geoff: Cormac Mccarthy died
today at his home instead of a
New Mexico.
His books often focused on loss
and bloodshed set everywhere
from the American west to a
post-apocalyptic world.
They were often with moral
ambiguity which included some of
his best-known works such as "No
country for old men" and"the
road."
Critics likened him to Faulkner,
Hemingway and Melville.
Joining us as the author of many
novels and a literary
critic himself.
Thank you for joining us.
Cormac Mccarthy was one of our
greatest writers, known for his
violent and bleak depictions,
the dark view of the human
condition, but you never really
wrote an uninteresting sentence.
What informed his approach to
writing?
>> Well, cormac Mccarthy was
kind of a hybrid of the great
American novelist of the last
150 years.
For some reason, he channeled in
an authentic way, not that he
was copying others, everybody
from Melville on.
He was a very masculine
novelist.
That needs to be noted.
His last novel was narrated by a
female character, something he
had been preparing for for 50
years.
He was very settled in his
tradition.
He absorbed all the great
writing and somehow he managed
to channel it in a new way as
though it came from his deepest
self.
It was as though he was a river
that all the other rivers flowed
into.
Geoff: He was relatively obscure
for most of his career and when
fame and acclaim eventually
found him, he really a board
talking about -- abhorred talk
about his books.
Is it fair to say he was the
most celebrated reclusive writer
since J.D. Salinger?
Walter: We have a few celebrated
reclusive writers in this
country, but Mccarthy, who did
get around.
He just lived a very private
life.
It was not as though he was
completely hiding out and didn't
want his photograph taken.
But, he was hard to meet.
You have to go to Santa fe.
You had to seek him out.
He was not pushing America away.
He just wanted to do his
business and his business was
the page, and that was where he
focused himself.
Geoff: You reviewed all of his
books.
What lines or passages stuck
with you, resonated with you?
Walter: I cannot claim to have
reviewed all of them.
I have reviewed quite a few of
them.
Mccarthy wrote every genre.
He wrote a great suspense novel,
"No country for old men."
A great historical, almost
horror novel in "Blood
meridian."
And a dystopian science fiction
novel in "The road."
That is what I think of most of
these days because it dealt with
war and an uncertain future, and
perhaps an apocalypse on the
horizon for a country much like
the U.S.
It is a very haunting book.
At the very end of it where he
looks back at the American
landscape through a clear stream
back into the primeval,
pre-civilization of this
continent really sticks with me
now.
Geoff: How do you think Mccarthy
and his body of work, how will
it be remembered?
Walter: It is going to be
remembered with extreme
fondness, respect, and I think
affection.
He was a popular novelist.
Once he got going with all the
pretty horses in the early
1990's, he became a best-selling
American novelist whose books
were made into movies and whose
work became familiar.
When he died today, it was not
just literary people who started
texting me and saying can you
believe it?
It was people of all kinds.
The general reader.
We don't think the general
reader exists in the united
States anymore, but she does, he
does and they do,.
Cormac wrote for all of them.
Geoff: How does his influence
show up in contemporary writing?
Walter: Well, in some ways, he
was a writer of ancient prose.
He sounded at times like the
bible, at times like ancient
philosophical texts.
He really combined knowledge of
the past and present in a way
few do here.
I think he will be remembered as
a kind of gold standard for a
very strong, minimalist American
prose.
His early books were anything
but minimalist.
If you look at "Blood meridian,"
it was a book that might have
been written by a mad prophet of
the desert in the year 0.
Geoff: Walter kirn, thank you
for joining us as we acknowledge
and pay tribute to the many
contributions of cormac