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8 unusual facts about Cormac McCarthy


Auguste Corteau

In addition to the fourteen novels, novellas and short stories collections he has published over the years, he has also worked extensively as a translator, and has translated into Greek numerous works by masters of prose such as Nabokov, Banville, Updike, Annie Proulx and Cormac McCarthy.

Bryson City, North Carolina

In Cormac McCarthy's 1979 novel, Suttree, the title character winds up in Bryson City after wandering over the mountains from Gatlinburg.

Ches McCartney

Cormac McCarthy's 1979 novel Suttree, set in Knoxville, Tennessee, features a character based on McCartney.

Child cannibalism

In Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road, a father and son encounter a family that consumes a fetus.

Fallout shelter

Cormac McCarthy's book The Road and the accompanying movie has its main characters finding a shelter (bomb or fallout) with uneaten rations.

Gabriel's Story

David Anthony Durham made his literary debut with a haunting novel which, in the tradition of Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses, views the American West through an original lens.

Samuel Chamberlain

Chamberlain is also the author of a harrowing account of his early adventures entitled My Confession: The Recollections of a Rogue. It was the primary source for author Cormac McCarthy's 1985 novel Blood Meridian.

The Last Pale Light in the West

It is a seven-song concept album inspired by Cormac McCarthy's book Blood Meridian with each song based on characters and situations drawn from the novel.


Adriana Lisboa

She translated into Portuguese the fiction, poetry and nonfiction of such authors as Cormac McCarthy, Jonathan Safran Foer, Peter Carey, Margaret Atwood, Maurice Blanchot, and Robert Louis Stevenson, among others.

Alan Bilton

Among the writers Bilton teaches in his Contemporary American Fiction class are Cormac McCarthy, Douglas Coupland, Paul Auster, Junot Diaz, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Jennifer Egan.

Alkek Library

These holdings include The Witliff Collection housed on the Library's seventh floor, the King of the Hill archives, major work of significant writers such as Cormac McCarthy and Sam Shepard, and the Lonesome Dove collection.

Both Flesh and Not

Wallace mentions Omensetter’s Luck by William H. Gass (1966); Steps by Jerzy Kosinski (1968); Angels by Denis Johnson (1983); Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy (1985); and Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson (1988).

John Randolph Neal, Jr.

In Cormac McCarthy's 1979 novel, Suttree, the title character runs into Neal, who had been a friend of his father's, while walking through the streets of Knoxville in the 1950s.

Lauri Pilter

His translations into Estonian include two novels by Philip Roth, The Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy, the chapter "Waiting for Glory" from the novel The Web and the Rock and the novella The Lost Boy by Thomas Wolfe, and Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain.

Linda Catlin Smith

Drawn to an ambiguity of harmony and narrative, her work is informed by her appreciation of the work of writers and painters, including: Marguerite Duras, Cormac McCarthy, Cy Twombly, Giorgio Morandi, Mark Rothko, Agnes Martin, and Joseph Cornell, among many others.

Maps and Legends

"Dark Adventure: On Cormac McCarthy's The Road", originally appeared as "After the Apocalypse", published in The New York Review of Books on February 15, 2007.

Peter Josyph

In 2001, Josyph co-directed the documentary Acting McCarthy: The Making of Billy Bob Thornton’s All the Pretty Horses (Lost Medallion Productions, 2000), which examines the art of acting in relation to literature (the work of Cormac McCarthy), with actors Matt Damon, Bruce Dern, Henry Thomas, Lucas Black, Miriam Colon, Julio Mechoso; screenwriter Ted Tally; DPs Fred Murphy and Barry Markowitz; and director Billy Bob Thornton.

As an author of literary non-fiction, Peter Josyph has explored various forms of memoir, such as two books about reading novelist Cormac McCarthy; two books of eyewitness encounters in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in Lower Manhattan; a book of conversations with surgeon-author Richard Selzer, as well as a book of Selzer's correspondence with him; and ongoing chronicles, in essay and conversation, of his association with jazz composer and trumpet player Tim Hagans.

Sevierville, Tennessee

Much of Cormac McCarthy's 1973 novel Child of God takes place in Sevierville and the surrounding area.

South Knoxville

Celebrities and notable people who are from or have lived in South Knoxville include actors David Keith, John Cullum and Johnny Knoxville, cartoonist Darby Conley, model David White, author Cormac McCarthy, and Pittsburgh Steelers punter Craig Colquitt.

The Border Trilogy

The Border Trilogy consists of three novels written by American author Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain.


see also

Edward Faraday Odlum

A lesser folk legend holds that Robert the Bruce gave a portion of the stone to Cormac McCarthy, king of Munster, in gratitude for Irish support at the Battle of Bannockburn (1314).