McCarthy, Cormac, 1933–2023,
American novelist, b. Providence, R.I. He grew up in Knoxville, Tenn., moved
to the Southwest in 1974, and since then mainly in El Paso, Tex. In finely
wrought, acutely observant prose, McCarthy typically portrayed a sleazy
American South and Southwest filled with appalling poverty, violence, and
cruelty. His novels include The Orchard Keeper (1965), his
first; Suttree (1979); Blood Meridian
(1985); All the Pretty Horses (1992; National Book Award),
his best-known work and the first book in his “Border
Trilogy”; the next two books in the triad, The
Crossing (1994) and Cities of the Plain
(1998); No Country for Old Men (2005); and The
Road (2006; Pulitzer Prize). In 2022, two final novels,
The Passenger and Stella Maris.
Reclusive and something of a cult figure, McCarthy was determinedly
nonliterary. Although he won a MacArthur Foundation “genius
grant” in 1981, he was known only to a small coterie of devoted
readers until the 1990s.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
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