Cormac McCarthy, the acclaimed fiction writer whose books were regarded as American masterpieces by critics and legions of fans but who refused to offer insight into what had inspired them or what they might mean, has died.
Widely regard as one of America’s greatest living writers, McCarthy died on Tuesday of natural causes at his home in Santa Fe, N.M., according to his publisher, Knopf. He was 89.
Often set in the backwoods of Tennessee or the great wide open of the Old West, McCarthy’s novels took violence to a nearly hallucinogenic level as he spooled out stories of murderous bounty hunters, drug deals gone fatally wrong and life in a post-apocalyptic netherworld.
