Cormac McCarthya Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who endured decades of obscurity and poverty before the film versions of “All the Pretty Horses,” “No Country for Old Men” and “The road” brought him a wide readership and financial security, died Tuesday in Santa Fe, N.M. His publisher, Penguin Random House, said his son John McCarthy announced his death of natural causes. He was 89 years old.
Extremely reclusive, McCarthy avoided publicity so effectively that one critic observed, “He wasn’t even famous for it.” But Joel and Ethan Coen’s 2008 adaptation of the 2005 novel “No Country for Old Men” put him momentarily in the spotlight; the crime thriller, starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin, won Oscars for best picture, director, adapted screenplay and supporting actor.
While McCarthy’s first novel, “The Orchard Keeper,” was published in 1965, commercial success eluded him until his 1992 National Book Award-winning “All the Pretty Horses” and the film version in 2000 began to change his career.
Set in West Texas between 1949 and 1951, “Pretty Horses” was the first in McCarthy’s frontier trilogy, followed by “The Crossing” in 1994 and “Cities of the Plain” in 1998. But the film The film, directed by Billy Bob Thornton and starring Matt Damon, Penelope Cruz and Henry Thomas, opened to mostly negative reviews.
Peter Biskind reports in his book “Down and Dirty Business” that Thornton had been forced to cut an hour from the film by producer and distributor Harvey Weinstein, although critics questioned whether the additional footage would have improved the ” arty visuals and the film’s leaden pace. “
In 2009, John Hillcoat directed a powerful film version of McCarthy’s 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Road.” A post-apocalyptic father-son story, the film starred Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Charlize Theron and Robert Duvall. Critical reception was largely favorable, but the bleak film opened to modest returns at the box office.
In 2013, director Ridley Scott’s crime drama “The Counselor” was based on an original screenplay by McCarthy. Critics were divided about the film, about the disastrously violent results of a drug deal gone wrong. The film featured A-list actors such as Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz and Penelope Cruz, but for many viewers McCarthy’s excessive philosophical verbiage undermined what was essentially a simple genre exercise.
In the same year James Franco directed and co-wrote what variety called an “extremely faithful” and “appropriately raw” adaptation of McCarthy’s chilling 1973 novel”son of god” which, like the book, was awash in the violence and degradation of its central character, bravely played by Scott Haze.
A big screen adaptation of McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian,” the novel considered by many to be his masterpiece, was in development. In April, it was announced that Hillcoat would once again direct the adaptation with McCarthy’s son John serving as an executive producer.
McCarthy’s television work includes 1977’s “The Gardener’s Son,” a two-hour episode of the PBS anthology series “Visions.” Directed by Richard Pearce, it starred Penelope Allen, Ned Beatty and Kevin Conway. The author adapted his own 2006 play for the 2011 HBO telepic “The Sunset Limited.” Before filming began, McCarthy spent weeks rehearsing with director Tommy Lee Jones, who starred Samuel L. Jackson. Critics found the adaptation alternately claustrophobic: it takes place in one room, gritty and light on plot.
McCarthy also wrote the five-act play “The Stonemason,” first performed in 1995.
In 2022 he published two novels, “El passager” and “Stella Maris”.
Born Charles McCarthy in Providence, RI, McCarthy was 4 years old when his family moved to Knoxville, Tenn. He acted in high school, then was in and out of the U. of Tennessee as a liberal arts major without a degree. While stationed in Alaska with the Air Force in the 1950s, he hosted a radio show.
McCarthy was married three times. He has two sons: Cullen McCarthy, born in 1962 with his first wife, Lee Holleman, and John Francis McCarthy, born in 1999 with his third wife, Jennifer Winkley. He divorced his second wife, Annie DeLisle, in 1981.
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