Cormac McCarthy has been pronounced dead once before. In 2016, a fake message went around on Twitter, including that USAToday assumed for true. But this Tuesday is according to his publisher really happened. The famous American fiction writer has passed away at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico at the age of 89.
Who knows, McCarthy appreciated his own fake death. The worlds he described were dark, apocalyptic, gory. But as far as is known, the American writer has not responded to it. He largely avoided publicity and hardly gave interviews.
“I can’t explain how you make a novel,” McCarthy said The New York Times in a rare interview with the press. “It’s like jazz. They create as they play, and maybe only those who can make it can understand.”
Even without explanation, his books became successful, albeit when McCarthy was around sixty years old. Of All the Pretty Horses won a National Book Award in 1992 and broke through to the general public. It was made into a movie, just like the famous one No Country for Old Men.
Typewriter
McCarthy wrote all his literary work on a typewriter. He bought a lightweight model from a pawn shop in Knoxville in the 1960s for $50. He would write some five million words on it over the next five decades, which famed bookseller Glenn Horowitz likened to “carving out Mount Rushmore with a Swiss army knife.”
The Olivetti typewriter in question fetched a whopping $254,500 (235,832 euros) at Christie’s auction in December 2009, while the auction house had reckoned on something between $15,000 and $20,000. The proceeds went to a research institute in Sante Fe. McCarthy simply ordered an identical model for $11 plus $19.95 shipping.
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