10th SAAS CONFERENCE

“The Backyard of the U.S. Mansion: Critical readings of poverty and wealth in the United States”

Alcalá de Henares (Madrid).  April 14-16, 2011

 

10) Currency Collapse, Moral Collapse: Material and Spiritual Poverty in Cormac McCarthy’s Fiction

Panel Chair: Carmen Méndez
Institution: Universidad Complutense de Madrid
E-mail: cmmendez@filol.ucm.es

Recently popularized by film adaptations of his works, and hailed as one of the most haunting writers of the last decades, Cormac McCarthy’s novels are pregnant with images of poverty, often defined by his choice of settings (the American South and the Southwest, or a desolate post-apocalyptical environment). The material wastelands of McCarthy’s oeuvre, where deprivation, drought and famine seem to define the characters’ choices, also bring about a poverty that we might deem spiritual, a poverty reflected in spectacles of brutality and sadism as seen in the gangs of Blood Meridian, or in new definitions of property and commodities (slavery, human harvesting), as seen in The Road. Likewise, the deprivation of family ties and the ultimate symbol of US material property (real estate) leads to murder and stealing in the name of survival (Child of God), while the illusion of property is further explored in Suttre. Most of McCarthy’s novels could be analyzed as a study of the possession of property and its misfortunes by characters living on the fringe of society (such as Blevin’s horse and Colt pistol in All the Pretty Horses).

McCarthy challenges the economic modes America has been based on: slavery is featured prominently in The Road, where the two main characters are also, quite appropriately, carrying around their possessions in a wrecked supermarket cart. Nomadism, also noticeable in his novels, appears to be the only choice in a world where men return to primitive systems of economic organization.
Contributions to the panel may include, but are not limited to, studies on:

- the effects of the US/Mexico frontier on currency and commodities, especially in The Border Trilogy and No Country for Old Men

- new commodities: drugs, stolen money (No Country for Old Men), slavery and dystopia (The Road)

- human life as a commodity in The Road, the (economic) value of human beings

- McCarthy’s novels as a critique of US systems of production of wealth and its discontents

- nomadism in McCarthy and its consequences on the organization of the economy

- pertinent readings of McCarthy as a reflection of the current economic crisis

- wealth and poverty in film adaptations of McCarthy’s novels.

 

10th INTERNATIONAL SAAS CONFERENCE
Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, 14-16 April 2011

THE BACKYARD OF THE U.S.A. MANSION: Critical Readings of Poverty and Wealth in the United States

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Please, complete this form and send it, in electronic format (via e-mail), to the Chair of your selected panel. Deadline for sending proposals is October 29, 2010.