Counternarrative Possibilities reads Cormac McCarthy's Westerns against the backdrop of two formative tropes in American mythology: virgin land (from the 1950s) and homeland (after '9/11' ). Looking at McCarthy's Westerns in the context of American Studies, James Dorson shows how his novels counter the national narratives underlying these tropes and reinvest them with new, potentially transformative meaning. Departing from prevailing accounts of McCarthy that place him in relation to his literary antecedents, Counternarrative Possibilities takes a forwardlooking approach that reads McCarthy's work as a key influence on millennial fiction. Weaving together disciplinary history with longstanding debates over the relationship between aesthetics and politics, this book is at once an exploration of the limits of ideology critique in the twenty-first century and an original reconsideration of McCarthy's work 'after postmodernism'.

Counternarrative Possibilities reads Cormac McCarthy's westerns against the backdrop of American mythology's two formative national tropes: virgin land (from the 1950s) and homeland (after 9/11). Looking at McCarthy's westerns in the context of American studies, James Dorson shows how his books counter the national narratives underlying these tropes and reinvest them with new, potentially transformative meaning. Departing from prevailing accounts of McCarthy that place him in relation to his literary antecedents, Counternarrative Possibilities takes a forward-looking approach that reads McCarthy's work as a key influence on millennial fiction. Weaving together disciplinary history with longstanding debates over the relationship between aesthetics and politics, this book is at once an exploration of the limits of ideology critique in the twenty-first century and a timely, original reconsideration of McCarthy's work after postmodernism.

»Dorson provides an eloquent encapsulation of scholarly approaches regarding the affirmation and subversion of romantic narratives in the novels. And throughout he offers wonderful connections to Herman Melville and James Joyce.« E. Hage, SUNY Cobleskill, Choice, 01.04.2017 »In its entirety, James Dorson's Counternarrative Possibilities develops two absorbing argumentative strands: An extremely informed and informative examination of the politics of criticism as well as the criticism of politics that have shaped American Studies since the second half of the twentieth century; and a well-argued re-examination of McCarthy's western novels in light of recent political and cultural developments in the United States.« Jan D. Kucharzewski, Amerikastudien/America Studies, 64.3 (2019)