Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy, who died on June 13th, 2023 at the age of 89, was a titan of literary fiction, celebrated for his philosophical, violent, often deeply moving novels. Our interview about McCarthy’s novels is with Stacey Peebles, a professor at Centre College and editor of The Cormac McCarthy Journal.
“The most famous award he received early on is the MacArthur Fellowship, which essentially allowed him to continue in the process of writing Blood Meridian. It was not until 2006 that he won a Pulitzer for The Road…1992 was the big turning point in his career, since that’s when he published All the Pretty Horses and that was the first bestseller. He published five novels before that, but each one sold fewer than 5,000 copies. So he was kind of scraping by.”
After a publishing hiatus of 16 years, Cormac McCarthy had a duo of psychological thrillers out in 2022: The Passenger & Stella Maris.
Books by Cormac McCarthy
“It’s somewhat loosely based on the history of the Glanton Gang, who were a bunch of murderous outlaws in the southern US in the 19th century. McCarthy is using them as the occasion to think about how one chronicles an unspeakable history, or how one can reckon with a nation that comes from chaos, and what that means for the nation itself…In Blood Meridian, there really is no system at all. If there is one, it’s a kind of debased violent impulse, which is why the novel is both perpetually on the verge of an explosion of violence, and also often, frankly, quite monotonous. Because how else can you depict unsystematized chaos in the long form? Blood Meridian has these 18th-century-style subtitles for its chapters which summarize what is about to happen, and to me these summaries indicate the utter inevitability of the world that McCarthy is describing. By the time you read the chapter itself, it’s effectively already happened, it’s predestined. And the novel ultimately moves towards this kind of dance of the devils. It ends in total bacchanal, with Satan at its centre. It gravitates to what it has always desired, which is true chaos. I can’t mention this novel without mentioning Judge Holden, who is one of the most monumental antagonists in all American literature — a giant, hairless demon in human form, who is present at all sites of human violence.” Read more...
“The Road is a very spare novel by Cormac McCarthy. Humanity has been wiped out, for the most part. There’s a man and his son traveling on a road to try to get to where it’s rumored that sprouts of civilization are starting to grow again. It’s a very minimalistic book. It’s very sparse and elegiac, just with those two characters.” Read more...
Elliot Ackerman, Military Historians & Veteran
“The literary event of the season must surely be the publication of Cormac McCarthy’s first new books since the devastating, Pulitzer Prize-winning, post-apocalyptic The Road in 2006. McCarthy returns now with not one, but two linked novels, which together tell the story of Bobby and Alicia Western, a brother and sister pair tormented by family history—their physicist father helped invent the atom bomb. In The Passenger, salvage diver Bobby stumbles upon a murder mystery while exploring a submerged plane wreck.” Read more...
Notable New Novels of Fall 2022
Cal Flyn, Five Books Editor
The Passenger & Stella Maris
by Cormac McCarthy
Coming back to publishing 16 years after his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road, Cormac McCarthy published two linked novels within a month of each other in late 2022: The Passenger and Stella Maris. They were also immediately made available as a boxset, pictured here.
“It’s an elegant little novel about decidedly inelegant subject matter. I’ve taught it a number of times and I just love how it opens up for the reader. It’s certainly not pyrotechnic or linguistically excessive in the way that both Blood Meridian and Suttree are, but there’s so much going on with it. The reader really has to negotiate her own reaction to the character as the character changes over the course of the book.” Read more...
The Best Cormac McCarthy Books
Stacey Peebles, Literary Scholar
“Readers really respond to it. It is a nice balance of accessible and challenging. The plot is pretty accessible—again, it doesn’t have either the density or the hyperviolence of Blood Meridian—but the language is gorgeous. It’s got sentences, starting from the first page, that will just stop you cold.” Read more...
The Best Cormac McCarthy Books
Stacey Peebles, Literary Scholar
Interviews where books by Cormac McCarthy were recommended
The Best Cormac McCarthy Books, recommended by Stacey Peebles
From All The Pretty Horses to Blood Meridian to The Road, American novelist Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) was a titan of literary fiction for his philosophical, violent, often deeply moving novels. Cormac McCarthy expert Stacey Peebles introduces us to the author’s oeuvre—and tells us that despite its apocalyptic bleakness, The Road is actually McCarthy’s “happiest book.”
The best books on Coming of Age, recommended by Meg Rosoff
The award-winning novelist Meg Rosoff talks about coming-of-age tales, highlighting the wonder of the moment when adolescents find the world suddenly coming into focus.
Notable New Novels of Fall 2022, recommended by Cal Flyn
Fall is a busy time in publishing, as the biggest names in fiction prepare to release new books in the months leading up to Christmas. Here, Five Books deputy editor Cal Flyn rounds up some of the most notable novels of Fall 2022—including two new books from the great American novelist Cormac McCarthy and a sumptuous work of historical fiction from Maggie O’Farrell.
The Best Apocalyptic Fiction, recommended by Elliot Ackerman
“Imagination is a national security imperative,” according to acclaimed novelist, journalist and decorated US Marine Elliot Ackerman. He’s written a novel with retired Admiral Jim Stavridis, about what would happen if the US went to war with China. Here, he talks us through his favourite books of apocalyptic fiction—and the truths they reveal about war, humanity, and literature.
The best books on Wilderness, recommended by Mark Boyle
Author and environmentalist Mark Boyle lived for three years without money; now he lives entirely off-grid and eschews all forms of modern technology, in search of a wilder way of living—and of being more in tune with the natural world. Here he discusses his literary inspirations: the best books on wilderness.
The best books on Zombies, recommended by Greg Garrett
Zombies have returned with a vengeance in recent years, the secret to their undying popularity lying in their ability to embody many different kinds of menace, from social unrest to pandemics, financial insecurity to international terrorism. Greg Garrett, author of Living with the Living Dead, recommends five books to help you prepare for the zombie apocalypse
George Monbiot — with An Essential Reading List
Writer and investigative journalist George Monbiot recommends books that have shaped him, and that are crucial reading for those wishing to navigate the current economic and environmental crises.
The Best Apocalyptic Novels, recommended by James Miller
British novelist James Miller recommends his choice of the best apocalyptic novels
The Best 20th-Century American Novels, recommended by David Hering
The story of America is not one of a manageable unified nation, says novelist and critic David Hering. It may, however, be the story of America’s dream — which is why many of the best American novels have a distinctly dreamlike quality. He picks out five of the best American novels of the 20th century, from 1905 through to 1987.
Esi Edugyan on Books That Influenced Her
Canadian author Esi Edugyan, whose novel Washington Black is shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize, picks five books that have inspired her novels, and shares wisdom on what it means to read fiction today
The best books on Wild Places, recommended by Robert Macfarlane
Robert Macfarlane, author of an acclaimed trilogy of books about landscape and human thought tells us about the intrepid, sometimes misanthropic writers who inspired his own investigation of wilderness. He chooses some of his favourite books of nature-writing.
Aleksandar Hemon on Man’s Inhumanity to Man
When reading books, we often empathize with a main character and find redemption in our emotional response to their fate. But it’s more important to think, says Bosnian novelist Aleksandar Hemon. Here, he picks the best books on ‘man’s inhumanity to man.’
