Pulitzer-Prize-winning author and preeminent voice of American literature Cormac McCarthy died at 89 years old of natural causes on Tuesday at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
His son, John McCarthy, and publisher Penguin Random House, confirmed the passing of the iconic writer.
“Cormac McCarthy changed the course of literature,” Nihar Malaviya, the CEO of Penguin Random House, said in a statement to NBC News.
“For sixty years, he demonstrated an unwavering dedication to his craft and to exploring the infinite possibilities and power of the written word,” Malaviya said. “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.”
McCarthy was best known for “The Road” and “No Country for Old Men,” which would both eventually be adapted into award-winning films. The author published twelve novels during his lifetime, primarily focused on post-apocalyptic genres about Western civilization and violent tales about the American frontier.
Born Charles McCarthy Jr. on July 20, 1933, in Providence, Rhode Island, the author grew up in an Irish Catholic family with five siblings. At age 4, his family relocated to Knoxville, Tennessee, where his father worked as a lawyer.
“We were considered rich because all the people around us were living in one- or two-room shacks,” McCarthy told The New York Times.
In the early 1950s, McCarthy briefly attended the University of Tennessee before serving in the U.S. Air Force for four years. He would later return to the university for another short stint before dropping out for good. During his time at the education institute, he published two short stories in the student literary magazine “The Phoenix.”
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When he began his writing career, McCarthy changed his first name to Cormac, which some reports indicate was a family nickname given to his father by his Irish aunts. Other reports say he changed the name to avoid confusion with ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s dummy Charlie McCarthy or to honor the Irish chieftain Cormac MacCarthy, who constructed Blarney Castle.
In March 2007, McCarthy described the inspiration behind “The Road” during an interview with Oprah Winfrey for her book club. While taking a trip to El Paso, Texas, with his son, the author said he would watch the town from a window in the middle of the night while his child slept.
“There was nothing moving, but I could hear the trains going through and that very lonesome sound,” McCarthy said. “I just had this image of what this town might look like in 50 or 100 years. I just had this image of these fires up on the hill and everything being laid waste, and I thought a lot about my little boy.”
Daily Wire editor emeritus Ben Shapiro placed “The Road” in his top 10 science fiction novels.
“Nearly all science fiction is, in the end, a meditation on human nature,” Shapiro said. “Here, McCarthy meditates on the nature of parenthood, of life without hope, of carrying a flame where there is only darkness. The tale of a man trying to guide his son through a post-apocalyptic cannibalistic dystopia is essentially just the ancient tale of a man trying to guide his son through a dangerous world, leaving him with values to carry on.”
Following the critically-acclaimed and widespread success of “The Road,” McCarthy stayed silent for nearly 16 years until he published his last two novels, “Stella Maris” and “The Passenger.”
McCarthy, who was said to be a private man, was married and divorced three times and is survived by his two sons, Cullen McCarthy, and John Francis McCarthy.