Today is the birthday of Cormac McCarthy

from Writer's Almanac (Garrison Keillor, Minnesota Public Radio list serv):

Today is the birthday of Cormac McCarthy (1933), born Charles McCarthy Jr. in Providence, Rhode Island. His novels tend to follow the Southern Gothic tradition, and he's been compared to William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, and Truman Capote. Richard Woodward, of the New York Review of Books, wrote, "A man's novelist whose apocalyptic vision rarely focuses on women, McCarthy doesn't write about sex, love or domestic issues." He's known for his "Border Trilogy": All the Pretty Horses (1992), The Crossing (1994), and Cities of the Plain (1998). Blood Meridian (1985) commonly turns up on "Best Novels of the 20th Century" lists, and The Road (2006) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.


He grew up outside Knoxville; his dad was a lawyer who used to work for the Tennessee Valley Authority. The McCarthys lived in a big white house on a fair-sized bit of land and were considered rich, since most of their neighbors lived in shacks. He had a remarkable number of hobbies as a kid, but reading and writing weren't on the list until his early 20s. He sent his first novel, The Orchard Keeper (1965), to Random House, because that was the only publisher he'd ever heard of. Somehow, the manuscript found its way to William Faulkner's former editor, Albert Erskine. Erskine bought the book and was McCarthy's editor for 20 years.

McCarthy likes to be left alone, and he grants very few interviews. When he does, he rarely wants to talk about his work, preferring one of the hundreds of other subjects he's interested in. "Writing is way, way down at the bottom of the list." He's said that he doesn't understand authors who don't want to tackle "life and death" themes, and that he much prefers the company of scientists to that of writers.