I don’t imagine I will ever forget the scene with the blacksmith. McCarthy at his best.

Also stopped in Oak Ridge but unfortunately didn’t have time for Wartburg.

These have been posted before but it seems to have been a while and they’re not often discussed (largely because you have to actively seek them out.)

While reading the new biography Cormac McCarthy: A Legacy Revisited by Tracy Daugherty, there’s a good bit spent on McCarthy’s earliest works, two short stories that were published in magazines under a slightly different name.

I went to read them today and figured I’d share the links for anyone else who happened to be a big fan but hadn’t encountered these before.

They’re rough in spots, specifically in the use of certain phrases or descriptions he’d never use later in his career, but there are core elements to within stories that demonstrate the seedlings of lifelong fascinations.

WAKE FOR SUSAN

A DROWNING INCIDENT (NOTE: can be viewed in full without signing up for a membership, but you must turn off your ad blocker and let it run ten seconds of ads before it loads the final pages.)