«I wanted to be no hero». The Orchard Keeper: diventare uomo, diventare scrittore

[Autom. eng. transl.] The present essay offers a reading of the first novel published by Cormac McCarthy, The Orchard Keeper, aimed at identifying in it some of the thematic nuclei that reappear in continuous elaborations and variations throughout the author's production. They are: the absence of the father, to be understood both in a literal sense and as a figure of a lack of a transcendent reference horizon; the search for a meaning of existence through the encounter with an authority figure that fills the void left by the father; the insistence of retracing the crisis of modernity as nostalgia for a traditional past lived only in memory; the confrontation with the world of nature as a space for an alterity as life-giving as it is disturbing.