Another fun fact here that has a connection to the University of Texas, Clint Eastwood and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: the guy who was the editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal at the time was Rick Wallach, who was the nephew of Eli Wallach, who of course went to Texas and starred with Clint in the famous Sergio Leone film. Rick was an adjunct professor at the University of Miami at the time. Rick was a raging lefty. I don't know if you can tell by reading the essay, but I'm not. In any event, Rick always stuck up for me when I was attacked by lefty nutjobs in the academy, in large part because he personally knew McCarthy and knew that my interpretation was in line with McCarthy's views on sociopolitical matters. That and he and I really got along well and loved to talk about Eli Wallach's wonderful performance in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
In fact, I originally presented that essay at a conference held at Black Hills State University on 28-30 September 2009. I ended up winning an award for having the best paper. At the end of the conference, I was at dinner with my wife, two young daughters and a bunch of McCarthy scholars from all over the world. A famous literary critic from the Sorbonne lit into me right in front of my children while we were eating buffalo steaks. She was upset that I had the audacity to claim McCarthy or any author worth anything could be conservative. Rick chewed her out, told her knew for a fact that McCarthy held the views I claimed in the essay, and told her she should apologize, She didn't. She left instead. After that, my daughters (who were eight and five at the time), had a long discussion with Rick about the cinematic greatness of Leone, Eastwood and Eli Wallach's performance.