Cormac McCarthy - 1933
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I. Biography
Cormac McCarthy was born in Rhode Island in 1933, the third of six children. Originally named Charles, after his father, McCarthy was either renamed Cormac after the Irish King or his family changed his name to the Gaelic form of "son of Charles." When McCarthy was four, his family moved to Knoxville where his father became a lawyer for the Tennessee Valley Authority.
McCarthy attended Catholic High School in Knoxville and the University of Tennessee in 1951 through 1952, where he majored in liberal arts. In the following year after college, McCarthy joined the U.S. Air Force serving for four years, two of which he spent in Alaska hosting a radio show. In 1957, McCarthy returned to the university and published two stories in the student literary magazine, The Phoenix. At the university, he was awarded the Ingram-Merrill Award for creative writing during 1959 and 1960.
McCarthy left the University of Tennessee without a degree and moved to Chicago where he found work as an auto mechanic. In 1965 he wrote his first novel, The Orchard Keeper, which won the William Faulkner Foundation Award for best first novel by an American writer. McCarthy moved to El Paso, Texas in 1976 where he completed Sutree, Blood Meridian, and his western trilogy: All the Pretty Horses (National Book Award winner), The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain.
McCarthy's first novels are quite dark. They depict "the erosion of primitive lives in the Tennessee hills in The Orchard Keeper ," incest in Outer Dark, mass murder in Child of God, "alcoholic decrepitude" in Suttree, and "perhaps the most unyieldingly savage vision of the Old West ever committed to print" in Blood Meridian (Draper).
McCarthy's western trilogy may not be as gothic as his earlier works, but they still reflect his innovative language, his theme of wandering, and his interest in the nature of human evil.
II. Works Cited
http://www.cormacmccarthy.com/cormac.htmDraper, Robert. "The Invisible Man." Texas Monthly 20 (1999): 42-45.
This essay was submitted by a student of Sheryl Row, a teacher at the Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas, Texas.