Cormac McCarthy showed us America’s violent heart, Martin Pengelly

Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men, the Coen brothers adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel. 

 Cormac McCarthy, who died on Tuesday aged 89, achieved fame relatively late. 

He was nearly 60 when, in 1992, his sixth novel, All the Pretty Horses, brought him mainstream attention. The book was a bestselling award-winner and it was followed by The Crossing (1994) and Cities of the Plain (1998), to form The Border Trilogy. No Country for Old Men (2005) and The Road (2006) sold well and won awards too, the latter landing a Pulitzer. Both became hit films, made by the Coen brothers and John Hillcoat respectively. Then, after a 16-year long silence, McCarthy’s final books arrived in 2022: The Passenger and Stella Maris. The paired novels met with mixed reactions, particularly the austere Stella Maris, a book-length conversation between a suicidal mathematical prodigy and her therapist. Reviewers wondered at McCarthy’s attempt to write a female lead; McCarthy wrote about men, mostly. But in Stella Maris there were flashes of his classic style too, of his mordant wit and stark description.

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