Pulitzer-Winning Novelist Cormac McCarthy Dead at 89

The American novelist, born in Providence, Rhode Island, penned 12 novels, two plays, five screenplays, and three short stories.

Novelist Cormac McCarthy, who authored “Blood Meridian,” “The Road,” and “No Country for Old Men,” died on Tuesday of natural causes, his publisher Alfred A. Knopf revealed in a statement. He was 89.

Knopf's announcement detailed that McCarthy died at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. McCarthy's death was also confirmed by his son, John McCarthy.

Born Charles McCarthy Jr. in 1933 to an Irish Catholic family, the decorated author reportedly read little in his childhood and adolescence, and it wasn’t until he served in the US Air Force that he began to read more broadly during his station in Alaska.

McCarthy’s work is reminiscent of German Melville or William Faulkner, according to the late literary critic Howard Bloom. His works are often stories that offer violent, post-apocalyptic American frontier tales.

But McCarthy, a very private man often referred to as a “writer's writer," spent much of his career subsisting on grants, eventually winning the MacArthur “genius grant” in 1981.

“I never had any doubts about my abilities,” McCarthy told an American newspaper in 1992. “I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this.”

“Someone would call up and offer him $2,000 to come speak at a university about his books,” echoed Annie DeLisle, his second wife in an interview. “And he would tell them that everything he had to say was there on the page. So we would eat beans for another week.”

McCarthy began to gain widespread recognition after the release of his 1992 book "All the Pretty Horses," which went on to become a New York Times bestseller and win the National Book Award, among other titles.

But it wasn’t until 2007 that McCarthy would become a household name, once Oprah Winfrey picked up his post-apocalyptic novel “The Road” for her book club and introduced it to a wider span of readers. "The Road" also won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Price for Fiction.

Many of McCarthy's novels went on to be adapted into movies; in fact, his novel “No Country for Old Men'' was adapted into a film by the Coen Brothers and won four Academy Awards, including best picture in 2008.

Authors, poets, and other notable celebrities took to Twitter to lament McCarthy’s passing.

“When a great artist dies, there is the moment when the world understands it will never again have a new creation from that mind, that heart, that vast soul. It is a loss beyond measure, but what that soul has left us is a gift beyond time,” poet Joseph Fasano wrote on Twitter.

When a great artist dies, there is the moment when the world understands it will never again have a new creation from that mind, that heart, that vast soul. It is a loss beyond measure, but what that soul has left us is a gift beyond time.

Rest in everything, Cormac McCarthy pic.twitter.com/kM3mVIIw1Z

— Joseph Fasano (@Joseph_Fasano_) June 13, 2023

Stephen King, a renowned American author of horror and supernatural fiction, also took to Twitter to express his mourning.

Cormac McCarthy, maybe the greatest American novelist of my time, has passed away at 89. He was full of years and created a fine body of work, but I still mourn his passing.

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) June 13, 2023

“Death was not hilarious today. RIP Cormac McCarthy. A great favorite,” wrote Patton Oswalt, an American comedian.

Death was not hilarious today. RIP Cormac McCarthy. A great favorite. pic.twitter.com/mqbIgDH0DC

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) June 13, 2023

McCarthy was married three times, but not at the time of his death. He is survived by two of his kids, Cullen and John McCarthy.