Cormac McCarthy is gone – but his works remain brilliantly alive

Until yesterday afternoon, Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr. (better known to readers as Cormac) was the greatest living American writer – many would say the greatest living writer, full stop. 

The heir to Melville, Twain, Flannery O’Connor and Faulkner, McCarthy published his first novel, The Orchard Keeper, in 1965 at the age of thirty-two. Set in rural Tennessee, this Southern Gothic fable established the palette he would use to compose his next three novels, each darker than his debut and likewise set in the Volunteer State. 

Born in Providence, Rhode Island, McCarthy moved to Knoxville at age five when his father was hired as an attorney for the Tennessee Valley Authority. The South shaped McCarthy’s sensibility and speech: his voice would sound the soft-vowels of east Tennessee for the rest of his life and his characters’ dialogue would be deeply imprinted by the rough poetry and colloquialisms of the region.