Cormac McCarthy Dies: Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Of No Country For Old Men, The Road & Blood Meridian Was 89

Cormac McCarthy, generally considered one of America’s greatest living authors, has died. His death was confirmed by his son, John McCarthy. He was 89.

McCarthy is best known for books such as Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West; The Road, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and No Country For Old Men, which was adapted into the Coen Brothers’ Oscar-winning film. His other published works include The Orchard Keeper, Outer Dark, Child of Dark, Suttree, All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain. All the Pretty Horses, The Road and No Country were adapted for film by Billy Bob Thornton, John Hillcoat and Joel and Ethan Coen, respectively.

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New Regency Adapting Cormac McCarthy's 'Blood Meridian' Into Feature Film With John Hillcoat Directing

Deadline last month exclusively reported that Hillcoat is set to direct Blood Meridian for New Regency. The sprawling novel is widely considered one of the greatest works of American literature. Published in 1985, Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West is an epic tale of the violence and depravity that attended America’s westward expansion which brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of a 14-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into a nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving. A central figure in the book is the enormous, pale, hairless Judge Holden, whom McCarthy described as a “grotesque patchwork of up-river Kurtz and Milton’s Satan.”

Literary critic Harold Bloom was among the book’s first proponents, calling it “sublime” and “worthy of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.” William Dalrymple – and many others – have held Blood Meridian up as “the great American novel.” The New York Times and Bloom both described McCarthy’s prose in the book as “Faulknerian.” The work’s sprawling, unorthodox nature led many to consider it unfilmable.

Among those who have attempted to adapt the book are Ridley Scott, William Monahan and James Franco.

McCarthy and his son, John, are executive producers on the project.

His books have been published in 48 territories across the globe, winning awards including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Coens’ No Country is perhaps the most iconic adaptation of his work for film and won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, upon its release in 2007.

Notoriously press-shy, McCarthy granted few interviews. In 1992 he told The New York Times, “Of all the subjects I’m interested in, it would be extremely difficult to find one I wasn’t. Writing is way, way down at the bottom of the list.”

Oprah Winfrey chose McCarthy’s The Road as the April 2007 selection for her massively-popular Book Club. As a result, McCarthy agreed to his first television interview. In the conversation, which aired on The Oprah Winfrey Show, McCarthy told Winfrey that he did not know any writers and much prefers the company of scientists. He also spoke about how his son inspired the post apocalyptic father-son journey depicted in The Road.

McCarthy later adapted his play The Sunset Limited into a screenplay for Tommy Lee Jones to direct and exec produce. Jones who starred in the 2011 project, opposite Samuel L. Jackson.

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Pulitzer-Winning ‘The Road’, ‘No County For Old Men’ Author Cormac McCarthy Dies At 89

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