Who was Cormac McCharty, the writer who made one feel alive in a universe in crisis
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One of the greatest American novelists of his time has died at the age of 89. “Heaven is sitting in a room with a blank page,” he said. Among the main works “No country for old men” and “The Passenger”
Five years ago word got around that he was dead and Penguin Random House ran to shut the rumors down. Even if it was plausible. Cormac McCarthy passed away today at the age of 89. For years, only what was known about him was in the fourth of his novels and little else that emerged from a couple of long stories about his life as a great recluse in contemporary literature. That he didn’t have an email address, cell phone or social media account. That he avoided publicity and only rarely surfaced, like a whale, to make cryptic statements to the press. “THEMy perfect day,” he told the Wall Street Journal, “is sitting in a room with a blank sheet. This is heaven”.
When Der Spiegel went to interview him in 1992, McCarthy drew a bleak picture of contemporary culture. “Poetry, painting, music, all irretrievably disappeared, all covered up in the West”. Harold Bloom thought him the only living writer who was already a classic. And named him one of the four greatest American novelists of his time, along with Philip Roth, Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon, and called McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian (1985) “the greatest single book since ‘While died’ by Faulkner”.
“I don’t remember ever giving our Lord particular reasons to smile at me, but he smiled at me”, reads “No country for old men”. He lived in Santa Fe, employing mostly black hole scientists. “I think the notion that the human species can somehow improve, that everyone can live in harmony, is a very dangerous idea,” he told Vanity Fair. “Those who are spoiled by this idea are also the ones who will sell their souls, their freedom”. He was one of the few writers who made one feel alive in a universe in crisis.
In 2007 McCarthy took part in one of the most unlikely cultural events when he agreed to be interviewed by Oprah Winfrey. He looked uncomfortable in the spotlight. “I don’t think it’s good for your head,” he told Oprah of the interview. “You spend a lot of time thinking about how to write a book, you probably shouldn’t talk about it. You probably should.” Luckily he had had time to publish “Il Passeggero”. A masterpiece for the eyes and the heart.
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Giulio Meotti has been a journalist for «Il Foglio» since 2003. He is the author of numerous books, including We will not stop dancing. The untold stories of the martyrs of Israel (Capalbio Award); They killed Charlie Hebdo; The end of Europe (Capri Prize); Israel. The last European state; The suicide of Western culture; God’s Tomb; Notre Dame burns; The Last Pope of the West? and Europe without Jews.
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