Cormac McCarthy, widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers, has passed away. Penguin Random House publisher Alfred A. Knopf confirmed that he died on Tuesday, June 13, at the age of 89. He passed away at home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, of natural causes, according to Knopf.
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McCarthy's career spanned over six decades, with his weighty prose taking readers on gritty adventures set in the American Southwest and Southern Appalachians. One of the most celebrated writers of all time, some of his greatest works include the Texas murder mystery, which was adapted into the Coen Brothers' Oscar winning film, No Country For Old Men, as well as Western classic All the Pretty Horses, which earned him the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992. The latter was also adapted into a film starring Matt Damon and Billy Bob Thornton and notably marked the first in his "Borders Trilogy," which also comprised of follow-ups The Crossing and Cities of the Plain.
McCarthy earned the Pulitzer Prize for his grim and grueling post-apocalyptic masterpiece The Road in 2007, which was also adapted into a film starring Viggo Mortensen, chronicling a father and son surviving a dangerous and harrowing journey on foot across the barren United States following an event where nearly all civilization is wiped out.
Potentially one of his most popular works is Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West, an "anti-Western" inspired by real events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s.
Raised in Knoxville, Tenn., McCarthy's Southern gothic writing often earned comparisons to William Faulkner as they similarly followed bleak and violent themes in rural settings. Throughout his celebrated career, McCarthy rarely spoke to the press, so little was known about him despite being one of the most popular writers, especially following his major commercial success following All the Pretty Horses in the early 90s.
McCarthy's final novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris, were published in October and December of 2022, respectively.
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