How the West was written: Genre and reception in the literature of Cormac McCarthy

The following chapters will attempt to answer this question through the use of genre theory, Western genre critical commentary, and rhetorical analysis. Chapter one will analyze how McCarthy attempts to use appeals of the Western genre to make Blood Meridian appear as a traditional Western. He did this with the purpose of authenticating himself as a Western writer and appealing to an audience that had an appetite for such Westerns. In Chapter two, I'll argue that All the Pretty Horses, mostly through the use of traditional Western character functions, aligns itself strongly with the Western genre, and thus experiences more commercial success than Blood Meridian. That chapter will also reveal how McCarthy, in All the Pretty Horses, attempts to implement the same rhetoric he attempted in Blood Meridian, (that of spatial movement) for the same purpose (to align each novel with the Western genre), but that he does so via different appeals. In that chapter I will demonstrate how McCarthy, through the form of both novels, uses a rhetoric of spatial movement and authenticity for the purpose of giving each novel the heart of a true Western through what Deborah Allison has termed the "spectacle of movement.".