Cormac Mccarthy Biography, Wife, Death

Cormac Mccarthy was an American novelist most known for books such as The Road and Blood Meridian whose death has shocked the wolrd.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author died on Tuesday, June 13th 2023 of natural causes at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Cormac Mccarthy was 89 years old.

In this article, Nigeriabombshell.com presents Cormac Mccarthy biography, wife, career, novels, twitter, the road, blood meridian etc

Cormac Mccarthy Biography & Death

Cormac Mccarthy was an American author and novelist popular for his two seminal novels, The Road and Blood Meridian.

Mccarthy was born on July 20th 1933 in Providence, Rhode Island in the United States of America (USA). He died on June 13th 2023 at the age of 89, just about a month shy of his 90th birthday.

Cormac Mccarthy cause of death is listed as natural causes.

“Cormac McCarthy changed the course of literature,” Nihar Malaviya, CEO of Penguin Random House, said in a statement Tuesday. “For sixty years, he demonstrated an unwavering dedication to his craft, and to exploring the infinite possibilities and power of the written word. Millions of readers around the world embraced his characters, his mythic themes, and the intimate emotional truths he laid bare on every page, in brilliant novels that will remain both timely and timeless, for generations to come.”

Cormac Mccarthy was born Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr. in Providence, Rhode Island, the third of his parent’s six children. He took on the name Cormac for himself, an old family nickname.

His family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee in his childhood where his father worked for the Tennessee Valley Authority as an attorney.

Cormac Mccarthy graduated from parochial school to enrol at the University of Tennessee. He would later drop out and join the Air Force.

He returned to the University of Tennessee in 1957 and dropped out again three years later to focus on writing what became his first novel, “The Orchard Keeper” (1965).

Growing up, he rebelled against his clearly wealthy family. “I was not what they had in mind,” he said of his parents. “I felt early on I wasn’t going to be a respectable citizen. I hated school from the day I set foot in it.”

After publishing a few commercially unsuccessful but building a cult following (none of his first five books sold more than 3,000 hardcover copies), he moved to the American Southwest to research one of his two greatest works, the Blood Meridian.

Although it initially garnered a lukewarm critical and commercial reception, it has since been regarded as his magnum opus, with some labeling it the Great American Novel.

Cormac Mccarthy’s other novels include All the Pretty Horses (1992), the Crossing (1994) and Cities of the Plain (1998) – completing the Border Trilogy. Other novels are No Country for Old Men and The Road, which won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction.

Cormac Mccarthy was famous for his reticence and staying out of the public eye. He was reluctact to make public appearances, teach classes, or give interviews.

In a now famous interview with Oprah Winfrey, Mccarthy told her “I’ll keep on my side of the fence and you stay on yours,”

Cormac Mccarthy married and divorced three wives -Lee Holleman McCarthy, Anne De Lisle and Jennifer Winkley. He had two sons – Cullen and John.

Cormac Mccarthy wife

Cormac Mccarthy most recent wife was Jennifer Winkley. He had been married two times prior.

At the age of 64 in 1998, Cormac Mccarthy wed his third wife, 32-year-old Jennifer Winkley. They had one son, John Mccarthy, whom Cormac had publicly acknowledged as the inspiration for a character in ‘The Road’.

“The Road,” is about a father and son trying to keep moving through a violent, ash-covered world and is dedicated to John Mccarthy.

“A lot of the things that the kid [in the book] says are things that John said,”. Cormac McCarthy told the Journal about his son with his third wife

“John said, ‘Papa, what would you do if I died?’ I said, ‘I’d want to die, too,’ and he said, ‘So you could be with me?’ I said, ‘Yes, so I could be with you.’ Just a conversation that two guys would have.”

Cormac McCarthy and Jennifer McCarthy would get divorced in 2006.

In 2014, Cormac Mccarthy wife Jennifer Winkley was arrested in a bizarre assault case in Santa Fe, New Mexico, according to the L.A Times.

She was arrested on suspicion of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and released on $5,000 bail.

According to arrest records, McCarthy and her current boyfriend, whose name has been redacted, were arguing about space aliens Saturday morning. The boyfriend alleges that McCarthy went into her bedroom alone and came out wearing lingerie, with “a silver hand gun in her v*gina.”

Cormac Mccarthy 2nd wife was Anne De Lisle, a British singer. They met while he was traveling to Europe on an American Academy of Arts and Letters fellowship.

They later married and moved to Knoxville where Cormac Mccarthy gradually converted an old dairy barn into a home.

“We lived in total poverty,” De Lisle told the Times. “We were bathing in the lake. Someone would call up and offer him $2,000 to come speak at a university about his books. And he would tell them that everything he had to say was there on the page. So we would eat beans for another week.”

Cormac Mccarthy divorced his 2nd wife in 1976.

Cormac Mccarthy first wife was poet Lee Holleman McCarthy. They had one son, Cullen.

Like his other wives, Lee Holleman had issues with the eccentric Cormac.

Her obituary after her passing noted she filed for divorce when Mr. McCarthy asked her to “get a day job so he could focus on his novel writing,” even though she was already “caring for the baby and tending to the chores of the house.”

Net Worth

Cormac McCarthy was an American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter who had a net worth of $10 million at the time of his death, according to celebritynetworth.com

Cormac Mccarthy Oprah interview

Cormac Mccarthy was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey in an infamous interview after the popular television host chose The Road as one of her book club titles.

The awkward interview was later described as a ‘bomb’ by Vulture.

“Slouching in an overstuffed armchair, he (Cormac Mccarthy) seemed more like a nice-enough old man, gamely trying to answer the inane questions posed by the overenthusiastic woman sitting opposite.

“Winfrey trotted out such chestnuts as “Where did the idea for this novel come from?” and “Do you have a writing routine?” McCarthy, to his credit, treated the questions seriously, though that may be because he’s the only writer on earth who’s never heard them before,” the publication wrote.

Watch Oprah Winfrey interview Cormac Mccarthy below…

Novels

Cormac Mccarthy published ten novels in order of publication 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), and The Road (2006).

The Border Trilogy

Cormac Mccarthy’s border trilogy include the novels All the Pretty Horses, The Plain and Cities of the Crossing.

The trilogy revolves around the coming of age and adventures of two young cowboys, John Grady Cole and Billy Parham, and is mainly set on the border between the Southwestern United States and Mexico.

Cormac Mccarthy The Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian; or, The Evening Redness in the West is a 1985 epic historical novel by American author Cormac McCarthy, classified under the Western, or sometimes the anti-Western, genre.

McCarthy’s fifth book, it was published by Random House. Set in the American frontier with a loose historical context, the narrative follows a fictional teenager from Tennessee referred to as “the kid”, with the bulk of the text devoted to his experiences with the Glanton gang, a historical group of scalp hunters who massacred Indigenous Americans and others in the United States–Mexico borderlands from 1849 to 1850 for bounty, sadistic pleasure, and eventually out of nihilistic habit.

The role of antagonist is gradually filled by Judge Holden, a physically massive, highly educated, preternaturally skilled member of the gang who is extremely pale and completely bald from head to toe.

Although the novel initially received lukewarm critical and commercial reception, it has since become highly acclaimed and is widely recognized as McCarthy’s magnum opus and one of the greatest American novels of all time.

Some have labelled it the Great American Novel.

After multiple unsuccessful attempts to adapt the novel into a film, it was announced in April 2023 that New Regency is set to produce a feature film based on the novel.

Cormac Mccarthy the Road

The Road is a 2006 post-apocalyptic novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. The book details the grueling journey of a father and his young son over a period of several months across a landscape blasted by an unspecified cataclysm that has destroyed industrial civilization and almost all life.

The novel was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006. The book was adapted into a film of the same name in 2009, directed by John Hillcoat.

The film stars Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee as a father and his son in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The film received a limited release in North American cinemas from November 25, 2009, and was released in United Kingdom cinemas on January 4, 2010.

It received generally positive reviews from critics; the performances of Mortensen and Smit-McPhee garnered praise. It also received numerous nominations, including a BAFTA nomination for Best Cinematography.

Source: Nigeriabombshell.com