Acclaimed US novelist Cormac McCarthy dies at 89

World
By William

Cormac McCarthy, whose nihilistic and violent tales of the United States’ frontier and post-apocalyptic worlds have led to awards, screen adaptations and sleepless nights for his captivated and shocked readers, passed away Tuesday at the age of 89.

McCarthy — arguably the greatest American writer since Ernest Hemingway or William Faulkner, both of whom he has sometimes been compared to — died of natural causes at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, according to a statement from publisher Penguin Random House, citing his son John McCarthy.

Little known for the first 60 years of his life, McCarthy rose to prominence after receiving rave reviews for 1992’s All the Pretty Horses, the first in his The Border Trilogy.

That book was eventually made into a movie, as was 2005’s No Country for Old Men and The Road, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006.

American actor Viggo Mortensen starred as a father on a post-apocalyptic journey in 2009’s The Road, an adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel [File: Carlo Allegri/Reuters]

But McCarthy has never been seen on the red carpet. He was an intensely private man and hardly ever gave interviews. He allowed Oprah Winfrey a rare exception in 2007, telling her, “I don’t think so [interviews] are good for your head. If you spend a lot of time thinking about how to write a book, you probably shouldn’t think about it, but you probably should.”

McCarthy wrote with a distinctive, loose style that eschewed grammatical norms but relentlessly drew the reader into his unforgiving universe of blood and dust.

“He stood at the window of the empty café and watched the activities in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life hidden from the young people who had just started, otherwise they would not have the courage to participate. to start. all’, he wrote in his typical way in All the Pretty Horses.

Early success eluded McCarthy

McCarthy, born Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr. on July 20, 1933 in Providence, Rhode Island, was one of six children in an Irish Catholic family. He later switched to using the old Irish name Cormac.

His father was a lawyer and he grew up in Tennessee in relative comfort. But Central America was not for him.

“I felt early on that I was not going to be a respectable citizen. I hated school from the day I set foot there,” he told the New York Times in another rare interview in 1992.

He served in the Air Force in the 1950s and was married twice before the 1960s were over – first to Lee Holleman, whom he met in college and with whom he had a son. He later married English singer Anne DeLisle, from whom he divorced in 1976.

After a brief stint in Europe, he returned to Tennessee to settle near Knoxville, later moving to El Paso, Texas, and then to Santa Fe.

His first book The Orchard Keeper, set in rural Tennessee and published in 1965, ended up with Faulkner’s last editor, who recognized the young writer’s potential. But despite positive reviews – and some shocked reactions to this and other early works such as Child of God and Outer Dark – McCarthy eluded commercial success. He fumbled around with writers’ grants.

In 1985, Blood Meridian was published, which received little attention at the time, although it is now considered his first truly great novel and arguably his best. With lots of violence and no heroes, it tells the story of a band of scalp hunters in the mid-19th century.

All the Pretty Horses, a coming-of-age book that kicked off a trilogy about Texas ranch hands at the end of the frontier, finally brought him acclaim in the 1990s.

Three men in tuxedos and suits pose for a photo against a dark background.
Actor Javier Bardem, writer-director Joel Coen, and writer-director Ethan Coen (from left) celebrate their 2008 Oscars for No Country for Old Men [File: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters]

The Border Trilogy was followed by No Country for Old Men, a deeply disturbing yet compelling Western crime novel about a drug deal gone bad, quickly adapted to the screen by Joel and Ethan Coen. It won the 2007 Oscar for Best Picture.

This was the time when The Road was also published – which was perhaps even darker than before. The novel is set in a world where an unnamed disaster has ended society and food production. It follows a father and his son as they walk through a devastated landscape inhabited by desperate people. The full depths of human depravity are shown – but also the love the little family is able to sustain through it all. The Road won several awards and was also made into a film in 2009.

Then followed a long period until two new companion novels were released in 2022 – interrelated books The Passenger and Stella Maris. They were unmistakably McCarthy, now nearly 90 years old, if a little friendlier and perhaps farewell.

“Enough,” says a character for whom death is approaching. “I have never found this life particularly beneficial or benevolent, and I have never understood in the slightest why I was here. If there is an afterlife – and I fervently pray there isn’t – I can only hope they don’t sing.”

In a statement, Penguin Random House CEO Nihar Malaviya said: “Cormac McCarthy has changed the course of literature. For sixty years he demonstrated an unwavering dedication to his craft and to exploring the infinite possibilities and power of the written word.”

McCarthy was married three times and divorced his third wife Jennifer Winkley in 2006. He had two children: Cullen, born in 1962, and John, born in 1998.

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