US writer Cormac McCarthy dies

McCarthy died Tuesday of “natural causes” at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the age of 89, his agent in New York said. The button publishers and John McCarthy, the writer’s son, also confirmed McCarthy’s death.

Author Stephen King expressed his sadness via short message service Twitter and described McCarthy as “perhaps the greatest American writer of my time”. McCarthy “changed the path of literature,” said Nihar Malaviya, interim director of Penguin Random House. “For 60 years he has shown an abiding passion for his art and for exploring the infinite possibilities and power of the written word.”

Used a typewriter until the end

The writer, who used a typewriter to the end, hadn’t published a new novel for around 16 years after his world bestseller “Die Straße” published in 2006 – and then two at once last year: “The Passenger” and “Stella Maris”, published in German translation by Rowohlt-Verlag at the end of 2022, are now the author’s farewell works. The two books, which are related in terms of content, are about a pair of siblings. “One is a total hit and the other isn’t bad either,” commented the New York Times.

Throughout his writing career, McCarthy gave so few interviews and so seldom appeared publicly that it even made headlines recently when some old local newspaper interviews of him from the ’60s and ’70s surfaced again. McCarthy says he prefers to just stay in bed. “Some days I get my books and my typewriter and just stay there all day – or several days.”

“Hands do the thinking”

Nor can he explain how his novels come about. “It’s like jazz. They create it as they play, and maybe only those who do it can understand that.” He gets ideas that he then lets develop in his head before eventually getting the urge to write them down. “My hands then do the thinking. It’s not a conscious process.” Many of his works are hard to beat when it comes to horror and atrocities. “There is simply no life without bloodshed.”

McCarthy has published around a dozen novels, but for decades the author was only known to a few experts and fans. Hollywood then made him world famous. The western thriller “No Country for Old Men”, based on McCarthy’s novel of the same name, won four Oscars in 2008 – and the author even surprisingly appeared at the award ceremony himself.

Works filmed with Matt Damon, among others

His work All the Pretty Horses (1992) was also made into a film, starring Matt Damon and Penélope Cruz. The book won the coveted National Book Award and became a bestseller. The novel “The Road”, published in 2006, won the Pulitzer Prize, was also made into a film – and was accepted by Oprah Winfrey into her famous book club. Surprisingly, McCarthy gave his consent – and America’s popular talk show hostess even gave one of his extremely rare interviews.

The writer was born in Rhode Island in 1933 and grew up as the son of a lawyer with five siblings in Tennessee. He tried to keep his private life out of the public eye as much as possible – or, as McCarthy once said in one of his early interviews: “I’m actually just very selfish and want to enjoy my life.”