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aCknowLedgmentS This book would not have been possible without the generous support of many wonderful people. The first debt of gratitude I owe is to Art Palacas at the University of Akron, in whose 2002 graduate course on linguistics I wrote my first paper on McCarthy. Palacas also offered me the opportunity to present this paper at the PALA (Poetics and Linguistics Association) conference at New York University during the summer of 2004. In addition to being a great linguist and teacher, he is an inspiring human being, sacrificially embodying the ethical principles he teaches. At Baylor University, Joe Fulton deserves more thanks than I could ever give. He is an exemplary mentor and model of professorial excellence, such as when he proved a point by telling a rapt class about the time he cherrybombed a church. Despite his terrorist inclinations as a child, however, his adulthood has shown him to be a great scholar who, even with multitudinous obligations, mentors graduate students with patience and care, making himself available for every step of the process. Richard Russell is another exemplar of academic excellence. Unlike Fulton’s, his childhood was blameless, although his graduate classes are extended experiments in sleep deprivation and the consumption of caffeinated beverages. Yet his thorough and inspirational teaching forges professors out of graduate students and writers out of dabblers, and I am inexpressibly grateful to him. Mike Parrish, Luke Ferretter, and Greg Garrett at Baylor University also guided me skillfully through the early stages of writing this book. I would like to thank Garrett in particular for his seminar on religion and literature in which he taught Blood Meridian and The Road with special attention to Roman Catholic imagery and the sacramental. I had not previously considered either concept, but I now realize they are central to any reading of McCarthy’s works. In addition, I would like to mention the students of that class. Of notable influence was Robert Hamilton, who voiced what I have long felt about McCarthy’s writing but had not been able to articulate. According to Hamilton, McCarthy’s prose is “the King James Bible on crack.” With sincerest thanks, I would like to express my gratitude to Fred Hobson for his work both on the Southern Literary Studies series of LSU Press and on this book project, and to John Easterly, who is the Platonic ideal of x Acknowledgments an executive editor in so many ways, not least of which is his meticulous attention to detail and his enthusiasm for the works that he sees through from primordial mess to finished project. And, finally, I thank my parents for being wonderful parents, despite the fact that they have not yet read any novels by Cormac McCarthy, nor will they ever read this book. Love you both! ...

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