Cormac McCarthy (bornCharles Joseph McCarthy Jr.; July 20, 1933 – June 13, 2023) was an American author who wrote twelve novels, two plays, five screenplays, and three short stories, spanning theWestern,post-apocalyptic, andSouthern Gothic genres. His works often include graphic depictions of violence, and his writing style is characterized by a sparse use of punctuation and attribution. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American novelists.[1][2][3]
McCarthy was born inProvidence, Rhode Island, although he was raised primarily inTennessee. In 1951, he enrolled in theUniversity of Tennessee, but dropped out to join theU.S. Air Force. Hisdebut novel,The Orchard Keeper, was published in 1965. Awarded literary grants, McCarthy was able to travel to southern Europe, where he wrote his second novel,Outer Dark (1968).Suttree (1979), like his other early novels, received generally positive reviews, but was not a commercial success. AMacArthur Fellowship enabled him to travel to the American Southwest, where he researched and wrote his fifth novel,Blood Meridian (1985). Although it initially garnered a lukewarm critical and commercial reception, it has since been regarded as hismagnum opus, with some labeling it theGreat American Novel.
Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr.[7] was born inProvidence, Rhode Island, on July 20, 1933, one of six children of Gladys Christina McGrail and Charles Joseph McCarthy.[8] His family wasIrish Catholic.[9] In 1937, the family relocated toKnoxville, Tennessee, where his father worked as a lawyer for theTennessee Valley Authority.[10] The family first lived on Noelton Drive in the upscaleSequoyah Hills subdivision, but by 1941, had settled in a house on Martin Mill Pike inSouth Knoxville.[11] McCarthy later said, "We were considered rich because all the people around us were living in one- or two-room shacks."[12] Among his childhood friends was Jim Long (1930–2012), who was later depicted as J-Bone inSuttree.[13]
McCarthy attended St. Mary's Parochial School andKnoxville Catholic High School,[14] and was analtar boy at Knoxville'sChurch of the Immaculate Conception.[13] As a child, McCarthy saw no value in school, preferring to pursue his own interests. He described a moment when his teacher asked the class about their hobbies. McCarthy answered eagerly; as he later said, "I was the only one with any hobbies and I had every hobby there was ... name anything, no matter how esoteric. I could have given everyone a hobby and still had 40 or 50 to take home."[15]
In 1951, he began attending theUniversity of Tennessee, studyingliberal arts.[16] He became interested in writing after a professor asked him to repunctuate a collection of eighteenth-century essays for inclusion in a textbook.[17] McCarthy left college in 1953 to join theU.S. Air Force. While stationed inAlaska, McCarthy read books voraciously, which he said was the first time he had done so.[12] He returned to the University of Tennessee in 1957, where he majored in English and published two stories, "Wake for Susan" and "A Drowning Incident" in the student literary magazine,The Phoenix, writing under the name C. J. McCarthy, Jr. For these, he won theIngram-Merrill Award for creative writing in 1959 and 1960. In 1959, McCarthy dropped out of college and left for Chicago.[10][12]
For the purpose of his writing career, McCarthy changed his first name from Charles toCormac to avoid confusion, and comparison, with ventriloquistEdgar Bergen's dummyCharlie McCarthy.[18][19]Cormac had been a family nickname given to his father by his Irish aunts.[12] Other sources say he changed his name to honor the Irish chieftainCormac MacCarthy, who constructedBlarney Castle.[20]
After marrying fellow student Lee Holleman in 1961, McCarthy moved to what Lee's obituary calls "a shack with no heat and running water in the foothills of theSmoky Mountains outside of Knoxville." There, the couple had a son, Cullen, in 1962.[21] When writerJames Agee's childhood home was being demolished in Knoxville that year, McCarthy used the site's bricks to build fireplaces inside hisSevier County shack.[22] Lee moved to Wyoming shortly after, where she filed for divorce from McCarthy.[21]
In 1965,Random House published McCarthy's first novel,The Orchard Keeper (1965).[12] He had finished the novel while working part time at an auto-parts warehouse in Chicago and submitted the manuscript "blindly" to Albert Erskine of Random House.[12][23] Erskine continued to edit McCarthy's work for the next 20 years.[23] Upon its release, critics noted its similarity to thework of Faulkner and praised McCarthy's striking use of imagery.[24][25]The Orchard Keeper won a 1966William Faulkner Foundation Award for notable first novel.[26]
While living in theFrench Quarter inNew Orleans, McCarthy was evicted from a $40-a-month room for failing to pay his rent.[12] When he traveled the country, McCarthy always carried a 100-watt bulb in his bag so he could read at night, no matter where he was sleeping.[15]
In the summer of 1965, using a Traveling Fellowship award fromThe American Academy of Arts and Letters, McCarthy shipped out aboard the linerSylvania hoping to visit Ireland. On the ship, he met Englishwoman Anne DeLisle, who was working on the ship as a dancer and singer. In 1966, they were married in England. Also in 1966, he received aRockefeller Foundation grant, which he used to travel around Southern Europe before landing inIbiza, where he wrote his second novel,Outer Dark (1968). Afterward, he returned to the United States with his wife, whereOuter Dark was published to generally favorable reviews.[27]
McCarthy (age 35; 1968).
In 1969, the couple moved toLouisville, Tennessee, and purchased a dairy barn,[28] which McCarthy renovated, doing the stonework himself.[27] According to DeLisle, the couple lived in "total poverty", bathing in a lake. DeLisle claimed, "Someone would call up and offer him $2,000 to come speak at a university about his books. And he would tell them that everything he had to say was there on the page. So we would eat beans for another week."[12] While living in the barn, he wrote his next book,Child of God (1973).[29] LikeOuter Dark before it,Child of God was set in southernAppalachia. In 1976, McCarthy separated from Anne DeLisle and moved toEl Paso, Texas.[30]
In 1974,Richard Pearce ofPBS contacted McCarthy and asked him to write the screenplay for an episode ofVisions, a television drama series. Beginning in early 1975, and armed with only "a few photographs in the footnotes to a 1928 biography of a famous pre-Civil War industrialistWilliam Gregg as inspiration", McCarthy and Pearce spent a year traveling the South to research the subject of industrialization there.[31] McCarthy completed the screenplay in 1976 and the episode, titledThe Gardener's Son, aired on January 6, 1977. Numerous film festivals abroad screened it.[32] The episode was nominated for twoPrimetime Emmy awards in 1977.[31]
In 1976, when McCarthy was 42, he met then-16-year-old Finnish-American Augusta Britt at a motel in Arizona. Despite their age difference, the two hit it off immediately, and he drew upon their experiences forSuttree, his work-in-progress at the time. By the following year, in 1977, when he was 43, but she was still 17, on a shared trip to Mexico, they had progressed to a physical relationship. They remained friends until his death.[33]
In 1979, McCarthy published his semiautobiographicalSuttree, which he had written over 20 years before, based on his experiences in Knoxville on theTennessee River.Jerome Charyn likened it to a doomedHuckleberry Finn, noting how theYew tree of the author's sprawling Tennessee garden was inspiration for the "christening of what became the principal character's name."[34][35][36]
As of 1991, none of McCarthy's novels had sold more than 5,000 hardcover copies, and "for most of his career, he did not even have an agent". He was labeled the "best unknown novelist in America".[30]
After working with McCarthy for 20 years, Albert Erskine retired from Random House in 1992. McCarthy turned toAlfred A. Knopf, where he fell under the editorial advisement ofGary Fisketjon. As a final favor to Erskine, McCarthy agreed to do an interview withRichard B. Woodward ofThe New York Times. He had done earlier, smaller interviews back in the 60s and 70s.[10]
In the early 2000s while staying at an El Paso motel with his young son, McCarthy looked out the window late one night and imagined what the city might look like in fifty or one hundred years and saw: "fires up on the hill and everything being laid to waste".[15] He wrote two pages covering the idea; four years later in Ireland he expanded the idea into his tenth novel,The Road. It follows a lone father and his young son traveling through a post-apocalyptic America, hunted by cannibals.[note 2] Many of the discussions between the two were verbatim conversations McCarthy had had with his son.[15][50] Released in 2006, it won international acclaim and thePulitzer Prize for Fiction.[47] McCarthy did not accept the prize in person, instead sendingSonny Mehta in his place.[51]John Hillcoat directed the 2009film adaptation, written byJoe Penhall, and starringViggo Mortensen andKodi Smit-McPhee. Critics' reviews were mostly favorable:Roger Ebert found it "powerful" but lacking "emotional feeling",[52]Peter Bradshaw noted "a guarded change of emphasis",[53] while Dan Jolin found it to be a "faithful adaptation" of the "devastating novel".[54]
McCarthy published the playThe Sunset Limited in 2006. Critics noted it was unorthodox and may have had more in common with a novel, hence McCarthy's subtitle: "a novel in dramatic form".[55][56] He later adapted it into a screenplay for a2011 film, directed and executive produced byTommy Lee Jones, who also starred oppositeSamuel L. Jackson.[56][55]Oprah Winfrey selected McCarthy'sThe Road as the April 2007 selection for herBook Club.[1][57] As a result, McCarthy agreed to his first television interview, which aired onThe Oprah Winfrey Show on June 5, 2007. The interview took place in the library of theSanta Fe Institute. McCarthy told Winfrey that he did not know any writers and much preferred the company of scientists. During the interview, he related several stories illustrating the degree of outright poverty he endured at times during his career as a writer. He also spoke about the experience of fathering a child at an advanced age, and how his son was the inspiration forThe Road.[58]
In 2012, McCarthy sold his original screenplayThe Counselor toNick Wechsler, Paula Mae Schwartz, and Steve Schwartz, who had previously produced the film adaptation of McCarthy's novelThe Road.[59] Directed byRidley Scott, with the production finished in 2012, the film was released on October 25, 2013, to polarized critical reception.Mark Kermode ofThe Guardian found it "datedly naff",[60] andPeter Travers ofRolling Stone described it as "a droning meditation on capitalism".[61] However,Manohla Dargis ofThe New York Times found it "terrifying" and "seductive".[62]
McCarthy was a trustee for theSanta Fe Institute (SFI), a multidisciplinary research center devoted to the study ofcomplex adaptive systems.[63] Unlike most members of the SFI, McCarthy did not have a scientific background. AsMurray Gell-Mann explained, "There isn't any place like the Santa Fe Institute, and there isn't any writer like Cormac, so the two fit quite well together."[23] From his work at the Santa Fe Institute, McCarthy published his first piece of nonfiction writing in his 50-year writing career. In the essay entitled "The Kekulé Problem" (2017), McCarthy analyzes a dream ofAugust Kekulé's as a model of theunconscious mind and theorigins of language. He theorizes about the nature of the unconscious mind and its separation from human language. The unconscious, according to McCarthy, "is a machine for operating an animal" and "all animals have an unconscious". McCarthy postulates that language is a purely human cultural creation and not a biologically determined phenomenon.[64]
In 2015, McCarthy's next novel,The Passenger, was announced at a multimedium event hosted in Santa Fe by theLannan Foundation. The book was influenced by his time among scientists; it has been described by SFI biologistDavid Krakauer as "full-blown Cormac 3.0—a mathematical [and] analytical novel". In March 2022,The New York Times reported thatThe Passenger would be released on October 25, 2022, and a second companion novel,Stella Maris, on November 22.[6] The latter was McCarthy's first novel sinceOuter Dark to feature a female protagonist.[26]
At the time of his death, McCarthy was listed as an executive producer on a film adaption ofBlood Meridian, to be directed byJohn Hillcoat, who previously directed the film adaptation ofThe Road.[65] In a 2024 interview, Hillcoat said he and McCarthy spent extended time discussing the film, which the author once volunteered to write and envisioned as a "Faustian tale, the journey of the Judge trying to win the soul of the kid, and consume everything in his path." McCarthy had rejected a miniseries proposal, finding television lacks a "kind of grandeur about it, an element of scale."[66]
He left the beer on the counter and went out and got the two packs of cigarettes and the binoculars and the pistol and slung the .270 over his shoulder and shut the truck door and came back in.
McCarthy used punctuation sparsely, even replacing most commas with "and" to createpolysyndetons;[67] it has been called "the most important word in McCarthy's lexicon".[1] He toldOprah Winfrey that he preferred "simple declarative sentences" and that he used capital letters, periods, an occasional comma, or a colon for setting off a list; he never used semicolons, which he labeled as "idiocy".[23][68] He did not use quotation marks for dialogue and believed there is no reason to "blot the page up with weird little marks".[69] Prof. Erik Hage notes that McCarthy's dialogue often lacks attribution, but that "somehow... the reader remains oriented as to who is speaking."[70] His attitude to punctuation dated to some editing work he did for a professor of English while enrolled at the University of Tennessee; he stripped out much of the punctuation in the book being edited, which pleased the professor.[71] McCarthy edited fellow Santa Fe Institute FellowW. Brian Arthur's influential article "Increasing Returns and the New World of Business", published in theHarvard Business Review in 1996, removing commas from the text.[72] He alsocopy edited work for physicistsLawrence M. Krauss andLisa Randall.[73]
Saul Bellow praised his "absolutely overpowering use of language, his life-giving and death-dealing sentences".[74]Richard B. Woodward has described his writing as "reminiscent of earlyHemingway".[12] Unlike earlier works such asSuttree andBlood Meridian, the majority of McCarthy's work after 1993 uses simple, restrained vocabulary.[1]
There's no such thing as life without bloodshed. The notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous.
Cormac McCarthy, interviewed in theNew York Times (April 19, 1992)[75]
McCarthy's novels often depict explicit violence.[15] Many of his works have been characterized asnihilistic,[76] particularlyBlood Meridian.[77] Some academics dispute this, sayingBlood Meridian is actually agnostic tragedy.[78][79] His later works have been characterized as highly moralistic.Erik J. Wielenberg argues thatThe Road depicts morality as secular and originating from individuals, such as the father, and separate from God.[80]
The bleak outlook of the future, and the inhuman foreign antagonistAnton Chigurh ofNo Country for Old Men, is said to reflect the apprehension of thepost-9/11 era.[81] Many of his works portray individuals in conflict with society and acting on instinct rather than on emotion or thought.[82] Another theme throughout many of McCarthy's works is the ineptitude or inhumanity of those in authority and particularly in law enforcement. This is seen inBlood Meridian with the murder spree theGlanton Gang initiates because of the bounties, the "overwhelmed" law enforcement inNo Country for Old Men, and the corrupt police officers inAll the Pretty Horses.[83] As a result, he has been labeled the "great pessimist of American literature".[15]
McCarthy was fluent in Spanish, having lived in Ibiza, Spain in the 1960s and later residing in El Paso, Texas and Santa Fe, New Mexico.[84] Isabel Soto argues that after he learned the language, "Spanish and English modulate or permeate each other" in his novels, as it was "an essential part of McCarthy's expressive discourse".[85] Katherine Sugg observes that McCarthy's writing is "often considered a 'multicultural' and 'bilingual' narrative practice, particularly for its abundant use of untranslated Spanish dialogue".[86] Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera observes "John Grady Cole is a native speaker of Spanish. This is also the case of several other important characters in theBorder Trilogy, including Billy Parhnam [sic], John Grady's mother (and possibly his grandfather and brothers), and perhaps Jimmy Blevins, each of whom are speakers of Spanish who were ostensibly born in the US political space into families with what are generally considered English-speaking surnames ... This is also the case ofJudge Holden inBlood Meridian."[84]
McCarthy wrote all of his fiction and correspondence with a singleOlivetti Lettera 32 typewriter between the early 1960s and 2009. At that time he replaced it with an identical model.[87]
McCarthy dedicated himself to writing full time, choosing not to work other jobs to support his career. "I always knew that I didn't want to work", McCarthy said. "You have to be dedicated, but it was my number-one priority."[88] Early in his career, his decision not to work sometimes subjected him and his family to poverty.[58]
Nevertheless, according to scholar Steve Davis, McCarthy had an "incrediblework ethic".[89] He preferred to work on several projects simultaneously and said, for instance, that he had four drafts in progress in the mid-2000s and for several years devoted about two hours every day to each project (“this was unusual”) (per the source).[87] He was known to conduct exhaustive research on the historicalsettings and regional environments found in his fiction.[90] He edited his own writing, sometimesrevising a book over the course of years or decades before deeming it fit for publication.[89] While his research and revision were meticulous, he did not outline his plots and instead viewed writing as a "subconscious process" which should be given space for spontaneous inspiration.[17]
After 1958, McCarthy wrote all of his literary work and correspondence with a mechanicaltypewriter. He originally used aRoyal but went looking for a more lightweight machine ahead of a trip to Europe in the early 1960s. He bought a portableOlivetti Lettera 32 for $50 at a Knoxville pawn shop and typed about five million words over the next five decades. He maintained it by simply "blowing out the dust with a service station hose".Book dealer Glenn Horowitz said the modest typewriter acquired "a sort of talismanic quality" through its connection to McCarthy's monumental fiction, "as ifMount Rushmore was carved with aSwiss Army knife".[87] His Olivetti was auctioned in December 2009 atChristie's, with the auction house estimating it would fetch between $15,000 and $20,000. It sold for $254,500, with proceeds donated to the Santa Fe Institute.[91] McCarthy replaced it with an identical model, bought for him by his friend John Miller for $11 plus $19.95 for shipping.[87]
McCarthy was ateetotaler. According to Richard B. Woodward, "McCarthy doesn't drink anymore – he quit 16 years ago [i.e. in 1976] in El Paso, with one of his young girlfriends – andSuttree reads like a farewell to that life. 'The friends I do have are simply those who quit drinking,' he says. 'If there is an occupational hazard to writing, it's drinking'."[75] However, his long-time friend Augusta Britt claimed that he had resumed drinking near the end of his life.[33]
In the late 1990s, McCarthy moved toTesuque, New Mexico, north ofSanta Fe, with his third wife, Jennifer Winkley, and their son, John. McCarthy and Winkley divorced in 2006.[23]
In 2013, Scottish writer Michael Crossan created a Twitter account impersonating McCarthy, quickly amassing several thousand followers and recognition by former site ownerJack Dorsey. Five hours after the account's creation, McCarthy's publisher confirmed that the account was fake and that McCarthy did not own a computer.[92] In 2018, another account impersonating McCarthy was created. In 2021, it was briefly markedverified following a viral tweet, after which his agent confirmed that the account was again a fake.[93][94]
In 2016, ahoax spread on Twitter claiming that McCarthy had died, withUSA Today even repeating the information.[95][96] TheLos Angeles Times responded to the hoax with the headline, "Cormac McCarthy isn't dead. He's too tough to die."[97]
In 2024,Vanity Fair published an article about McCarthy's romantic relationship with Augusta Britt, whom he met when he was 42 and she was 16. The article claims that he took her to Mexico with a forged birth certificate and began having sex with her when she was 17. Britt has confirmed this account but denied that the relationship was predatory or abusive.[33][98]
McCarthy did not publicly reveal his political opinions.[99] A resident of Santa Fe with a traditionalist disposition, he once expressed disapproval of the city and the people there: "If you don't agree with them politically, you can't just agree to disagree—they think you're crazy."[23] Academic David Holloway writes that "McCarthy's writing can be read as either liberal or conservative, or as both simultaneously, depending on the politics that readers themselves bring with them to the act of reading the work".[100]
In one of his few interviews, McCarthy revealed that he respected only authors who "deal with issues of life and death", citingHenry James andMarcel Proust as examples of writers who do not. "I don't understand them ... To me, that's not literature. A lot of writers who are considered good I consider strange", he said.[30] Regarding his own literary constraints when writing novels, McCarthy said he was "not a fan of some of the Latin American writers,magical realism. You know, it's hard enough to get people to believe what you're telling them without making it impossible. It has to be vaguely plausible."[101]Moby-Dick (1851) was his favorite novel. Along withMoby-Dick, McCarthy regardedThe Brothers Karamazov (1880),Ulysses (1922), andThe Sound and the Fury (1929) as "great" novels.[17]
Socially, McCarthy had an aversion to other writers, preferring the company of scientists. He voiced his admiration for scientific advances: "What physicists did in the 20th century was one of the extraordinary flowerings ever in the human enterprise."[23] At MacArthur reunions, McCarthy shunned his fellow writers to fraternize instead with scientists like physicistMurray Gell-Mann and whale biologistRoger Payne. Of all of his interests, McCarthy stated, "Writing is way, way down at the bottom of the list."[30]
McCarthy died at his home in Santa Fe on June 13, 2023, at the age of 89.[102][103][104][105]Stephen King said McCarthy was "maybe the greatest American novelist of my time ... He was full of years and created a fine body of work, but I still mourn his passing."[106]
In 2003, literary criticHarold Bloom named McCarthy as one of the four major living American novelists, alongsideDon DeLillo,Thomas Pynchon, andPhilip Roth.[107] Bloom's 1994 bookThe Western Canon had listedChild of God,Suttree, andBlood Meridian among the works of contemporary literature he predicted would endure and become "canonical".[108] Bloom reserved his highest praise forBlood Meridian, which he called "the greatest single book since Faulkner'sAs I Lay Dying", and though he held less esteem for McCarthy's other novels he said that "to have written even one book so authentically strong and allusive, and capable of the perpetual reverberation thatBlood Meridian possesses more than justifies him.... He has attained genius with that book."[109]
A comprehensive archive of McCarthy's personal papers is preserved at theWittliff Collections,Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas. The McCarthy papers consists of 98 boxes (46 linear feet).[110] The acquisition of the Cormac McCarthy Papers resulted from years of ongoing conversations between McCarthy and Southwestern Writers Collection founder,Bill Wittliff, who negotiated the proceedings.[111] The Southwestern Writers Collection/Wittliff Collections also holds The Woolmer Collection of Cormac McCarthy, which consists of letters between McCarthy and bibliographer J. Howard Woolmer,[112] and four other related collections.[112][113]
^National Book Foundation; retrieved March 28, 2012. (With acceptance speech by McCarthy and essay by Harold Augenbraum from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)
^Buckner, Mary (March 2, 1975)."Self-Satisfaction Novelist's Goal".Lexington Herald. p. E-4.Archived from the original on October 1, 2022. RetrievedOctober 1, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
^Phillips, Dana (2014). "History and the Ugly Facts ofBlood Meridian". In Lilley, James D. (ed.).Cormac McCarthy: New Directions. Albuquerque, New Mexico:University of New Mexico Press. pp. 17–46.
^Frye, Steven (Spring 2005). "Yeats' 'Sailing to Byzantium' and McCarthy'sNo Country for Old Men: Art and Artifice in the New Novel".The Cormac McCarthy Journal.5 (1). Miami: The Cormac McCarthy Society:14–20.JSTOR42909368.
^Soto, Isabel (January 1, 2002). "Chapter 4:The Border Paradigm in Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing.". In Benito, Jesús (ed.).Literature and Ethnicity in the Cultural Borderlands. Brill. pp. 51–61.
^Sugg, Katherine (2001). "Multicultural masculinities and the border romance in John Sayles's Lone Star and Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy".New Centennial Review.1 (3):117–154.doi:10.1353/ncr.2003.0071.S2CID144132488.
^Archives, Critical History, Translation. (2020). In S. Frye (Ed.),Cormac McCarthy in Context (Literature in Context, pp. 271–342). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
^Wood, James (July 18, 2005)."Red Planet".The New Yorker. RetrievedJuly 2, 2020.
.jpg)
.jpg)
