. Jarrett’s book may be considered less authoritative because it was published before the completion of several significant novels, so discussion of those is glaringly absent.

Luce, Dianne C. “’They Ain’t the Thing’: Artifact and Hallucinated Recollection in Cormac McCarthy’s Early Frame-Works.” Cormac McCarthy : 113–130. Print.  

Dianne Luce’s critical essay suggests that Cormac McCarthy’s early works were very much concerned with history and the individual’s creation of it. She argues that, to these characters, factual history is irrelevant as long as they can construct one that feels true to them. These histories are constructed of ‘memories’ triggered by a character’s encounter with some artifact, like a gravestone. The character then must come up with an acceptable reason for that artifacts appearance where it is. One of her most interesting suggestions is that the whole of The Orchard Keeper may be a memory/hallucination of John Wesley triggered by his encounter with his mother’s gravestone.

-----. "Landscape of Memory: The Orchard Keeper." Reading the World: Cormac McCarthy's Tennessee Period. Columbia: University of South Carolina, 2009. 1-61. Print.

The first chapter of Dianne Luce’s book on Cormac McCarthy’s early career focuses on the complicated relationships residents of southern Appalachia necessarily had between tradition, nature, and progress, and applying that directly to a reading of The Orchard Keeper. Luce opens with an explanation of three major developments in the region: the displacement of residents in the creation of Great Smoky Mountain National Park, the introduction of TVA, and the long tradition of running whiskey even before Prohibition. Except for the whiskey, which is mentioned quite often in The Orchard Keeper, the novel never directly mentions any of these developments. However, considering that McCarthy grew up in Eastern Tennessee right in the midst of some of these events, Luce demonstrates that the history is not mentioned directly probably because knowledge of  it, and the conflicts of interest rising because of it, is inherent to the region. Luce takes the common summarization of The Orchard Keeper being a novel about the struggle of tradition against progress, nature versus technology, one step further by demonstrating that it must be by default merely because of the time and place of its setting.

-----, “The Road and the Matrix: The World as Tale in The Crossing,” Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy, Southern Quarterly Series (Southern Quarterly Series) (1999): 195-247.

Dianne Luces’s critical essay suggests the The Crossing consists of little actual plot development, but, rather, is constructed of a series of tales told by a myriad of characters. She suggests these tales and the wanderings of the observer of them are a metaphor “of wandering, avoidance and entrapment within the illusion of linear time-boundedness,” and she demonstrates this by careful analysis of each of the major tales in the novel, and the protagonists reaction to them. This essay expands existing criticism of The Crossing, but also overlaps with thought on The Orchard Keeper, exploring and explicating what appears to be major themes of both novels—the illusion of time, tale versus reality, truth versus fact.

Prather, William. “'Like Something Seen through Bad Glass': Narrative Strategies in The Orchard Keeper.” Myth, Legend, Dust: Critical Responses to Cormac McCarthy (2000): 37-54. Print.  

William Prather’s critical essay argues for the classification of The Orchard Keeper as a novel of the grotesque and absurd. Using definitions by Albert Camus and Wolfgang Kayser for absurd and grotesque, respectively, Prather then attempts to demonstrate how McCarthy’s novel meets these criteria. He primarily focuses on John Wesley’s early and intimate encounters with death, and the inescapable role it plays in his life, arguing that a confrontation with death must be grotesque or absurd. Also pertinent to Prather is the novel’s attempt at dealing with alienation, a condition, he infers, the necessarily harbors the absurd. The essay is similar to Wade Halls “The Comedy of Cormac McCarthy” in its attempt to define the world of McCarthy’s novel in new terms, and Prather accepts as a given throughout the essay Dianne Luce’s assertion that The Orchard Keeper all takes place within John Wesley’s memory or hallucination.

Ragan, David Paul. “Values and Structure in The Orchard Keeper.” Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy (1999): 17-27. Print.

In David Paul Ragan’s critical essay he suggests that because of the elusive nature of narrative in The Orchard Keeper, a reader must instead latch on to the sources of value and moral significance in order to make it through. Each character, he claims, has a basic set of values defined by age and life experience. Because there is little internal expression of emotion from these characters, readers must rely on actions to reveal morality. Ragan guides readers through several scenes and gives his interpretation of them. Morality and values are central to many essays on The Orchard Keeper and McCarthy in general. This essay is unique in suggesting that they’re a guiding force rather than something lost and waiting to be found.

Sanborn III, Wallis R. "Animals and Death in The Gardener's Son, The Stonemason, "Bounty," and "The Dark Waters"" Animals in the Fiction of Cormac McCarthy. Jefferson: McFarland & Company,,, 2006. 15-26. Print.

The first chapter of Sanborn’s book deals with imagery of animals as harbingers of the death of something, a dramatic shift in understanding about the way of things. The early works he discusses include two sections from The Orchard Keeper published separately. Sanborn suggests that the collection of bounty on animals, or even on people, is accepting that that thing is worth more dead than alive, and it’s through the interactions with these animals, dead or associated with the dead, that McCarthy’s early characters begin to realize the way in which technology has begun to corrupt. Animals are very prominent and so is death in Cormac McCarthy’s fiction. This essay adds another layer of understanding to both.

-----. "Feline Hierarchy in The Orchard Keeper." Animals in the Fiction of Cormac McCarthy. Jefferson: McFarland & Company,,, 2006. 27-45. Print.

The second chapter of Sanborn’s book argues that characters in The Orchard Keeper may be defined in terms of the various cats prominent throughout the novel. The hierarchy of cats is determined by their relationship and dependence on man for their survival—from blind kittens to livestock stealing panthers. Through their encounters with these cats, the characters may be put into hierarchy as well, though more of a moral one. As many other critics discuss this essay addresses morality in The Orchard Keeper. However, by adding discussion of just one of the animals so prominent throughout the text, Sanborn opens up new avenues of thought and inference.

------, Wallis R. "Wolves as Metaphor in The Crossing." Animals in the Fiction of Cormac McCarthy. Jefferson: McFarland & Company,,, 2006. 131-48. Print.

Sanborn’s eighth chapter examines the relationship between man and wolves past and present in the Southwest setting of The Crossing. He argues primarily that the relationship is a “metaphor for man’s appetite for control over the natural world.” Even when intentions are good, direct interaction between man and nature often leads to disastrous results for both. This assessment of man’s relationship with nature is crucial not just in The Crossing, but most of McCarthy’s novels as well. Particularly, The Orchard Keeper deals with the complexities of relationships that are often necessary, but not always beneficial to either party that have become forced due to progress. This essay coincides with Luce’s “Landscape of Memory” to that effect.