Three returning guests join us for this first part of our interesting and engaging discussion of Cormac McCarthy’s magnum opus Blood Meridian.  Steve Frye is professor and chair of English at California State University, Bakersfield and President of the Cormac McCarthy Society. He is the author of Understanding Cormac McCarthy (Univ. of South Carolina Press) and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Cormac McCarthy, and Cambridge UP’s Cormac McCarthy in Context. He has written numerous journal articles on Cormac McCarthy and other authors of the American Romanticist Tradition.  Additionally, he is the author of the recently published novel Dogwood Crossing.  Stacey Peebles is Chair of the English program, Director of Film Studies, and the Marlene and David Grissom Professor of Humanities at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky.  She is the author of Welcome to the Suck: Narrating the American Soldier's Experience in Iraq (2011) and Cormac McCarthy and Performance: Page, Stage, Screen (2017).  She is co-editor of Approaches to Teaching the Works of Cormac McCarthy.  She has been editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal since 2010.    Rick Wallach is one of the founders of the Cormac McCarthy society, and recently retired after some few years teaching English at the University of Miami, He is senior editor of the Cormac McCarthy Society casebook series, and editor of the two-volume collection of essays Sacred Violence as well as Myth, Legend Dust: Critical Responses to Cormac McCarthy, and co-editor with Lynnea Chapman King and the late James Welsh of From Novel to Film: No Country for Old Men. He has written widely and extensively on numerous topics in literature, film, media and contemporary music.   Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the theme music and interludes for READING MCCARTHY.    The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society. To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Find us on Twitter and Facebook; the website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you’d like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the page to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy. Support the show