Author Info
ABOUT
CORMAC MCCARTHY
In this short clip of McCarthy’s interview with Oprah she mentions that this is one of the few interviews he has ever done. It is very interesting to know that he isn’t one who goes and seeks publicity. He seems very down to earth and he seems to wants to fill the pages of his novels rather then boost his own ego. He also comes off very determined when talking about how nothing can be perfected but we still all strive for perfection . It relates to the novel when the man and boy are determined to go down south even when they have no idea what is waiting for them once they arrive. Oprah also ask McCarthy what kind of story it was; if it was about the journey or spiritual journey but he clams its about the man, the boy and they road. He also says that people can read into that however they like. As Tyler mentioned, the boy in the novel is based on McCarthy’s own son. Because it is based on his son I feel that the story isn’t about their journey but the relationship they have together.
McCarthy mentioned what he wants people to get out of the novel which is that people should care more about each other and things around us. He says the novel should allow people to realize that “life is good even when it’s bad”. McCarthy really seems to hope people get something good out of this rather depressing novel which is somewhat unexpected consider what he writes about.
To date, Cormac McCarthy has written ten novels. In order of publication, these are:
- The Orchard Keeper (1965)
- Outer Dark (1968)
- Child of God (1974)
- Suttree (1979)
- Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West (1985)
- All the Pretty Horses (1992)
- The Crossing (1994)
- Cities of the Plain (1998)
- No Country for Old Men (2005)
- The Road (2006)
-Sam
McCarthy’s Life and the Novel
Matt
I think that McCarthy’s son played an important part in the development of The Road. And I mean other than the fact that it was his idea. I think that McCarthy used his son as a model for the son in The Road. I also think that it was his son that inspired the themes of The Road. One of which is of course hope. I think that McCarthy admired the typical childish always hopeful and trusting aspects of children and use that to build the story. This is shown through things like the sons innocent decisions of result in successes. Like in the end when the last thing The father says is not to trust anyone. The first thing the son does is trust some random guy and it turns out he is there to help and has a family of his own, welcoming the boy into it. And at the same time, a lot of bad things happen in doing stuff that the son doesn’t want to do. Like going into the house where they found the cellar full of people. I think that the son in the story was the most important character and was likely a reflection of McCarthy’s kid.
I think that McCarthy’s life also affected the women in the novel. For starters there weren’t very any of them, different from his life as he married a few women. But the main woman in the novel, though only in it a couple of times was the boys mother. Who killed her thus taking herself away from the father and son. This shows the resentment McCarthy had for his many divorces. He was unable to keep a women around and so was the father in The Road.
The father in The Road knew a lot about many different things, he knew about making fires, he was a good shot, he was handy and building shelters from the wind. It seems that he may have been modeled in McCarthy’s view of himself, making this novel a story about McCarthy and his son trying to live in a post apocalyptic world. McCarthy drew on past experiences to build the father character, like renovating the barn. Renovating a barn shows that he was good with his hands, like the father in the book.
Biography: Cormac McCarthy
By Tyler Croll
Originally named Charles (after his father), he renamed himself to Cormac after the Irish King. Cormac McCarthy was born in Rhode Island on July 20, 1933. He has five siblings, two brothers and three sisters.
Cormac is the third born and the eldest son.
He and his family moved to Knoxville in 1937 when he was four, and was raised a Roman Catholic.
In 1951, he attended the University of Tennessee for a major in liberal arts.
In 1953, McCarthy joined the U.S. Air Force and served four years, during the time in which he hosted a radio show.
McCarthy returned to University in 1957 and published his first two stories: “A Drowning Incident” and “Wake for Susan” in the student magazine “The Phoenix”. He then went on to win the Ingram-Merrill Award for creative writing at his school in 1959 as well as 1960.
McCarthy then left University again, this time for good, and worked as an auto mechanic in Chicago and began writing his first novel.
He later married Lee Holleman, who had been a student at the University of Tennessee and later on became an author of many poetry books, and they had a son named Cullen. Not too long after, they divorced.
His first novel, The Orchard Keeper, was published in 1965; great reviews.
McCarthy had received a traveling fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters previously that year and used the money he won to leave America to visit the home of his Irish ancestors. While on the trip, he met Anne DeLisle, a young English singer/dancer and they married each other 1966 in England. The two of them toured southern England, France, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain together and then settled on the island of Ibiza, which was a kind of artist’s colony at the time.
The two of them returned to America in 1967. They moved to Rockford, Tennessee, a town near Knoxville.
1969 after receiving yet another creative writing award, he and his wife moved into a barn near Louisville, Tennessee. McCarthy renovated the barn himself…entirely. He gathered stones, cut and kiln dried wood by himself.
“Child of God” was published in 1973.
From 1974-75, McCarthy worked on the screenplay for a PBS film called The Gardener’s Son, which premiered in January 1977; it was based on historical events.
Anne DeLisle and Cormac McCarthy were separated in 1976 (no children), and McCarthy moved soon after to El Paso, Texas, where he still lives. They were divorced a few years later.
1979 Cormac published his fourth novel, “Suttry”. This book had been written off and on over twenty years, and was said to be his finest work by some critics.
“Blood Meridian” was published in 1985; it received little attention or review, but now is looked at as the turning point in his career by some critics, as well as the finest work he had written overall.
“All the Pretty Horses”, the first volume of The Border Trilogy, was published in 1992. Unlike McCarthy’s earlier books, this one became a publishing dream, receiving many awesome reviews. It became a New York Times bestseller, and sold 190,000 copies in hardcover within the first six months of publication. It finally gave McCarthy the wide readership that had eluded him for many years.
In the mid 1970’s, McCarthy wrote a play and published later in 1994 called “The Stonemason”, a tragedy that explores the fortunes of three generations of a black family in Kentucky.
Soon after, he came out with the second volume of The Border Trilogy, “The Crossing” with over 200,000 copies printed.
The third volume of The Border Trilogy was published in 1998: “Cities of the Plain”. It unites John Grady Cole (main character of All the Pretty Horses) with The Crossing’s Billy Parham, and depicts Cole’s doomed relationship with a Mexican prostitute.
McCarthy then married for a third time, this time until present. His wife’s name is Jennifer and they have one child together, living in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In 2005 McCarthy published “No Country for Old Men”, followed by “The Road” in 2006 in which we are reading and analyzing for our grade 12 University English class! Cormac’s eight year old son inspired him to write this novel, which gives the idea that he is the Papa in the novel and his son is the son.
Perhaps McCarthy’s own inability to adhere to a relationship/make a permanent commitment was inspiration for the mother in The Road. Certainly the distress might cause hims to see some of the world’s general evil toward mankind — charactaristic of the dystopic genre.
Site I used for for Biography – Tyler
http://www.cormacmccarthy.com/Biography.htm
Here’s a great bit of analysis on McCarthy, indicating many of the good and detrimental aspects to his works and himself.
http://quarterlyconversation.com/cormac-mccarthy-paradox-of-choice
This essay talks about McCarthy telling Oprah that he doesn’t care for Marcel Proust or Henry James, as he doesn’t consider them real literature. We can see here how, though he’s able to write good novels, McCarthy isn’t a real literature aficionado. I lost alot of respect for McCarthy, as no one can dislike any of James’ work, or Time Regained. While the author of this piece states how, “In McCarthy it is often seen as an obsession with borders: of personal identity, of physical place, and of spiritual position within an existential realm of conflicting value systems”, I find that in The Road McCarthy has digressed from his usual values as borders, identity and physical surroundings all seem to be displaced with the old world. I would venture to say that this is characteristic of most dystopic works, yet Anthem seems to encompass all of these values, displaying how in The Road McCarthy has developed a writing style unique and of itself.
I’d like to hear more of your ideas comparing The Road and Anthem, Daniel…