Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr.
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Awards
Cormac McCarthy won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2007 for his novel The Road. He also received the National Book Award for All the Pretty Horses in 1992. His sparse punctuation and violent themes mark his works, which include No Country for Old Men and Blood Meridian. He died in Santa Fe in 2023 at age 89.
Names, aliases, and relatives of Cormac McCarthy — birth name, kin, and personal ties.
Cormac McCarthy by the numbers — life, work, and family.
Cormac McCarthy — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
Raised in Tennessee, McCarthy was born Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr. on July 20, 1933, in Providence, Rhode Island. He attended Knoxville Catholic High School and later enrolled at the University of Tennessee, though he dropped out to join the US Air Force. His father was Charles J. McCarthy. He had many hobbies as a child and saw little value in formal schooling.
McCarthy’s debut novel The Orchard Keeper was published in 1965 while he worked in an auto-parts warehouse. His 1985 novel Blood Meridian has since been called his magnum opus. He achieved widespread success with All the Pretty Horses 1992, winning the National Book Award. The Road 2006 won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007. No Country for Old Men was adapted into a 2007 film that won four Academy Awards. He also wrote screenplays, including The Counselor 2013.
McCarthy married three times: to Lee Holleman in 1961 divorced 1962, with whom he had son Cullen; to Anne DeLisle in 1966 divorced 1981; and to Jennifer Claire Winkley in 1998, with whom he had son John. He quit drinking in his early forties. He lived in Tesuque, New Mexico, and later in Santa Fe. He used a manual typewriter, an Olivetti Lettera 32.
Harold Bloom called McCarthy one of the four major American novelists of his time, alongside Pynchon, DeLillo, and Roth. Critics consistently rank Blood Meridian among the greatest American novels. His works have been adapted into major films, including No Country for Old Men 2007 and The Road 2009. The Olivetti typewriter on which he wrote his novels sold for $254,500 at auction in 2009, with proceeds donated to the Santa Fe Institute. His stark, violent, and philosophically rich storytelling defines his legacy.
Every award, honor, and recognition received by Cormac McCarthy — Grammys, hall-of-fame inductions, civic honors, lifetime achievements.
A wall of memorable lines from Cormac McCarthy — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.
If You Look at the Greek Plays, They’re Really Good. and There’s Just a Handful of Them. Well How Good Would They Be If There Were 2,500 of Them? but That’s the Future Looking Back at Us. Anything You Can Think Of, There’s Going to Be Millions of Them. Just the Sheer Number of Things Will Devalue Them. I Don’t Care Whether It’s Art, Literature, Poetry or Drama, Whatever. the Sheer Volume of It Will Wash It Out. I Mean If You Had Thousands of Greek Plays to Read, Would They Be That Good? I Don’t Think So. …Just the Appalling Volume of Artifacts Will Erase All Meaning That They Could Ever Possibly Have. but We Probably Won’t Get That Far Anyway.
Little-known facts about Cormac McCarthy — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.
Harold Bloom regarded McCarthy as one of America’s four major novelists alongside Pynchon, DeLillo, and Roth.
McCarthy’s novel The Road received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2007.
All the Pretty Horses earned the National Book Award in 1992.
McCarthy resided with his family in the Tesuque area of New Mexico.
A former heavy drinker, McCarthy gave up alcohol in his early forties.
McCarthy fathered two sons: Cullen with Lee Holleman and John with Jennifer Winkley.
McCarthy’s style features graphic violence and sparse punctuation, often omitting quotation marks.
Critics consistently rank McCarthy among the greatest living American authors.
McCarthy kept his political views private, though he once criticized Santa Fe’s political culture, saying disagreement was not tolerated.
The semi-autobiographical Suttree, published in 1979, drew on McCarthy’s Knoxville experiences; Jerome Charyn compared it to a doomed Huckleberry Finn.
Widespread success came with All the Pretty Horses 1992, winning both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and launching the Border Trilogy followed by The Crossing and Cities of the Plain.
Steve Davis noted McCarthy’s incredible work ethic: he often worked on several projects simultaneously, spending about two hours daily on each. He revised manuscripts over years and conducted exhaustive historical research, yet never outlined plots, relying on a subconscious creative process.
A biography-bibliography appears in Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series, Volume 171.
McCarthy spoke fluent Spanish, having lived in Ibiza in the 1960s. His novels frequently blend Spanish and English, with characters like John Grady Cole portrayed as native Spanish speakers.
In New Orleans, McCarthy was evicted from a cheap room for nonpayment. He always carried a 100-watt light bulb to read by at night.
After marrying Lee Holleman in 1961, McCarthy lived in a shack without heat or running water. Their son Cullen was born in 1962. McCarthy salvaged bricks from James Agee’s demolished childhood home to build fireplaces. Lee worked and cared for the baby while McCarthy wrote; she eventually left him and filed for divorce.
McCarthy and Edward Abbey discussed releasing wolves into southern Arizona in the 1980s to restore the population.
The Orchard Keeper debuted in 1965. Grants allowed travel to Europe for Outer Dark. A MacArthur Fellowship funded his Southwest travels for Blood Meridian, which later became considered his masterpiece.
McCarthy authored twelve novels, two plays, five screenplays, and three short stories, spanning Western and post-apocalyptic genres.
After editor Albert Erskine retired in 1992, McCarthy moved to Knopf under Gary Fisketjon and gave his first interview to Richard B. Woodward.
Though born in Rhode Island, McCarthy was raised in Tennessee. He enrolled at the University of Tennessee in 1951 but left to join the Air Force.
Impersonation accounts on Twitter fooled thousands; McCarthy did not own a computer or use social media. Publishers quickly debunked the fakes.
A 2016 death hoax was picked up by USA Today and quickly denied. The Los Angeles Times joked McCarthy was too tough to die.
McCarthy admired writers who tackled life and death, and dismissed Henry James and Proust as not addressing those themes. He disliked magical realism, preferring plausibility, and named Moby-Dick as his favorite novel.
McCarthy admired 20th century physics and preferred scientists’ company at MacArthur reunions over writers. He claimed writing was low on his list of interests.
McCarthy avoided other writers, preferring conversations with scientists.
McCarthy used an Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter from the 1960s onward, typing millions of words. The typewriter sold at auction for $254,500 in 2009, with proceeds to the Santa Fe Institute. He replaced it with an identical model.
McCarthy quit drinking in his early forties, noting that writing carries an occupational hazard of drinking. His friends were mostly fellow non-drinkers.
McCarthy attended Catholic schools and served as an altar boy. He disliked formal schooling but had many hobbies, once claiming he could give every classmate a hobby.
The Orchard Keeper was published by Random House in 1965 after McCarthy submitted it blindly to editor Albert Erskine, who edited McCarthy for 20 years. It won the 1966 William Faulkner Foundation Award.
Multiple McCarthy works were adapted to film, most notably No Country for Old Men 2007, which won four Oscars including Best Picture. Other adaptations include All the Pretty Horses, The Road, Child of God, and The Sunset Limited.
McCarthy collaborated with the Santa Fe Institute, where he published the essay The Kekulé Problem in 2017, examining the unconscious and language origins.
The Road 2006 won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
In 2012, McCarthy was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
McCarthy met his second wife, Anne DeLisle, aboard a ship in 1965 while on a Traveling Fellowship. They married in 1966. A Rockefeller grant funded his travels in Southern Europe, where he wrote Outer Dark 1968.
No Country for Old Men 2005 received mixed initial reviews but became a major film.
Harold Bloom, in 2003, named McCarthy among the four major living American novelists. Bloom praised Blood Meridian as the greatest book since Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, and included several McCarthy novels in his canonical list.
McCarthy’s personal papers are preserved at the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University, spanning 98 boxes. The archive includes letters with bibliographer J. Howard Woolmer.
McCarthy’s sparse punctuation includes avoiding semicolons and quotation marks. He prefers simple declarative sentences and uses and frequently for polysyndeton.
Quick answers to the questions readers ask most about Cormac McCarthy.
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