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Cormac McCarthy (1933–2023) Tribute List

Wed Jun 14 14:50:51 EDT 2023
By Vocabulary.com (NY)Visual Thesaurus Moderator
Cormac McCarthy, widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers, authored twelve novels, as well as plays, screenplays, and short stories, spanning the Western and post apocalyptic genres. McCarthy's first widespread success was the award-winning All the Pretty Horses. This was the first novel of his Border Trilogy, which included The Crossing and Cities of the Plain. A number of McCarthy’s novels were adapted into films; for example, No Country for Old Men which became a critical and commercial success, winning four Academy Awards. But it was his post-apocalyptic The Road which won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. This tribute highlights McCarthy's illustrious career through quotes and biographical articles.
ultimate
War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.
– Blood Meridian
absolute
He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable....Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.
– The Road
intestate
He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable....Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.
– The Road
implacable
He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable....Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.
– The Road
speculation
He slept and when he woke he'd dreamt of the dead standing about in their bones and the dark sockets of their eyes that were indeed without speculation bottomed in the void wherein lay a terrible intelligence common to all but of which none would speak.
– All the Pretty Horses
govern
Ninety percent of the time. It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people can't be governed at all. Or if they could I never heard of it.
– No Country for Old Men
disparity
He began to suspect some dimensional displacement in these descents to the underworld, some disparity unaccountable between the above and the below. He destroyed his charts and began again.
– Suttree
astrolabe
Crouched in the broken shadow with the sun at his back and holding the trap at eye level against the morning sky he looked to be truing some older, some subtler instrument. Astrolabe or sextant. Like a man bent at fixing himself someway in the world. Bent on trying by arc or chord the space between his being and the world that was.
– The Crossing
sextant
Crouched in the broken shadow with the sun at his back and holding the trap at eye level against the morning sky he looked to be truing some older, some subtler instrument. Astrolabe or sextant. Like a man bent at fixing himself someway in the world. Bent on trying by arc or chord the space between his being and the world that was.
– The Crossing
abyss
"The abyss of the past into which the world is falling," he thinks. "Everything vanishing as if it had never been."
– The Passenger
author
The literary world lost one of its icons on Tuesday when “No Country for Old Men” and “The Road” author Cormac McCarthy died of natural causes at his home in Santa Fe, N.M.
– Los Angeles Times
fiction
The Road was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Literature, and it also won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.
– Cormac McCarthy Biography
novel
Filmmakers adapting Cormac McCarthy’s novel ‘The Road’ followed the ray of hope found in its father-son relationship.
– Los Angeles Times
trilogy
All the Pretty Horses, the first volume of The Border Trilogy, was published by Knopf in 1992. Unlike McCarthy's earlier books, this one became a publishing sensation, garnering many excellent reviews.
– Cormac McCarthy Biography
macabre
A spare and often macabre writer, McCarthy's many novels took a dour view of the human condition and often lushly evoked the sparseness of Appalachia and the American south-west, from brutally violent west Texas in No Country for Old Men, to the forbidding Mexican border in All the Pretty Horses, to post apocalyptic ruin in The Road.
– The Guardian
apocalyptic
A spare and often macabre writer, McCarthy's many novels took a dour view of the human condition and often lushly evoked the sparseness of Appalachia and the American south-west, from brutally violent west Texas in No Country for Old Men, to the forbidding Mexican border in All the Pretty Horses, to post apocalyptic ruin in The Road.
– The Guardian
prolific
He was prolific but reclusive, only granting a few interviews during his lifetime.
– The Guardian
reclusive
He was prolific but reclusive, only granting a few interviews during his lifetime.
– The Guardian
justice
From the start his writing drew comparisons to novelists as different as William Faulkner and Mark Twain, but his themes were always and recognizably his own: justice, despair, the futile but urgent need for hope in a fallen world.
– The New York Times
despair
From the start his writing drew comparisons to novelists as different as William Faulkner and Mark Twain, but his themes were always and recognizably his own: justice, despair, the futile but urgent need for hope in a fallen world.
– The New York Times

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