A late author’s work will breathe new life through a unique course offered next semester.
The late Cormac McCarthy passed away in June of 2023, but thanks to a friendship between Troy English professor Dr. Patrick Bonds and McCarthy’s youngest brother, Dennis McCarthy, students will be given an opportunity to edit and publish McCarthy’s work.
“The brother [Dennis] is McCarthy’s literary executor,” Bonds said. “We are co-editing a reworking of one of Cormac McCarthy’s earlier works and making a student-slash-critical addition.
“This is the first time in my 27 years of academia that I get to do a project of this magnitude. It’s optimistic getting to work on something like this.”
A literary executor is a person entrusted with handling an author’s unpublished literary works in the event of their passing.
Bonds came to McCarthy with the idea. McCarthy, who was an educator for a good part of his life, was excited about the proposal.
“Ideally, students who participate in this project would have a publishing credit,” said Dr. Kirk Curnutt, chair of the English Department. “They can take a published final product into a job interview and say, ‘I wrote this part and worked on that part.’”
The class isn’t barred to just English majors, either. There are no prerequisites for the course. The class is open to every major and any major that involves writing and editing is encouraged to join.
“If you’re interested in any kind of editing or publishing, it’s open to any of those areas,” Bonds said. “You can be journalism, business writing, anything.”
“I think it gives students an understanding of publication and the legalities that are involved with it,” said Curnutt. “Hopefully, we can get Dennis [McCarthy] to Zoom into the class and talk about what it’s like to manage an artist’s estate.”
Most of the course will be hands-on work, learning to communicate with collaborators, learning about copywriting and eventually working on editing the literary work itself.
One hope for the course is the opportunity for more authors and their estates to notice Troy as a potential partnership.
“My hope for this class is for us to offer it every year or every other year,” said Curnutt. “Once we establish the prototype, hopefully, it will convince other estates to take up the project.”
The class is open for registration for next semester. For more information, contact Dr. Patrick Bonds.
Comments