In the 1970s, a young and upcoming author wanted to escape the press and media. Where did he go? A city called El Paso, known for its location next to the Mexican border, diverse culture, breathtaking mauve sunsets, stunning mountains, and sinfully delicious food. Cormac McCarthy moved to El Paso in 1976, looking to isolate himself from the media spotlight. He drew inspiration fr
om the culture, language, and landscape of the borderland. He was not incredibly involved with the community but depicted El Paso and the Old West in print countless times.
McCarthy was born to Charles Joseph and Gladys Christina McGrail McCarthy in Rhode Island on July 20, 1933, the third of six children and the eldest son. His parents named him Charles, after his father, but he renamed himself Cormac after the Irish King. However, the Cormac McCarthy website says that some claim his parents legally changed his name to the Gaelic equivalent of "Son of Charles." His parents raised him Roman Catholic, as he attended Catholic High School in Knoxville, Tennessee. In his first-and-now-classic interview with Richard Woodward of The New York Times, McCarthy discusses the discord with his parents: "I was not what they had in mind. I felt early on I wasn't going to be a respectable citizen. I hated school from the day I set foot in it." About his sense of alienation, during an odd moment with Woodward he reflects, "I remember in grammar school the teacher asked if anyone had any hobbies. I was the only one with any hobbies, and I had every hobby there was. There was no hobby I didn't have. Name anything, no matter how esoteric, I had found it and dabbled in it. I could have given everyone a hobby and still had 40 or 50 to take home."
Upon graduation, he enrolled in 1952 at the University of Tennessee, and in 1953 McCarthy joined the Air Force, serving four years, two stationed in Alaska, where he hosted a radio show, sparking his love for reading. In an interview with The New York Times in 1992, McCarthy exclaims, "I read a lot of books very quickly," a testament to the voracity to which reading hit him.
Image caption: Cormac McCarthy, Suttree dustjacket. Courtesy of Wikimcdia Commons
McCarthy returned to the University of Tennessee from 1957 to 1959, publishing two stories, "A Drowning Incident" and "Wake for Susan," in the university literary magazine The Phoenix, and called himself C.J. McCarthy, Jr. He then won the Ingram-Merill Award for creative writing in 1959 and 1960.
With no degree in hand, McCarthy left college for good and moved to Chicago, where he allegedly worked in an auto repair shop as a mechanic. He invested his off time in writing his first novel, The Orchard Keeper, a story of a boy and two older men who weave in and out of his young life. McCarthy met his first wife, Lee Holleman, who had also been a student at the University of Tennessee. They settled down in Sevier County, Tennessee, and had a child, Cullen, but it was not enough to keep the marriage from ending soon. Incidentally, Lee McCarthy published books of her poetry, including Desires Door, a co-winner of the 1991 Nicholas Roerich Poetry Award.
Before publishing his first book, The Orchard Keeper, in 1965, which received good reviews but was not a big hit, McCarthy received a traveling fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He planned to use the money to travel to Europe and visit the home of his ancient ancestors, who had built Blarney Castle. He boarded a large boat called the Sylvania and headed to Ireland. While on board, McCarthy met Anne DeLisle, a young singer/dancer who happened to be working as a crew member on the ship. They got married in England in 1966, the same year he received The Rockefeller Foundation grant. With this grant money, McCarthy and Delisle traveled Europe before settling in the artist colony of Ibiza. McCarthy finished writing and revising his second novel, Outer Dark.
Likely due to DeLisle's insistence, the couple moved back to America, to Rockford, Tennessee, near Knoxville. Outer Dark, published in 1968 to good reviews, still lacked reader interest. Child of God, McCarthy's third book, published years later in 1973, unlike the first two, drew mixed reviews. McCarthy's website claims that some were "praising it as great, while others found it despicable."
According to Delisle and The New York Times , the McCarthys were poor. "We were bathing in the lake," DeLisle says. With McCarthy disconnected from the literary world at the time, Delisle tells Michael Hall of Texas Monthly, "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." McCarthy spent the next few years working on a screenplay called The Gardener's Son, based on actual events and airing on PBS. Richard Pearce, a director for the show, tells Woodward of The New York Times "He has more intellectual interest than anyone I've ever met." McCarthy and Delisle separated in 1976 and eventually divorced a few years later. It was later that year that McCarthy moved to El Paso, Texas.
At 43, twice divorced, unannounced, unnoticed, and living off literary fellowships, McCarthy arrived in El Paso. Many argue that this was a turning point in McCarthy's career. A few years after moving to El Paso, he published Suttree, in 1979, a book that had been part of his writing life on and off for 20 years and is considered by many to be his best work to date, critics maintaining that it is his finest novel ever. However, it carried negative reviews and was still not getting the recognition McCarthy merited.
McCarthy, who had always been fascinated by the Southwest, decided it was time for a change. His next novel, Blood Meridian, is an apocalyptic Western set in Texas and Mexico during the 1840s and based heavily on actual historical events centered on cowboys and Indians. McCarthy engaged in extensive research, going through the trouble of visiting every location mentioned in the book; he even learned Spanish to research historical events. His first example of Western writing, Blood Meridian, published in 1985, was lightly reviewed at the time but is now considered a landmark in McCarthy's career.
Image caption: Cormac McCarthy, 1968. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
After publishing his fifth book, McCarthy's publisher, Albert Erskine, his long-time editor at Random House, retired, forcing McCarthy to find another publisher. Picked up by Alfred A. Knopf, McCarthy celebrated the most exposure he had ever had. As a favor to Erskine, he even agreed to do the The New York Times interview, the only interview he had ever given by that time.
McCarthy met Woodward in Mesilla, New Mexico. They talked over lunch and discussed McCarthy's career. "McCarthy appreciates wilderness - in animals, landscapes, and people." Woodward explains how McCarthy had no connection to the literary lifestyle. He never taught nor wrote journalism. He did not sign books, nor did he grant interviews. He did not have an agent throughout his career, and not one of his books sold over 5,000 hard copies. Woodward describes him as an "engaging figure, funny, optimistic, and a world-class talker despite recent beliefs."
McCarthy tells Woodard about his first house in El Paso. It was a stone cottage behind a shopping center. McCarthy admits to doing his laundry at the local laundromat, eating his food off a hot plate, and even cutting his own hair. Woodward estimates that McCarthy had about 7,000 books in storage lockers, a testament to his love for reading and writing. McCarthy explains that when he first reached El Paso, he stopped drinking. He tells Woodward, "If there is an occupational hazard to writing, it's drinking." McCarthy admits to being an avid and skilled pool player and bowler. Woodward tells a story:
McCarthy was on a team, playing at a pool hall one afternoon, a loud and youthful establishment in one of El Paso's ubiquitous malls ... an incongruous setting for a man of his conservative demeanor ... McCarthy ignores the video games and rock-and-roll and patiently runs out the table. But more than one of his friends describes McCarthy as a 'chameleon, able to adjust easily to any surroundings and company because he seems so secure in what he will and will not do.'
McCarthy finishes the interview with how he loves El Paso, how "everything is interesting. I do not think I've been bored in 50 years."
McCarthy's next book was part one of The Borderland Trilogy, some of his best work set in the vast desert of Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico. All the Pretty Horses was the first in the trilogy. El Paso was a considerable influence on these books. A friend of McCarthy's tells Robert Draper of Texas Monthly, "El Paso was one of the last real cities left in America," a city that adds a bit of remoteness, with the ability to move freely and get lost. All the Pretty Horses, published in 1992, was McCarthy's first big hit. It became a sensation, garnishing great reviews, and selling 190,000 hardcover copies in under six months, and nationally hailed by The New York Times
McCarthy purchased a new pickup truck and kept on writing. 1994 saw the release of the second book in the trilogy, The Crossing. With a first printing of 200,000 copies, it attracted great reader attention, taking place in the Northern Mexican mountains. It features the tale of Billy Parham's attempt to return a trapped she-wolf to its home in the northern Mexican mountains and the tragic consequences of his adventure. The third installation, Cities of the Plain, unites John Grady Cole, the main character of All the Pretty Horses, with The Crossing's Billy Parham and centers on Cole's doomed relationship with a Mexican prostitute. Published in 1998 and not as heralded as the previous two, it is mainly known for its epilogue, which reaches back to Suttree in its imagery, and simultaneously casts the entire Borderland Trilogy in a new and fascinating light,unifying the previous two volumes of the trilogy.
Around the time of the Cities of the Plains publication, McCarthy married again, this time Jennifer Winkley, who had just turned 33 and had a degree in English and American literature from the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). They had one child, John Francis, born in 1999, and bought a home in the Coronado Country Club area high on the Franklin Mountains overlooking the city.
McCarthy built a tight-knit group of friends, one of which included his neighbor, local UTEP writer Rick DeMarinis, a gifted writer in his own right. "His circle of friends is indicative of El Paso's oddball jet set. They include attorney and airplane collector Malcolm McGregor; clothing industry heir Jim Farah and his photographer wife, Cynthia; U.S. magistrate Janet Ruesch; sculptor James Drake; rancher Ralph "Punko" Lowenfield; and local rare-book dealer Irving Brown of HI Books." McCarthy had close friends he went out with and even had them pick him up. He never discussed his writing life with them; they had no idea he wrote until one of them found one of his books.
McCarthy loved to talk about anything ... but literature. That said, he lived in El Paso for roughly 20 years and did little to nothing for the community. He would not sign a book, show up to any local occasion in his honor, or grant an interview. El Paso writer Debbie Nathan complains about how he would not participate in any local reading festivals or book signings, saying, "He won't take the most minimal role in the community." McCarthy rejected El Paso Herald-Post columnist Betty Ligon countless times for an interview. In the The New York Times interview, Woodward states, "The El Paso Herald-Post held a dinner in his honor. He politely warned them that he wouldn't attend and didn't. The plaque now hangs in the office of his lawyer." To no avail, people did anything they could to catch a glimpse into the life of one of the most private authors. They would even dig through his trash to make sure he was, in fact, an average person.just like the rest of us. Woodward asserts that "McCarthy's silence about himself has spawned a host of legends about his background and whereabouts. Esquire magazine recently printed [in 1992) a list of rumors, including one that had him living under an oil derrick."
Soon after the birth of their son, McCarthy and his family had moved and lived on the outskirts of Santa Fe, where he took a position as a writer in residence with the then Santa Fe Institute. In 2005 McCarthy published what might be considered his most well-known novel. No Country for Old Men takes place around the Mexican border of Juarez and El Paso, where rustlers have given way to drug runners and small towns have become free-fire zones. The novel, later written into a screenplay, received four Academy Awards. However, in 2006 came perhaps McCarthy's most outstanding achievement, The Road. It would win the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 2007 and the Jam
es Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Chosen for Oprah Winfrey's book club, McCarthy was offered an interview with Oprah, and much to everyone's astonishment, he accepted.
The interview aired on June I, 2008, and began with McCarthy cracking jokes Iike, "This is a first for me." McCarthy discusses how he never feels writing is a chore, enjoying it and looking forward to it. He says he looks to embrace the challenge: where most would give up, he thrives. McCarthy explains his vision in drafting books, telling Oprah that he always has this perfect creation in mind, something he will never achieve but something that keeps him on the path of striving for greatness. McCarthy mentions he wakes up every day thinking he will do something he has never done before.
The interview shifts to The Road. Oprah asks, "What was the inspiration for this book?" McCarthy replies:
Four or five years ago, my son !John, then aged three or four] and I went to El Paso, and we checked into the old hotel there. And one night John was asleep. It's about two in the morning, and I went over and just stood and looked out the window at this town. There was nothing moving but I could hear the trains going through, a very lonesome sound. I just had this image of what this town might look like in 50 or 100 years ... fires up on the hill and everything being laid to waste, and I thought a lot about my little boy. So, I wrote two pages. And then about four years later I realized that it wasn't two pages of a book, it was a book, and it was about that man and that boy.
McCarthy dedicated the book to his son, John Francis.
Image caption: Cormac McCarthy, 1973 Child of God dustjacket. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
McCarthy is a one-of-a-kind, utterly unique author. He has developed themes of isolationism by cutting himself off and living in solitude in El Paso. In multiple novels, the characters that try to coexist with other people end up meeting their end, reflecting on McCarthy's view on American society as we struggle to find the difference between sanity and triumph. Violence is prevalent throughout his novels. He says that violence is part of American society. McCarthy tells The New York Times "There's no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous."
He also shows distrust for the law, a common theme in his books. His characters live outside the law and fend for themselves, all stemming from his ideology of isolationism and solitude. He believes living outside the reach of laws and rules is true American freedom.
McCarthy brings a different type of writing style to life. He avoids pauses, and punctuations, such as commas, and instead looks to replace them with "and." The style, polysyndeton, is the repetition of conjunctions in succession, something for writers out there to think about. He avoids quotations and separates the dialogue, avoiding the "weird little marks." As an example from No Country for Old Men: "He left the beer on the counter and went out and got the two packs of cigarettes and the binoculars and the pistol and slung the .270 over his shoulder and shut the truck door and came back in." Here McCarthy uses "and" six times, allowing for a fluidity without interrupting commas, which act much like speed humps in a parking lot. McCarthy also incorporates copious amounts of Spanish. He added Spanish to help exemplify the language in his books, mainly in The Borderland Trilogy. McCarthy's style owes much to William Faulkner's - according to Woodward:
In its recondite vocabulary, punctuation, portentous rhetoric, use of dialect and concrete sense of the world- a debt McCarthy doesn't dispute. 'The ugly fact is books are made out of books,' he [McCarthyJ says. 'The novel depends for its life on the novels that have been written.' His list of those whom he calls the 'good writers'- Melville, Dostoyevsky, Faulkner - precludes anyone who doesn't 'deal with issues of life and death.' Proust and Henry James don't make the cut. 'I don't understand them,' he says. 'To me, that's not literature. A lot of writers who are considered good I consider strange.'
In 2017, McCarthy produced and published his nonfiction work, "The KeKule Problem," in Nautilus, theorizing the nature of the unconscious mind and its separation from human language. Of greater interest to McCarthy fans, The New York Times reports that McCarthy, currently 88, will publish two novels, 16 years after his last book, The Road. The two novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris are related and will be released one month apart. The New York Times shares that "the intertwined novels - which represent a major stylistic and thematic departure for McCarthy - tell the doomed love story of a brother and sister. The siblings, Bobby and Alicia Western, are tormented by the legacy of their father, a physicist who helped develop the atom bomb, and by their love for and obsession with one another." A departure from his earlier Southwestern themes, in the two novels, McCarthy tackles more cerebral subjects: the history of math and physics, the nature of reality and consciousness, whether religion and science can coexist, and the relationship between genius and madness.
Reagan Arthur, the publisher of Knopf, says, "He's exploring elements of philosophy and some of the bigger life questions more directly on the page," It is also the first time McCarthy builds a storyline around a female protagonist, Alicia Western, "a math prodigy whose intellect frightens people and whose hallucinations appear as characters, with their own distinct voices." During an interview in 2009 with The Wall Street Journal, McCarthy tells of a novel in progress and describes it as a long book "largely about a young woman." He says, "I was planning on writing about a woman for 50 years. I will never be competent enough to do so, but at some point, you have to try." Jenny Jackson, McCarthy's Knopf editor, writes, "It's a format for Cormac to allow Alicia to explore her obsessions, which I can tell happen to be Cormac's. It's a book of ideas." Jackson further says, "What do you do after you've written 'The Road'? The answer is, two books that take on God and existence."
Image caption: Cormac McCarthy, 2004. Courtesy of Five Books
In I 976 McCarthy arrived in El Paso, a city of over half a million people, largely unnoticed and, except maybe for the literary community, lived largely unnoticed. He did nothing for the community, never making appearances at local festivals or parties in his honor and not even signing books for the local public and his immediate fans, not characteristics one cares to see in someone of celebrity status. However, if there is anything to extract from McCarthy's stay in El Paso, other than bragging rights that he lived here, is the influence of his books, and the El Paso setting featured in several of his novels, for the borderland had a profound influence on him.
The Borderland Trilogy marked a turning point for McCarthy as he had incorporated Spanish, Mexican culture, and the landscape of old El Paso and Juarez. The Franklin Mountains even played a pivotal role in the creation of The Road. Cormac McCarthy loved, and hopefully still does, the city of El Paso, in his way, as he once saw it as a place to get away, escape and live freely. He spent over 20 years in the Desert Southwest city and started his late family here. Hopefully, El Paso will always hold a place in McCarthy's heart. just as El Paso will never forget its most private celebrity ever.
