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 Oprah’s Book Club selection of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road will thrust the American novelist into the public spotlight – yet McCarthy is known for his strong desire for privacy. It appears he has only given one media interview (to the New York Times, who described him as a “loner”), so it will be intriguing to see what the 73-year-old writer says when Oprah interviews him.
Within literary critic circles, McCarthy, 73, has been compared to William Faulkner and Herman Melville for powerful and sometimes ‘biblical’ prose, while uber-critic Harold Bloom ranked him alongside Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo as one of the great American novelists of the current generation. His work ranges across western, gothic and apocalyptic worlds.
The Road is down-beat tale of a father and son living in a desolate world. It was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle prize and The Guardian newspaper described the book, published in September last year, as “bleak and exhilarating”.
McCarthy has been writing for more than 40 years during which time he has been loved and loathed by critics. His first novel, The Orchard Keeper, was published in 1965 and he has often relied on grants and fellowships from literary foundations for support during his career spent almost entirely away from the limelight.
Born in 1933, he attended the University of Tennessee before spending four years in the US Air Force in the 1950s. He returned to the Knoxville campus and began writing short stories. The Orchard Keeper was edited by Albert Erkskine at Random House, who had also edited Faulkner’s work.
After a stint living in the arts community on the Spanish island of Ibiza, McCarthy published Outer Dark in 1968. A year later, he moved to Louisville where he penned Child of God. In the mid-1970s, he moved to Texas and published Suttree – a book that had been in the works for many years. His next work did not emerge until 1985 when Blood Meridan, or the Evening Redness in the West (an apocalyptic western set in Texas and Mexico in the 1840s and based on real events) was released.
All The Pretty Horses, the first part of a trilogy, was published in 1992 and, like The Road, was a popular success. The second volume, The Crossing, also sold well and Cities of the Plain was published in 1998.
McCarthy’s work is highly collectible, especially his early books. Two copies of The Orchard Keeper are currently being offered for sale at $8,625 and $6,589 respectively. There are just under 200 books signed by McCarthy available on AbeBooks.com – prices for signed copies start around $200.
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