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74-660: The Border Trilogy is a series of novels by the American author Cormac McCarthy : All the Pretty Horses (1992), The Crossing (1994), and Cities of the Plain (1998). The trilogy revolves around the coming of age and adventures of two young cowboys, John Grady Cole and Billy Parham, and is mainly set on the border between the Southwestern United States and Mexico . This article about

148-428: A " subconscious process" which should be given space for spontaneous inspiration. After 1958, McCarthy wrote all of his literary work and correspondence with a mechanical typewriter . He originally used a Royal but went looking for a more lightweight machine ahead of a trip to Europe in the early 1960s. He bought a portable Olivetti Lettera 32 for $ 50 at a Knoxville pawn shop and typed about five million words over

222-459: A "faithful adaptation" of the "devastating novel". McCarthy published the play The Sunset Limited in 2006. Critics noted it was unorthodox and may have had more in common with a novel, hence McCarthy's subtitle: "a novel in dramatic form". He later adapted it into a screenplay for a 2011 film , directed and executive produced by Tommy Lee Jones , who also starred opposite Samuel L. Jackson . Oprah Winfrey selected McCarthy's The Road as

296-508: A 2006 poll of authors and publishers conducted by The New York Times Magazine to list the greatest American novels of the previous quarter-century, Blood Meridian placed third, behind Toni Morrison 's Beloved (1987) and Don DeLillo 's Underworld (1997). Some have even suggested it is the Great American Novel . Time included it on their 2005 list of the 100 best English-language books published since 1923. At

370-443: A Twitter account impersonating McCarthy, quickly amassing several thousand followers and recognition by former site owner Jack Dorsey . Five hours after the account's creation, McCarthy's publisher confirmed that the account was fake and that McCarthy did not own a computer. In 2018, another account impersonating McCarthy was created. In 2021, it was briefly marked verified following a viral tweet, after which his agent confirmed that

444-425: A colon for setting off a list, but never semicolons, which he labeled as "idiocy". He did not use quotation marks for dialogue and believed there is no reason to "blot the page up with weird little marks". Erik Hage notes that McCarthy's dialogue often lacks attribution, but that "somehow   ... the reader remains oriented as to who is speaking." His attitude to punctuation dated to some editing work he did for

518-587: A combination of private donors, grant-making foundations, government science agencies, and companies affiliated with its business network. The 2014 budget was just over $ 10 million. Evolutionary theorist David Krakauer became the institute's president on August 1, 2015. The Santa Fe Institute was founded in 1984 by scientists George Cowan , David Pines , Stirling Colgate , Murray Gell-Mann , Nick Metropolis , Herb Anderson , Peter A. Carruthers , and Richard Slansky . All but Pines and Gell-Mann were scientists with Los Alamos National Laboratory . Originally called

592-507: A four-week course on complex systems. Lectures are provided by Institute researchers, and students work on a small collaborative project on complex systems. The institute also awards an annual High School Prize for Scientific Excellence to a local high school student and a local teacher. The educational programs include: Since the 1980s, the Santa Fe Institute has held a series of public lectures, which generally take place at

666-584: A house on Martin Mill Pike in South Knoxville . McCarthy later said, "We were considered rich because all the people around us were living in one- or two-room shacks." Among his childhood friends was Jim Long (1930–2012), who was later depicted as J-Bone in Suttree . McCarthy attended St. Mary's Parochial School and Knoxville Catholic High School , and was an altar boy at Knoxville's Church of

740-497: A large visitors program, and a larger group of external faculty affiliated with the institute but located at other institutions. The motivation of this structure was to encourage active turnover in ideas and people, allowing the research to remain on the cutting edge of interdisciplinary science. Today, the Santa Fe Institute continues to follow this organizational model. The institute is composed of several distinct groups. The resident faculty are researchers whose primary appointment

814-705: A lukewarm critical and commercial reception, it has since been regarded as his magnum opus , with some labeling it the Great American Novel . McCarthy first experienced widespread success with All the Pretty Horses (1992), for which he received both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award . It was followed by The Crossing (1994) and Cities of the Plain (1998), completing The Border Trilogy . His 2005 novel No Country for Old Men received mixed reviews. His 2006 novel The Road won

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888-511: A multidisciplinary research center devoted to the study of complex adaptive systems . Unlike most members of the SFI, McCarthy did not have a scientific background. As Murray Gell-Mann explained, "There isn't any place like the Santa Fe Institute, and there isn't any writer like Cormac, so the two fit quite well together." From his work at the Santa Fe Institute, McCarthy published his first piece of nonfiction writing in his 50-year writing career. In

962-487: A novel in the Western genre of the 1990s is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . See guidelines for writing about novels . Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page . Cormac McCarthy Cormac McCarthy (born Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr. ; July 20, 1933 – June 13, 2023) was an American author who wrote twelve novels, two plays, five screenplays, and three short stories, spanning

1036-932: A professor of English while enrolled at the University of Tennessee; he stripped out much of the punctuation in the book being edited, which pleased the professor. McCarthy edited fellow Santa Fe Institute Fellow W. Brian Arthur 's influential article "Increasing Returns and the New World of Business", published in the Harvard Business Review in 1996, removing commas from the text. He also copy edited work for physicists Lawrence M. Krauss and Lisa Randall . Saul Bellow praised his "absolutely overpowering use of language, his life-giving and death-dealing sentences". Richard B. Woodward has described his writing as "reminiscent of early Hemingway ". Unlike earlier works such as Suttree and Blood Meridian ,

1110-416: A second companion novel, Stella Maris , on November 22. The latter was McCarthy's first novel since Outer Dark to feature a female protagonist. At the time of his death, McCarthy was listed as an executive producer on a film adaption of Blood Meridian , to be directed by John Hillcoat , who previously directed the film adaptation of The Road. He left the beer on the counter and went out and got

1184-603: A small number of resident faculty and postdoctoral researchers, a large group of external faculty whose primary appointments are at other institutions, and a number of visiting scholars. The institute is advised by a group of eminent scholars, including several Nobel Prize -winning scientists. Although theoretical scientific research is the institute's primary focus, it also runs several popular summer schools on complex systems, along with other educational and outreach programs aimed at students ranging from middle school up through graduate school. The institute's annual funding comes from

1258-434: Is a large group of eminent scholars who advise the institute on important strategic matters. This group includes a number of Nobel Prize winners. The institute is headed by a president, currently evolutionary theorist David Krakauer , and a vice president for science, currently network ecologist Jennifer Dunne. It is governed by a Board of Trustees, which is chaired by Katherine Collins of Putnam Investments. Research at

1332-626: Is a purely human cultural creation and not a biologically determined phenomenon. In 2015, McCarthy's next novel, The Passenger , was announced at a multimedia event hosted in Santa Fe by the Lannan Foundation . The book was influenced by his time among scientists; it has been described by SFI biologist David Krakauer as "full-blown Cormac 3.0—a mathematical [and] analytical novel". In March 2022, The New York Times reported that The Passenger would be released on October 25, 2022, and

1406-515: Is also the case of several other important characters in the Border Trilogy , including Billy Parhnam [ sic ], John Grady's mother (and possibly his grandfather and brothers), and perhaps Jimmy Blevins, each of whom are speakers of Spanish who were ostensibly born in the US political space into families with what are generally considered English-speaking surnames ... This is also

1480-542: Is an occupational hazard to writing, it's drinking'." However, his long-time friend Augusta Britt claimed that he had resumed drinking near the end of his life. In the 1980s, McCarthy and Edward Abbey considered covertly releasing wolves into southern Arizona to restore their decimated population. In the late 1990s, McCarthy moved to Tesuque, New Mexico , north of Santa Fe , with his third wife, Jennifer Winkley, and their son, John. McCarthy and Winkley divorced in 2006. In 2013, Scottish writer Michael Crossan created

1554-502: Is at the institute. Along with the Omidyar Fellows, a group of postdoctoral scholars in residence, the resident faculty makes up the majority of the researchers physically present at the institute. The external faculty is a group of roughly 100 affiliated researchers whose primary appointments are at other institutions, typically universities. These individuals form a large and distributed community of scholars who frequently visit

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1628-499: Is composed largely of dialogue. A western set in the 1980s, No Country for Old Men was adapted by the Coen brothers into a 2007 film of the same name , which won four Academy Awards and more than 75 film awards globally. In the early 2000s while staying at an El Paso motel with his young son, McCarthy looked out the window late one night and imagined what the city might look like in fifty or one hundred years and saw: "fires up on

1702-881: Is seen in Blood Meridian with the murder spree the Glanton Gang initiates because of the bounties, the "overwhelmed" law enforcement in No Country for Old Men , and the corrupt police officers in All the Pretty Horses . As a result, he has been labeled the "great pessimist of American literature". McCarthy was fluent in Spanish, having lived in Ibiza, Spain, in the 1960s and later residing in El Paso, Texas, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Isabel Soto argues that after he learned

1776-678: Is the Gaelic version of "Charles". Cormac had been a family nickname given to his father by his Irish aunts. Other sources say he changed his name to honor the Irish chieftain Cormac MacCarthy , who constructed Blarney Castle . After marrying fellow student Lee Holleman in 1961, McCarthy moved to what Lee's obituary calls "a shack with no heat and running water in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains outside of Knoxville." There,

1850-575: Is way, way down at the bottom of the list." McCarthy died at his home in Santa Fe on June 13, 2023, at the age of 89. Stephen King said McCarthy was "maybe the greatest American novelist of my time ... He was full of years and created a fine body of work, but I still mourn his passing." In 2003, literary critic Harold Bloom named McCarthy as one of the four major living American novelists, alongside Don DeLillo , Thomas Pynchon , and Philip Roth . Bloom's 1994 book The Western Canon had listed Child of God , Suttree , and Blood Meridian among

1924-662: The American Southwest to research his next novel, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West (1985). The book is violent, with The New York Times declaring it the "bloodiest book since the Iliad " . Although snubbed by many critics, the book has grown appreciably in stature in literary circles; Harold Bloom called Blood Meridian "the greatest single book since Faulkner's As I Lay Dying ". In

1998-510: The New York Times (April 19, 1992) McCarthy's novels often depict explicit violence. Many of his works have been characterized as nihilistic , particularly Blood Meridian . Some academics dispute this, saying Blood Meridian is actually a gnostic tragedy. His later works have been characterized as highly moralistic. Erik J. Wielenberg argues that The Road depicts morality as secular and originating from individuals, such as

2072-516: The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction . McCarthy did not accept the prize in person, instead sending Sonny Mehta in his place. John Hillcoat directed the 2009 film adaptation , written by Joe Penhall , and starring Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee . Critics' reviews were mostly favorable: Roger Ebert found it "powerful" but lacking "emotional feeling", Peter Bradshaw noted "a guarded change of emphasis", while Dan Jolin found it to be

2146-540: The Tennessee River . Jerome Charyn likened it to a doomed Huckleberry Finn , noting how the Yew tree of the author's sprawling Tennessee garden was inspiration for the "christening of what became the principal character's name." In 1981, McCarthy was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship worth $ 236,000. Saul Bellow , Shelby Foote , and others had recommended him to the organization. The grant enabled him to travel

2220-584: The U.S. Air Force . His debut novel , The Orchard Keeper , was published in 1965. Awarded literary grants, McCarthy was able to travel to southern Europe, where he wrote his second novel, Outer Dark (1968). Suttree (1979), like his other early novels, received generally positive reviews, but was not a commercial success. A MacArthur Fellowship enabled him to travel to the American Southwest, where he researched and wrote his fifth novel, Blood Meridian (1985). Although it initially garnered

2294-693: The University of Tennessee , studying liberal arts . He became interested in writing after a professor asked him to repunctuate a collection of eighteenth-century essays for inclusion in a textbook. McCarthy left college in 1953 to join the U.S. Air Force . While stationed in Alaska , McCarthy read books voraciously, which he said was the first time he had done so. He returned to the University of Tennessee in 1957, where he majored in English and published two stories, "Wake for Susan" and "A Drowning Incident" in

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2368-567: The Western , postapocalyptic , and Southern Gothic genres. His works often include graphic depictions of violence, and his writing style is characterised by a sparse use of punctuation and attribution. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American novelists. McCarthy was born in Providence, Rhode Island , although he was raised primarily in Tennessee . In 1951, he enrolled in the University of Tennessee , but dropped out to join

2442-414: The "Rio Grande Institute", the scientists sought a forum to conduct theoretical research outside the traditional disciplinary boundaries of academic departments and government agency science budgets. SFI's original mission was to disseminate the notion of a new interdisciplinary research area called complexity theory or simply complex systems . This new effort was intended to provide an alternative to

2516-493: The 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. Many of McCarthy's works have been adapted into film. The 2007 film adaptation of No Country for Old Men was a critical and commercial success, winning four Academy Awards , including Best Picture . The films All the Pretty Horses , The Road , and Child of God were also adapted from his works of

2590-522: The April 2007 selection for her Book Club . As a result, McCarthy agreed to his first television interview, which aired on The Oprah Winfrey Show on June 5, 2007. The interview took place in the library of the Santa Fe Institute . McCarthy told Winfrey that he did not know any writers and much preferred the company of scientists. During the interview, he related several stories illustrating

2664-529: The Immaculate Conception . As a child, McCarthy saw no value in school, preferring to pursue his own interests. He described a moment when his teacher asked the class about their hobbies. McCarthy answered eagerly, as he later said, "I was the only one with any hobbies and I had every hobby there was ... name anything, no matter how esoteric. I could have given everyone a hobby and still had 40 or 50 to take home." In 1951, he began attending

2738-532: The Institute and contribute to its overall research program. The institute's Applied Complexity Network, formerly the Business Network, is a group of private companies and government agencies interested in complex systems research. Members of the business network often send representatives to Institute meetings or to serve as research fellows in residence at the institute. The institute's Science Board

2812-570: The Lensic Center in downtown Santa Fe. Typically 5–6 talks are held each year, normally by visiting external faculty of the institute. Attendance at these lectures is free of charge, and in recent years many of the talks are recorded and made available on video platforms such as YouTube The Santa Fe Institute has also launched a series of massive open online courses on complex systems, the first of which began in early 2013. In October 2019, The Santa Fe Institute launched Complexity Podcast,

2886-458: The Santa Fe Institute. McCarthy replaced it with an identical model, bought for him by his friend John Miller for $ 11 plus $ 19.95 for shipping. McCarthy was a teetotaler . According to Richard B. Woodward, "McCarthy doesn't drink anymore – he quit 16 years ago [i.e. in 1976] in El Paso, with one of his young girlfriends – and Suttree reads like a farewell to that life. 'The friends I do have are simply those who quit drinking,' he says. 'If there

2960-409: The account was again a fake. In 2016, a hoax spread on Twitter claiming that McCarthy had died, with USA Today even repeating the information. The Los Angeles Times responded to the hoax with the headline, "Cormac McCarthy isn't dead. He's too tough to die." In 2024, Vanity Fair published an article about McCarthy's relationship with Augusta Britt, whom he met when he was 42 and she

3034-434: The barn, he wrote his next book, Child of God (1973). Like Outer Dark before it, Child of God was set in southern Appalachia . In 1976, McCarthy separated from Anne DeLisle and moved to El Paso, Texas . In 1974, Richard Pearce of PBS contacted McCarthy and asked him to write the screenplay for an episode of Visions , a television drama series. Beginning in early 1975, and armed with only "a few photographs in

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3108-589: The case of Judge Holden in Blood Meridian ." McCarthy dedicated himself to writing full time, choosing not to work other jobs to support his career. "I always knew that I didn't want to work", McCarthy said. "You have to be dedicated, but it was my number-one priority." Early in his career, his decision not to work sometimes subjected him and his family to poverty. Nevertheless, according to scholar Steve Davis, McCarthy had an "incredible work ethic ". He preferred to work on several projects simultaneously and said, for instance, that he had four drafts in progress in

3182-406: The company of scientists. He voiced his admiration for scientific advances: "What physicists did in the 20th century was one of the extraordinary flowerings ever in the human enterprise." At MacArthur reunions, McCarthy shunned his fellow writers to fraternize instead with scientists like physicist Murray Gell-Mann and whale biologist Roger Payne . Of all of his interests, McCarthy stated, "Writing

3256-592: The couple had a son, Cullen, in 1962. When writer James Agee 's childhood home was being demolished in Knoxville that year, McCarthy used the site's bricks to build fireplaces inside his Sevier County shack. Lee moved to Wyoming shortly after, where she filed for divorce from McCarthy. Random House published McCarthy's first novel, The Orchard Keeper , in 1965. He had finished the novel while working part time at an auto-parts warehouse in Chicago and submitted

3330-449: The couple moved to Louisville, Tennessee , and purchased a dairy barn, which McCarthy renovated, doing the stonework himself. According to DeLisle, the couple lived in "total poverty", bathing in a lake. DeLisle claimed, "Someone would call up and offer him $ 2,000 to come speak at a university about his books. And he would tell them that everything he had to say was there on the page. So we would eat beans for another week." While living in

3404-451: The degree of outright poverty he endured at times during his career as a writer. He also spoke about the experience of fathering a child at an advanced age, and how his son was the inspiration for The Road . In 2012, McCarthy sold his original screenplay The Counselor to Nick Wechsler , Paula Mae Schwartz, and Steve Schwartz, who had previously produced the film adaptation of McCarthy's novel The Road . Directed by Ridley Scott , with

3478-449: The dynamics of financial markets, and the emergence of hierarchy and cooperation in the human species, and biological and technological innovation. Historically, researchers affiliated with the institute played roles to varying degrees in the development and use of methods for studying complex systems , including agent-based modeling , network theory , computational immunology , the physics of financial markets , genetic algorithms ,

3552-628: The editorial advisement of Gary Fisketjon . As a final favor to Erskine, McCarthy agreed to his first interview ever, with Richard B. Woodward of The New York Times . McCarthy finally received widespread recognition following the publication of All the Pretty Horses (1992), when it won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It became a New York Times bestseller , selling 190,000 hardcover copies within six months. It

3626-410: The essay entitled " The Kekulé Problem " (2017), McCarthy analyzes a dream of August Kekulé 's as a model of the unconscious mind and the origins of language . He theorizes about the nature of the unconscious mind and its separation from human language. The unconscious, according to McCarthy, "is a machine for operating an animal" and "all animals have an unconscious". McCarthy postulates that language

3700-481: The father, and separate from God. The bleak outlook of the future, and the inhuman foreign antagonist Anton Chigurh of No Country for Old Men , is said to reflect the apprehension of the post-9/11 era. Many of his works portray individuals in conflict with society and acting on instinct rather than on emotion or thought. Another theme throughout many of McCarthy's works is the ineptitude or inhumanity of those in authority and particularly in law enforcement. This

3774-645: The footnotes to a 1928 biography of a famous pre-Civil War industrialist William Gregg as inspiration", McCarthy and Pearce spent a year traveling the South to research the subject of industrialization there. McCarthy completed the screenplay in 1976 and the episode, titled The Gardener's Son , aired on January 6, 1977. Numerous film festivals abroad screened it. The episode was nominated for two Primetime Emmy awards in 1977 . In 1979, McCarthy published his semiautobiographical Suttree , which he had written over 20 years before, based on his experiences in Knoxville on

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3848-487: The hill and everything being laid to waste". He wrote two pages covering the idea; four years later in Ireland he expanded the idea into his tenth novel, The Road . It follows a lone father and his young son traveling through a post-apocalyptic America, hunted by cannibals. Many of the discussions between the two were verbatim conversations McCarthy had had with his son. Released in 2006, it won international acclaim and

3922-444: The increasing specialization the founders observed in science by focusing on synthesis across disciplines. As the idea of interdisciplinary science increased in popularity, a number of independent institutes and departments emerged whose focus emphasized similar goals. The Santa Fe Institute was created to be a visiting institution, with no permanent or tenured positions, a small group of resident faculty and postdoctoral researchers,

3996-461: The institute focuses on systems commonly described as complex adaptive systems or simply complex systems . Recent research has included studies of evolutionary computation , metabolic and ecological scaling laws, the fundamental properties of cities, the evolutionary diversification of viral strains, the interactions and conflicts of primate social groups, the history of languages, the structure and dynamics of species interactions including food webs,

4070-415: The institute's accomplishments include: The Santa Fe Institute runs a number of education programs aimed at introducing students as young as middle school and as old as graduate school to the core ideas of complex systems. The longest running education program is the annual Complex Systems Summer School. The CSSS hosts 50–60 graduate students and early postdocs, along with select Business Network fellows, for

4144-427: The language, in his novels "Spanish and English modulate or permeate each other", as it was "an essential part of McCarthy's expressive discourse". Katherine Sugg observes that McCarthy's writing is "often considered a 'multicultural' and 'bilingual' narrative practice, particularly for its abundant use of untranslated Spanish dialogue". Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera observes, "John Grady Cole is a native speaker of Spanish. This

4218-470: The majority of McCarthy's work after 1993 uses simple, restrained vocabulary. There's no such thing as life without bloodshed. The notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous. Cormac McCarthy, interviewed in

4292-532: The manuscript "blindly" to Albert Erskine of Random House. Erskine continued to edit McCarthy's work for the next 20 years. Upon its release, critics noted its similarity to the work of Faulkner and praised McCarthy's striking use of imagery. The Orchard Keeper won a 1966 William Faulkner Foundation Award for notable first novel. While living in the French Quarter in New Orleans , McCarthy

4366-448: The mid-2000s and for several years devoted about two hours every day to each project. He was known to conduct exhaustive research on the historical settings and regional environments found in his fiction. He edited his own writing, sometimes revising a book over the course of years or decades before deeming it fit for publication. While his research and revision were meticulous, he did not outline his plots and instead viewed writing as

4440-560: The next five decades. He maintained it by simply "blowing out the dust with a service station hose". Book dealer Glenn Horowitz said the modest typewriter acquired "a sort of talismanic quality" through its connection to McCarthy's monumental fiction, "as if Mount Rushmore was carved with a Swiss Army knife ". His Olivetti was auctioned in December 2009 at Christie's , with the auction house estimating it would fetch between $ 15,000 and $ 20,000. It sold for $ 254,500, with proceeds donated to

4514-460: The physics of computation, and machine learning . The institute also studies foundational topics in the physics and mathematics of complex systems, using tools from related disciplines such as information theory , combinatorics , computational complexity theory and condensed matter physics . Recent research in this area has included studies of phase transitions in NP-hard problems. Some of

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4588-499: The politics that readers themselves bring with them to the act of reading the work". In one of his few interviews, McCarthy revealed that he respected only authors who "deal with issues of life and death", citing Henry James and Marcel Proust as examples of writers who do not. "I don't understand them ... To me, that's not literature. A lot of writers who are considered good I consider strange", he said. Regarding his own literary constraints when writing novels, McCarthy said he

4662-416: The production finished in 2012, the film was released on October 25, 2013, to polarized critical reception. Mark Kermode of The Guardian found it "datedly naff", and Peter Travers of Rolling Stone described it as "a droning meditation on capitalism". However, Manohla Dargis of The New York Times found it "terrifying" and "seductive". McCarthy was a trustee for the Santa Fe Institute (SFI),

4736-662: The same names, and Outer Dark was turned into a 15-minute short. McCarthy had a play adapted into a 2011 film, The Sunset Limited . McCarthy worked with the Santa Fe Institute , a multidisciplinary research center, where he published the essay " The Kekulé Problem " (2017), which explores the human unconscious and the origin of language . He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2012. His final novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris , were published on October 25, 2022, and December 6, 2022, respectively. Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr.

4810-514: The student literary magazine, The Phoenix , writing under the name C. J. McCarthy, Jr. For these, he won the Ingram-Merrill Award for creative writing in 1959 and 1960. In 1959, McCarthy dropped out of college and left for Chicago. For the purpose of his writing career, McCarthy changed his first name from Charles to Cormac to avoid confusion, and comparison, with ventriloquist Edgar Bergen 's dummy Charlie McCarthy . "Cormac"

4884-539: The time, McCarthy was living in a stone cottage behind an El Paso shopping center, which he described as "barely habitable". As of 1991, none of McCarthy's novels had sold more than 5,000 hardcover copies, and "for most of his career, he did not even have an agent". He was labeled the "best unknown novelist in America". After working with McCarthy for twenty years, Albert Erskine retired from Random House in 1992. McCarthy turned to Alfred A. Knopf , where he fell under

4958-647: The two packs of cigarettes and the binoculars and the pistol and slung the .270 over his shoulder and shut the truck door and came back in. —Cormac McCarthy's polysyndetic use of "and" in No Country for Old Men McCarthy used punctuation sparsely, even replacing most commas with "and" to create polysyndetons ; it has been called "the most important word in McCarthy's lexicon". He told Oprah Winfrey that he preferred "simple declarative sentences" and that he used capital letters, periods, an occasional comma, or

5032-574: The works of contemporary literature he predicted would endure and become " canonical ". Bloom reserved his highest praise for Blood Meridian , which he called "the greatest single book since Faulkner's As I Lay Dying ", and though he held less esteem for McCarthy's other novels he said that "to have written even one book so authentically strong and allusive, and capable of the perpetual reverberation that Blood Meridian possesses more than justifies him.   ... He has attained genius with that book." Santa Fe Institute The institute consists of

5106-603: Was "not a fan of some of the Latin American writers, magical realism . You know, it's hard enough to get people to believe what you're telling them without making it impossible. It has to be vaguely plausible." He cited Moby-Dick (1851) as his favorite novel. Along with Moby-Dick , McCarthy regarded The Brothers Karamazov (1880), Ulysses (1922), and The Sound and the Fury (1929) as "great" novels. Socially, McCarthy had an aversion to other writers, preferring

5180-661: Was 16. The article claims that he took her to Mexico with a forged birth certificate and began having sex with her when she was still 17. Britt has confirmed this account but denied that the relationship was predatory or abusive. McCarthy did not publicly reveal his political opinions. A resident of Santa Fe with a traditionalist disposition, he once expressed disapproval of the city and the people there: "If you don't agree with them politically, you can't just agree to disagree—they think you're crazy." Academic David Holloway writes that "McCarthy's writing can be read as either liberal or conservative, or as both simultaneously, depending on

5254-498: Was born in Providence, Rhode Island , on July 20, 1933, one of six children of Gladys Christina McGrail and Charles Joseph McCarthy. His family was Irish Catholic . In 1937, the family relocated to Knoxville, Tennessee , where his father worked as a lawyer for the Tennessee Valley Authority . The family first lived on Noelton Drive in the upscale Sequoyah Hills subdivision, but by 1941, had settled in

5328-441: Was evicted from a $ 40-a-month room for failing to pay his rent. When he traveled the country, McCarthy always carried a 100-watt bulb in his bag so he could read at night, no matter where he was sleeping. In the summer of 1965, using a Traveling Fellowship award from The American Academy of Arts and Letters , McCarthy shipped out aboard the liner Sylvania hoping to visit Ireland. On the ship, he met Englishwoman Anne DeLisle, who

5402-407: Was followed by The Crossing (1994) and Cities of the Plain (1998), completing the Border Trilogy . In the midst of this trilogy came The Stonemason (first performed in 1995), his second dramatic work. McCarthy originally conceived his next work, No Country for Old Men (2005), as a screenplay before turning it into a novel. Consequently, the novel has little description of setting and

5476-581: Was working on the ship as a dancer and singer. In 1966, they were married in England. Also in 1966, he received a Rockefeller Foundation grant, which he used to travel around Southern Europe before landing in Ibiza , where he wrote his second novel, Outer Dark (1968). Afterward, he returned to the United States with his wife, where Outer Dark was published to generally favorable reviews. In 1969,

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