The novelist Cormac McCarthy was suspicious of punctuation, profoundly interested in violence, respected skill and physical labour, and loved the richness of the English language. He was particularly fond of short, declarative sentences and the word “and”.
McCarthy’s much lamented death at 89 has attracted international headlines and a renewed interest in his writing. He leaves behind 12 novels covering historical and speculative fiction.
A journey through McCarthy’s work is not for the fainthearted, nor the weak-stomached. These are stories of society’s outcasts – those who have found themselves out of time, out of place, or simply out of luck. McCarthy’s world is often grim, populated by oddballs, criminals, misfits and hard, violent men.
