The author of The Road, Blood Meridian and No Country For Old Men embodied a strong Southwestern sensibility, writing often about men grappling with the existence of evil.
Man... :(
(Also for transparency, I chose npr illinois bc it has the least intrusive ads and layoutof all sources I found.)
"How surely are the dead beyond dead. Death is what the living carry with them. A state of dread, like some uncanny foretaste of a bitter memory. But the dead do not remember and nothingness is not a curse. Far from it."
Cormac McCarthy, Suttree
To me, he and Camus illuminate the struggle of life. You make your own reason. The struggle is the reason.
I read Blood Meridian last year, and have honestly never read anything like it before. It’s the most utterly beautiful, most absolutely depraved book I’ve ever read. It’s a masterpiece, and it’s horrific.
Similarly, The Road, which just left me numb when I finished it. Glad I’d read it, but numb.
Blood Meridian is my favorite book I've ever read, but also one of the most challenging. But I've had to read it multiple times (three so far) to fully appreciate it, and I think I need even more to fully get it.
But I can't get it out of my head. The Judge especially just will not get out of my head.
He was a living legend, I'm glad to have read his novels and be at the same timeline. He's simply an incredible author. My first McCarthy book was The Road and I remember thinking that the prose was so simple yet still so powerful.