Stephen King has led the flood of tributes to Cormac McCarthy.
Stephen King has led the flood of tributes to Cormac McCarthy
‘The Shining’ author, 75, hailed the Pulitzer Prize winner as “maybe the greatest American novelist” of his age after it was announced on Tuesday (13.06.23) the ‘No Country for Old Men’ writer had died aged 89.
Stephen tweeted: “Cormac McCarthy, maybe the greatest American novelist of my time, has passed away at 89.
“He was full of years and created a fine body of work, but I still mourn his passing.”
Comedian and ‘Ratatouille’ actor Patton Oswalt, 54, posted online: “Death was not hilarious today. RIP Cormac McCarthy. A great favourite.”
‘The Old Ways’ author Robert MacFarlane, 46, added: “Ah… Cormac McCarthy has died today. A giant of a writer, who wrote with a pen of iron, torqued language into new forms and worked the rhythms of prose into wire-flashes of lightning and great rolls of thunder.”
And singer-songwriter Jason Isbell, 44, said: “I could go onstage and say ‘This next one was influenced by Cormac McCarthy’ and literally sing any song I’ve ever written.”
Cormac was perhaps best-known for writing ‘No Country for Old Men’ as it was turned into the multi-Oscar winning film of the same name by the Coen brothers.
His death was confirmed by his son John McCarthy in a statement from his publisher, Penguin Random House.
Cormac produced a dozen novels across a career spanning nearly 60 years and in 2009 became the second author after Philip Roth to receive the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for lifetime achievement in American fiction.
The writer told Rolling Stone about the main theme of his often-violent novels: “If it doesn’t concern life and death, 'it’s not interesting.'
Born to a lawyer dad, Cormac’s family moved to Tennessee when he was four years old.
His given name was Charles, but he changed it to Cormac after an Irish king, and he chose not to finish university and instead focus on writing.
Joel and Ethan Coen’s adaptation of his ‘No Country for Old Men’ novel starring Tommy Lee Jones won four Oscars, including one for Spanish actor Javier Bardem, who played the work’s sadistic serial killer.
In 2007, Cormac was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for ‘The Road’, the story of a father and son making their way across a post-apocalyptic landscape, which was also turned into a film starring Viggo Mortensen.
Corman wrote his first novel ‘The Orchard Keeper’ while working at a car parts shop in Chicago in the 1960s.
The critically-acclaimed author received multiple writing fellowships, including one from the Rockefeller Foundation.
He was often compared to William Faulkner for his style and rural settings, as well as the bleak violence in his books.
Cormac was married and divorced three times and is survived by his two sons, Cullen McCarthy, and John Francis McCarthy.
Cullen was born in 1962 to his first wife Lee Holleman, and he had John in 1999 with his third wife, Jennifer Winkley.
The writer divorced his second wife, Annie DeLisle, in 1981, and he has a brother, two sisters and two grandchildren.
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