M Allen Cunningham: 5 books

Cormac McCarthy has been writing and publishing novels since 1965, but most readers have plunged only recently into his darkly baroque work. In this 2,700-word essay, M. Allen Cunningham, an avid McCarthy fan, considers the author's entire corpus and the trajectory of his reputation.

Culled from notes kept during one strange autumn and winter in which M. Allen Cunningham resided in a barn, "The Caretaker's Gleanings" ruminates on the nocturnal mysteries of a creaturely life.

Only when you’re young and small do you fully understand the bigness of things.Originally published in Boulevard Magazine, “The Giant’s Face" is a 1,300-word short story by M. Allen Cunningham, author of the novel The Green Age of Asher Witherow, the novel Lost Son, and the illustrated limited-edition story collection Date of Disappearance.

The puzzled and puzzling narrator of "The Man in the Blue Coat" is a movie projectionist whose hold on reality seems to be loosening. Surreal and whimsical, this is a 4,100-word story about the inner life and the seemingly infinite distances between ourselves and others.

Reeling from the loss of his wife and all but lost to himself, Gleason sets out from San Francisco on a journey to Turkey, hardly knowing why. Is it that he wishes to reconcile with his estranged father, now living in a Turkish village, whom Gleason hasn't seen for fifteen years? Whatever the...