It’s the very smallest things in a work of art that draw us in and seize us. Most of my books are in the office where I teach, but I have a small bookcase at home where the books that mean the most to me live. The only time I struggled was when it came to Cormac McCarthy. I settled on his first novel, “The Orchard Keeper” (1965). Midway through, a young man walks toward a house, but McCarthy’s way of seeing is utterly uncommon: smoke, “ropy” in its twisting; a red taillight, “bobbing” like a head. Most thrilling is the shadow that acts with a will of its own. His language drew from the whole history of writing in English.
McCarthy’s 60-year career divides neatly into 30-year halves: obscurity and fame. During the 30 years beginning in 1962, he published five novels. Little was known about him beyond author bios. In 1992, “All the Pretty Horses” made McCarthy a household name, winning the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. But the appearance of a proto-biography by art critic Richard B. Woodward forged a creation myth. McCarthy was drawn as a man who shunned publishing, chose poverty for a monastic life, and endured “neglect and hardship.” He was rough-hewn, driving a 14-year-old pickup and living in a tiny cottage behind a shopping center in El Paso.
The idea of McCarthy as a solitary, self-sufficient man predominated until 17 months after his death in 2023, when Vanity Fair published an article about Augusta Britt. McCarthy met her when she was 16 and began a sexual relationship a year later. The conversation became about whether he groomed an underage girl. The life was said to void the art.
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing