Cormac McCarthy, who died on June 13, 2023, at the age of 89, is often characterized rather narrowly as a Southern writer, or perhaps a Southern Gothic writer.
McCarthy did lean heavily on his Tennessee upbringing in his first four novels, and he set many others in the deserts of the Southwest U.S. However, as a writer, he saw himself as a part of an expansive literary community, one that stretched back to the classical and Elizabethan periods, and one that drew on a variety of genres, cultures and influences.
