Michael Lynn Crews is an associate professor of English at Regent University. He specializes in American and contemporary literature.

• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1. Introduction: Books Out of Books
  • T Is for Texas, T Is for Tennessee: Cormac McCarthy’s Literary Journey
  • The Wittliff Collection
  • Literary Influence and the Novels of Cormac McCarthy
• Chapter 2. The Orchard Keeper
  • Faulkner, William (1897–1962) [See also The Stonemason]
  • Frost, Robert (1874–1963) [See also The Road]
  • Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1804–1864
• Chapter 3. Outer Dark
  • Camus, Albert (1913–1960) [See also Whales and Men
• Chapter 4. Child of God
  • Hitchcock, Alfred (1899–1980)
• Chapter 5. The Gardener’s Son
  • Bealer, Alex (1921–1980)
  • Christian, William (b. 1944)
  • Dawley, Thomas Robinson (1862–1930)
  • Ginsberg, Allen (1926–1997)
  • Gurdjieff, George (1866–1949)
  • Huxley, Aldous (1894–1963)
  • Joyce, James (1882–1941) [See also Suttree; in addition, see entries for Joseph Gerard Brennan and Peter De Vries in Suttree]
  • McLaurin, Melton Alonza (b. 1941)
  • Rapoport, Amos (b. 1929
• Chapter 6. Suttree
  • Abbey, Edward (1927–1989)
  • Agee, James (1909–1955)
  • Algren, Nelson (1909–1981)
  • Bellow, Saul (1915–2005)
  • Beowulf (ca. eighth century) [See also Blood Meridian]
  • Brennan, Joseph Gerard (1910–2004)
  • Brown, Christy (1932–1981)
  • Cooke, Ebenezer (ca. 1667–ca. 1732)
  • Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)
  • Davidson, Donald (1893–1968)
  • De Vries, Peter (1910–1993)
  • Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns) (1888–1965) [See also The Road]
  • Ericson, Eric B. (dates unknown), and Goesta Wollin (1912–1995)
  • Farrell, James T. (1904–1979)
  • Flaubert, Gustave (1821–1880)
  • Foucault, Michel (1926–1984)
  • Graves, Robert (1895–1985)
  • Hoagland, Edward (b. 1932)
  • Hunting in the Old South: Original Narratives of the Hunters (1967)
  • Joyce, James (1882–1941) [See also The Gardener’s Son; in addition, see entries for Joseph Gerard Brennan and Peter De Vries in this chapter]
  • Jung, Carl Gustav (1875–1961) [See also entry for Tabula Smaragdina in this chapter]
  • Koestler, Arthur (1905–1983)
  • Lampedusa, Giuseppe Tomasi di (1896–1957)
  • Lewis, Wyndham (1882–1957)
  • Lissner, Ivar (1909–1967)
  • Mailer, Norman (1923–2007)
  • The Malleus Maleficarum (1487)
  • Maryland: A Guide to the Old Line State (1940)
  • Massinger, Philip (1583–1640)
  • Melville, Herman (1818–1891) [See also The Stonemason and Whales and Men]
  • Miller, Henry (1891–1980) [See also Correspondence]
  • Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de (1533–1592) [See also Whales and Men] 000
  • Nordau, Max (1849–1923)
  • Pater, Walter (1839–1894)
  • Poe, Edgar Allan (1809–1849)
  • Shakespeare, William (1564–1616) [See also Blood Meridian and The Road]
  • Spengler, Oswald (1880–1936) [See also The Road; in addition, see entry for Wyndham Lewis in Suttree]
  • Steele, Wilbur Daniel (1886–1970)
  • Steinbeck, John (1902–1968)
  • Stephenson, Carl (1893–1954)
  • Tabula Smaragdina [See also entry for Carl Gustav Jung in this chapter]
  • Thompson, Francis (1859–1907)
  • Trumbo, Dalton (1905–1976)
  • West, Nathanael (1903–1940)
  • Weston, Jessie L. (1850–1928)
  • Wolfe, Thomas (1900–1938)
  • Xenophanes (ca. 570–ca. 478 BCE) [See also Heraclitus in Blood Meridian]
• Chapter 7. Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West
  • Beowulf (ca. eighth century) [See also Suttree]
  • Boehme, Jacob (1575–1624) [See also Eugen Herrigel in this chapter]
  • Celine, Louis-Ferdinand (1894–1961)
  • Chaucer, Geoffrey (1343–1400)
  • Collinson, Frank (1855–1943)
  • Conrad, Joseph (1857–1924)
  • Dillard, Annie (b. 1945)
  • Dobie, J. Frank (1888–1964)
  • Doughty, Charles Montagu (1843–1926)
  • Durant, Will (1885–1981)
  • Fraser, Julius Thomas (1923–2010)
  • Gard, Wayne (1899–1986)
  • Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749–1832)
  • Heller, Joseph (1923–1999)
  • Heraclitus (ca. 535–ca. 475 BCE)
  • Herrigel, Eugen (1884–1955) [See also Jacob Boehme in this chapter]
  • James, William (1842–1910)
  • Kierkegaard, Søren (1813–1855)
  • Kinnell, Galway (1927–2014)
  • Krutch, Joseph Wood (1893–1970)
  • McGinniss, Joe (1942–2014)
  • Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900)
  • O’Brien, Tim (b. 1946)
  • O’Connor, Mary Flannery (1925–1964)
  • Pirsig, Robert M. (b. 1928) [See also The Road]
  • Salinger, J. D. (Jerome David) (1919–2010)
  • Shakespeare, William (1564–1616) [See also Suttree and The Road]
  • Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950)
  • Tolstoy, Leo (1828–1910)
  • Valéry, Paul (1871–1945)
  • Whitehead, Alfred North (1861–1947)
  • Wolfe, Tom (b. 1931)
• Chapter 8. The Stonemason
  • Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106–43 BCE)
  • Faulkner, William (1897–1962) [See also The Orchard Keeper]
  • Frankl, Paul (1878–1962)
  • Gaines, Ernest J. (b. 1933)
  • Galsworthy, John (1867–1933)
  • Genovese, Eugene (1930–2012)
  • Gould, Robert Freke (1836–1915)
  • Herbert, Edward (1583–1648)
  • Langley, Batty (1696–1751)
  • Lesy, Michael (b. 1945)
  • Melville, Herman (1819–1891) [See also Suttree and Whales and Men]
  • Northrop, Filmer Stuart Cuckow (1893–1992)
  • Rilke, Rainer Maria (1875–1926)
  • Rosengarten, Theodore (b. 1944)
  • Rykwert, Joseph (b. 1926)
• Chapter 9. The Crossing
  • Gandia, Manuel Zeno (1855–1930)
  • Leopold, Aldo (1887–1948)
• Chapter 10. Cities of the Plain
  • Artemidorus (second century CE)
  • Bell, John Stewart (1928–1990)
  • Kanner, Leo (1894–1981)
  • Thorndike, Lynn (1882–1965)
  • Williams, James Robert (1888–1957)
• Chapter 11. The Road
  • Beckett, Samuel (1906–1989)
  • Defoe, Daniel (1660–1731)
  • Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns) (1888–1965) [See also Suttree]
  • Frost, Robert (1874–1963) [See also The Orchard Keeper]
  • Kierkegaard, Søren (1813–1855) [See also Blood Meridian]
  • London, Jack (1876–1916)
  • Markson, David (1927–2010)
  • Martin, Paul
  • Ovsyanikov, Nikita
  • Pagels, Heinz (1939–1988)
  • Pirsig, Robert M. (b. 1928) [See also Blood Meridian]
  • Shakespeare, William (1564–1616) [See also Suttree and Blood Meridian]
  • Twain, Mark (Samuel Langhorne Clemens--1835–1910)
• Chapter 12. Whales and Men
  • Arendt, Hannah (1906–1975)
  • Augustine of Hippo (354–430)
  • Beston, Henry (1888–1968)
  • Borges, Jorge Luis (1899–1986)
  • Camus, Albert (1913–1960) [See also Outer Dark]
  • Cervantes, Miguel de (1547–1616)
  • Dyson, Freeman (b. 1923)
  • Hemingway, Ernest (1899–1961)
  • Hoffer, Eric (1898–1983)
  • Hyde, Douglas (1860–1949)
  • Jeffers, Robinson (1887–1962)
  • Lopez, Barry Holstun (b. 1945)
  • Melville, Herman (1819–1891) [See also Suttree and The Stonemason]
  • Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de (1533–1592) [See also Suttree]
  • Moore, George Augustus (1852–1933)
  • Mowat, Farley (1921–2014)
  • Pound, Ezra (1885–1972)
  • Taylor, Gordon Rattray (1911–1981)
  • Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (1881–1955)
  • Thomas, Dylan (1914–1953)
  • Yeats, William Butler (1865–1939)
• Chapter 13. Correspondence
  • Brinnin, John Malcolm (1916–1998)
  • Byron, George Gordon, Lord (1788–1824)
  • Chatwin, Bruce (1940–1989)
  • Clarke, Arthur C. (1917–2008)
  • Davenport, Guy (1927–2005)
  • Graves, John (b. 1920)
  • Hansen, Ron (b. 1947)
  • Hardy, Thomas (1840–1928)
  • Kundera, Milan (b. 1929)
  • Leone, Sergio (1929–1989)
  • Lowry, Malcolm (1909–1957)
  • McGuane, Thomas (b. 1939)
  • Miller, Henry (1891–1980) [See also Suttree]
  • Ondaatje, Michael (b. 1943)
  • Scarry, Elaine (b. 1946)
  • Chapter 14. The Passenger
    • Céline, Louis-Ferdinand (1894–1961) [See also Blood Meridian]
    • Cioran, E.¿M. (1911–1995)
    • Dillard, Annie (b. 1945) [See also Blood Meridian]
    • Fielding, Henry (1707–1754)
    • Ginsberg, Allen (1926–1997) [See also The Gardener’s Son]
    • Jeffers, Robinson (1887–1962) [See also Whales and Men]
    • Merton, Thomas (1915–1968)
    • Poe, Edgar Allan (1809–1849) [See also Suttree]
    • Sacher-Masoch, Leopold von (1836–1895) / Marquis de Sade (1740–1814)
    • Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788–1860)
    • Thomas, Dylan (1914–1953) [See also Whales and Men]
    • Waugh, Evelyn (1903–1966)
    • Wilson, Edward O. (1929–2021)
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index