McCarthy, Cormac

McCarthy, Cormac, 1933–, American novelist, b. Providence, R.I. He grew up in Knoxville, Tenn., moved to the Southwest in 1974, and now lives mainly in El Paso, Tex. In finely wrought, acutely observant prose, McCarthy typically portrays a sleazy American South and Southwest filled with appalling poverty, violence, and cruelty. His novels include The Orchard Keeper (1965), his first; Suttree (1979); Blood Meridian (1985); All the Pretty Horses (1992; National Book Award), his best-known work and the first book in his "Border Trilogy"; the next two books in the triad, The Crossing (1994) and Cities of the Plain (1998); No Country for Old Men (2005); and The Road (2006; Pulitzer Prize). Reclusive and something of a cult figure, McCarthy is determinedly nonliterary. Although he won a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" in 1981, he was known only to a small coterie of devoted readers until the 1990s.

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McCarthy, Cormac

 orig. Charles McCarthy, Jr.

(born July 20, 1933, Providence, R.I., U.S.) U.S. novelist. He grew up in Tennessee and dropped out of the University of Tennessee to join the Air Force. He began writing in 1959. His novels, known for their natural observation, morbid realism, and violence, are in the Southern gothic tradition. They include The Orchard Keeper (1965), Outer Dark (1968), Blood Meridian (1985), and the widely read Border Trilogy (All the Pretty Horses, 1992; The Crossing, 1994; Cities of the Plain, 1998). The postapocalyptic The Road (2006; Pulitzer Prize) centres on a father and son struggling to survive after a disaster has all but destroyed the U.S.