Cormac McCarthy

Abstract

Cormac McCarthy: a complexity theory of literature examines McCarthy's works as a case study demonstrating how literary texts can make chaotic and complex systems imaginable. This book offers the first sustained analysis of McCarthy's literary engagement with complex systems, from food webs to evolutionary economics. Focusing on McCarthy's depiction of the role of economics and art on global inequality and eco-disaster, it argues that McCarthy's works offer a case study in the role of literature in challenging us to imagine the consequences of our world's unmaking, and to recognize what creativity and ethos is needed to make it again in the 'very maelstrom of its undoing.'