It is testimony to Cormac McCarthy’s reputation as a writer of dark and violent fictions that his publishers should explicitly have stated in their press release on Tuesday that his death was due to “natural causes”.
Normally the passing of a famous author at the age of 89 might be regarded as part of the natural cycle of things, but McCarthy’s frequent depictions of gruesome murder plots, and the judicious discussion of suicide in his most recent novel Stella Maris, perhaps induced Penguin Random House to emphasise how the author made his exit in a more conventional manner, garlanded by age and honours.
