Acclaimed Novelist Cormac McCarthy Dies at 89

Facts

• Cormac McCarthy — acclaimed US author of works such as Blood Meridian, The Road, and No Country for Old Men — has died at the age of 89. His publisher announced Wednesday that he passed away in his home in Santa Fe of natural causes.¹
• McCarthy, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his post-apocalyptic novel The Road (2006), was famed for writing that included dark subjects such as arson, necrophilia, and cannibalism.²
• His death has prompted an immense outpouring from the literary community, including Booker Prize winner and friend of McCarthy John Banville, who called his passing a "great loss," while renowned novelist Stephen King has called him "maybe the greatest American novelist of my time."³
• McCarthy's career began with the release of The Orchard Keeper, his first novel, in 1965. Several books followed in the 1970s, and while Blood Meridian (1985) is retrospectively considered his masterpiece, he didn't become a New York Times bestseller until 1992 with All The Pretty Horses.⁴
• The author was not only considered unique due to his esoteric writing style — comprised of lyrical prose with little punctuation, often compared to the works of James Joyce and William Faulkner — but also for never having held a teaching or journalism post, unlike his contemporaries.⁵
• Despite reticence surrounding his work and lack of a public persona, McCarthy is considered a timeless voice of the American South and West, with cinematic adaptations of The Road and No Country for Old Men having cemented his impact on cinema as well as literature.⁶

Sources: ¹Guardian, ²Independent, ³BBC News, ⁴Sky News, ⁵The Telegraph, and ⁶FT.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by The Irish Times. McCarthy's work reckoned with post-apocalyptic landscapes, with the boundaries of human invention and existence, and inspired readers with a nihilist terror. Using prose to reflect the horror of the postwar decades, McCarthy encapsulated visions of an Age of Aftermath, employing desolate landscapes to throw into relief the existential darkness present in all human beings.
• Narrative B, as provided by Spectator (UK). Despite frequently being accused of nihilism, the darkness in McCarthy's writing does not detract from the light of his novels — present in the depictions of love, devotion, and friendship, but also in the beauty of the text itself. His legacy is not merely one of nihilism but of the significance of the human experience and the power of articulating all the beauty, humor, and terror of life in prose.