“The greatest American novelist” Cormac McCarthy passes away at 89
American novelist Cormac McCarthy, the mind behind the classic works The Road, No Country for Old Men, and All the Pretty Horses, has passed away at the age of 89.
The news was broken by McCarthy’s publisher, Alfred A Knopf, with a post to social media announcing that the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer had “died today of natural causes at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.”
McCarthy enjoyed a near 60-year career, penning 12 novels, five screenplays, three short stories, and two plays. And while some may not have soared to commercial heights, many achieved critical acclaim, with late literary critic Howard Bloom even dubbing him the “true heir” of the likes of Herman Melville and William Faulkner.
And in 2007, his novel 2006 The Road won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, also for Fiction.
The Road was arguably McCarthy’s best known work, and followed the journey of a father and his son in a post-apocalyptic world. It was adapted into a film in 2009, like McCarthy’s other two critically acclaimed books, All the Pretty Horses and No Country for Old Men. The latter saw great success in the 2008 Academy Awards, claiming the coveted title of Best Picture.
And despite his literary accomplishments, McCarthy opted to remain in relative obscurity for the majority of his career. In 1992, the New York Times Book Review suggested that he might be “the best unknown novelist in America”.
The media painted McCarthy as a reclusive figure, and it was well-known that the author preferred not to discuss his books, though Oprah Winfrey managed to get him in for his first - and only - TV interview after The Road featured in her book club.
“You always have this hope that ‘today I'm going to do something better than I've ever done’," he told her. "I like what I do."
“Some writers have said in print that they hated writing, it was just a chore and a burden. I certainly don't feel that way about it,” McCarthy went on to explain. “Sometimes it's difficult but you always have this image of the perfect thing which you can never achieve but which you never stop trying to achieve."
Friends, writers, and fans took to social media in the wake of the news, with tributes to share their love for McCarthy and his works, as well as their agreement that he had achieved something very special throughout his life and literature.
“Cormac McCarthy, maybe the greatest American novelist of my time, has passed away at 89,” author Stephen King wrote. “He was full of years and created a fine body of work, but I still mourn his passing.”
“When a great artist dies, there is the moment when the world understands it will never again have a new creation from that mind, that heart, that vast soul. It is a loss beyond measure, but what that soul has left us is a gift beyond time,” writer Joseph Fasano shared.
“I love every book McCarthy wrote,” one fan declared. “From a film point of view, his writing was so good that the Coen Brothers hardly changed a word of dialogue when they adapted No Country For Old Men. Why would they? You can't improve on perfection.”
And as another said, “Cormac McCarthy’s writing was mean, and despairing, with a pretty withering view of humankind, and the cruel engines that drive it. but he had that faint flicker of belief that it could be different. ‘He can know his heart, but he don’t want to.’ gotta tend that flame folks. RIP.”
Images: Getty