M. Allen Cunningham's Blog

• In Defense of Reliant Novels (Historical, Biographical, or Lit-Spinoffs)

  April 9, 2008

  • Every fictional narrative, whether or not emergent from an actual history or preexisting story, will lay down its own laws. ... Over at the Critical Mass literary blog, one of the current PEN/Faulkner Award judges, Molly Giles, offers a glimpse of her experience sorting through the boxes and boxes of books by prospective awardees. Her observations are interesting, and strike me as much more ...
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• An Interview About Rilke & Lost Son

  March 20, 2008

  • Some time ago, Kay Callison interviewed me about Lost Son for a podcast. The finished podcast was a neatly edited version of a much longer conversation. Here follows the full discussion. You’ve put out quite an impressive a body of work for your age, young man! Two large novels -- The Green Age of Asher Witherow and now Lost Son. Thanks (chuckles). Both of your novels have been written from ...
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• Reading Cormac McCarthy

  March 14, 2008

  • As a novelist, Cormac McCarthy is many things: heir to the Southern gothic tradition, reviver of Celtic lyricism, metaphysical speculator, master comic, eschewer of punctuation, and reinventor of the iconic American West, to name a few.He has been writing and publishing novels since 1965, but most readers have plunged only recently into McCarthy’s darkly baroque work. His latest book, The Road ...
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