RIP Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023)

[Dolfan in NYC]

 

[Ingobernable]

McCarthy was really one of the last great authors of the southern tradition. A man who knew how to write about rain and who absolutely knew that artists talking about their own art is insufferable almost all of the time. 

“McCarthy has never shown interest in a steady job, a trait that seems to have annoyed both his ex-wives. "We lived in total poverty," says the second, Annie DeLisle, now a restaurateur in Florida. For nearly eight years they lived in a dairy barn outside Knoxville. "We were bathing in the lake," she says with some nostalgia. "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."

https://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/19/magazine/cormac-mccarthy-s-venomous-fiction.html
 

I got done with his most recent diptych in winter and there was a guy still evolving his style in his 80s. I’m sorry there’s no more pages to read.