Cormac

The Roman philosopher Seneca once proposed an interesting test of literary merit. “When things stand out and attract attention in a work you can be sure there is an uneven quality about it,” he wrote. “One tree by itself never calls for admiration when the whole forest rises to the same height.” The novels of Cormac McCarthy, who died on June 13 at the age of 89, illustrate this idea that the best writers are consistently excellent. In the many tributes to his lyrical and philosophical gifts that have been published over…

William Faulkner is the bard of the American South. Saul Bellow is the supreme chronicler of Chicago. New York is contested territory. For a long time, Wallace Stegner could have laid claim to the West. But that was before Cormac McCarthy hit his stride. PREMIUM Cormac McCarthy, the revered and unflinching chronicler of America's bleak frontiers and grim underbellies, died on June 13, 2023, his publisher said. He was 89 years old. (AFP) To understand the American West, you need to know the land and its…

No modern novelist was as utterly wedded to the apocalyptic sublime as Cormac McCarthy, who has died aged 89 at his home in New Mexico. Throughout a career in fiction that generated 12 novels and two plays and spawned a number of excellent film adaptations, McCarthy’s muse was always the abyss. He wrote about the darkness, violence, horror and chaos he perceived at the core of all creation – not with the hysterical terror of HP Lovecraft, but with an ecstatic lyricism more like that of Muslim mystic-poets rapturously…

The late and great Cormac McCarthy’s most famous novel is probably The Road, a hauntingly well-written and shattering story of a father and son trekking across a lawless America, wiped out by an unspecified cataclysmic event. Much has been made of the author’s sparse style, which combines poetic and surreal descriptions with lithe plotting and bleakly surreal settings: an appealing combination for a motion picture adaptation.The Australian director John Hillcoat brought it to the screen in 2009 with a film that…

Robert Macfarlane. Photograph: www.foxtrotfilms.comRobert Macfarlane: ‘He listened harder to prose than anyone since Melville’British writer and fellow of Emmanuel College, CambridgeAmong the thousand things I could praise in McCarthy’s astonishing body of work – written over 60 years – I want to speak of his prose rhythms. His books proclaimed themselves in the mind’s ear, setting it thrumming and rumbling, piercing it with cries. He listened harder to prose, and thought more about its prosody, than anyone since…

Cormac McCarthy, the acclaimed fiction writer whose books were regarded as American masterpieces by critics and legions of fans but who refused to offer insight into what had inspired them or what they might mean, has died.Widely regarded as one of America’s greatest modern writers, McCarthy died on Tuesday of natural causes at his home in Santa Fe, N.M., according to his publisher, Knopf. He was 89.Often set in the backwoods of Tennessee or the great wide open of the Old West, McCarthy’s novels took violence to a nearly…

Author of The Road and No Country For Old Men died in his home of natural causes, publisher announcesCormac McCarthy has died at the age of 89 on 13 June, the American author’s publisher has announced.McCarthy died in his home of natural causes. His son John McCarthy confirmed the death. Continue reading... Author of The Road and No Country For Old Men died in his home of natural causes, publisher announcesCormac McCarthy has died at the age of 89 on 13 June, the American author’s publisher has announced.McCarthy died…

Image: PeacockFollowing the success of John Wick: Chapter 4, it was a given that Lionsgate would be continuing the assassin-heavy universe of the action series in some capacity. We’ve known for some time that a TV spinoff by the name of The Continental was in the works, and now we’ve got our first idea of what to expect from the series.Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard Nerd Out About Jurassic Park's Returning HeroesSet in New York during the 1970s, The Continental: From the World of John Wick (yes, it’s really called…

Some books arrive predusted with the shimmer of literary myth. Stella Maris is one of them: Cormac McCarthy’s 12th – and likely final – novel, a tale concocted at the Santa Fe Institute, “a thinktank for maverick brainiacs” where the 89-year-old author spends his days discoursing with quantum physicists and clacking away on his portable typewriter, marinating in genius.For a writer who spurns the conventions of punctuation, Stella Maris feels a lot like a full stop, a parting pronouncement on the whole sordid human…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeCormac Roth’s final Instagram post before his death contained a powerful message about doing what you love.The 25-year-old musician, who is the son of Pulp Fiction actor Tim Roth, died on 16 October after a “courageous battle with cancer”, his family announced on Monday (31 October).Roth shared his last post on the social media site on 17 August, which was a video of him wearing a hat…