Cormac McCarthy, One Of The Greatest American Authors, Has Passed Away

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Cormac McCarthy died on Tuesday at the age of 89. He was the author of such novels as All the Pretty Horses, The Road, No Country for Old Men, Blood Meridian, The Passenger, and others. He won the Pulitzer for The Road, and No Country was adapted by the Coen brothers into the Academy Award Best Picture-winning movie that featured Javier Bardem as the fucking terrifying Anton Chigurh. 

Take a deep breath and watch this scene again:

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McCarthy was a writer who developed a mythical status. He didn't own a computer, choosing instead to write everything on a mechanical typewriter. He did very few interviews over the course of his 55+ year-career. Several times, people created twitter accounts pretending to be him, only to have his publisher confirm the account was not his because "he does not own a computer." He was also proclaimed dead in widely-circulated death hoax in 2016. 

I loved him. I love his novels. They give me peace. Reading All the Pretty Horses is one of the great pleasures of my life. That's the most accessible of his books, I think. No Country and The Road are also relatively readable. Start with those and then, if you're up for some truly heavy lifting, give Blood Meridian a try. Just know that it's absolutely barbaric, extremely tough to follow, and not particularly fun to read. Even so, it is considered his masterpiece, and one of the greatest American novels ever written. 

McCarthy's pages-long descriptions of landscapes, the deviations into religious philosophies or odd subjects he researches and then sits on for super long stretches (see: the JFK assassination conspiracy theories in The Passenger or the 20-odd pages on God in The Crossing); the weird words he chooses to use, his lack of quotation marks—it all takes some getting used to. Not to mention you probably need the Spanish translations open while reading a lot his novels. 

But all of it can feel like some transporting drug to the brain. I challenge anyone to read All the Pretty Horses and not fall in love with Alejandra, or to hold your breath entirely for the knife-fight scene in the prison. You'll finish the book and immediately long for the open plains and the smell of horse's breath and the feel of broken-in cowboy boots as you slip your worn heels through a set of stirrups. A simpler life, sleeping under the stars and waking early to break horses.  

Thank you for so many wonderful hours of reading, Cormac McCarthy.