Publishers Weekly
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Cormac McCarthy’s novels conjure a bleak American landscape in which characters struggle with temptation and only occasionally find enlightenment and redemption, according to this vivid and sweeping biography from Daugherty (Larry McMurtry). Raised in poverty in Knoxville, Tenn., McCarthy spent his early years in the woods, hunting, fishing, and developing the wanderlust that would drive him through life. He studied English at the University of Tennessee in the 1950s but left to focus on writing, immersing himself in the works of Beckett, Dostoyevsky, Faulkner, and Hawthorne. In 1962, Random House editor Albert Erskine rescued the manuscript of McCarthy’s first novel, The Orchard Keeper, from the slush pile, beginning a trusting and often contentious relationship between editor and author. McCarthy’s restless spirit drove him from Knoxville to El Paso, Tex., where he produced the highly acclaimed Border Trilogy, which made him a “brand name,” as Daugherty puts it. He eventually moved to Santa Fe and began working at the Santa Fe Institute, a research center focused on complex adaptive systems, taking more interest in science writing than fiction. Through close readings and detailed plot analyses, Daugherty expertly illustrates that McCarthy’s fiction is “rich with the history of America’s greed and violence, its spiritual yearnings, its stewardship of the earth’s elements, and, most consistently, its linguistic paradoxes.” The result is an astute and penetrating portrait of a literary great. (Oct.)

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A revealing biography of the enigmatic Southwest literary sage. After his death in 2023, McCarthy was honored as the author of multiple classics, most famously 1985’s death-soaked WesternBlood Meridian and 2006’s apocalyptic taleThe Road. Those bleak novels, combined with his infamous reclusiveness, led many to assume he kept a monk-like existence. But biographer Daugherty (Larry McMurtry: A Life, 2023, etc.) uncovers a sociable Southerner prone to carousing. Raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, McCarthy was exposed to rural poverty from a young age, experiences that fueled his early fiction. Nakedly influenced by Melville and Faulkner, he submitted his first novel, 1965’sThe Orchard Keeper, unsolicited to Random House and was all but miraculously rescued from the slush pile by Faulkner’s editor. The good fortune ended there for a long time; his books sold poorly for decades. But a MacArthur “genius” grant in 1981 liberated him, and, in El Paso and later Santa Fe, he made the Southwest his muse. Women were muses, too, awkwardly and uncomfortably: He was neglectful toward his three wives, and his most enduring relationship was with a woman named Augusta Britt, whom he met when she was 16. Daugherty balances the elements of McCarthy’s peculiar genius with well-reported portraits of him as a private yet adventurous figure. Disinterested in the literary world, he used his MacArthur fellowship as a way to meet scientists instead: Fittingly for this most Melvillean of modern authors, he went on whale-watching trips with one expert and spent his later years at the Santa Fe Institute, a scientific think tank. His final years were messy—editors found his final novels sloppy, the institute was entangled with Jeffrey Epstein, and news of his relationship with Britt clouded his posthumous reputation. Daugherty doesn’t neglect these flaws but puts them in the context of a writer who took nobody’s direction. A well-told story of a flinty American figure. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Exceptional literary biographer Daugherty, whose previous subjects include Larry McMurtry and Joan Didion, approaches Cormac McCarthy with the patience of a historian and the instincts of a novelist. Rather than reducing McCarthy to the familiar mythology of the reclusive genius wandering the American Southwest, Daugherty reveals the complicated, contradictory man behind the legend—ambitious yet ascetic, fiercely private yet magnetically social, emotionally distant yet capable of deep attachment. The result is less a monument than a reckoning. Daugherty’s approach is both surgical and sympathetic, deploying a pulsing rhythm that mirrors the haunting cadence of McCarthy’s own writing over nearly six decades in such indelible novels as Blood Meridian (1985) and The Road (2006). We see the young, penniless writer in Tennessee, the restless traveler traversing the world, and the devoted craftsman with a penchant for self-mythologizing. Daugherty balances scholarly rigor with narrative force, making this accessible without sacrificing intellectual depth and humanizing a legend without diminishing the mystery. McCarthy famously avoided the limelight even as his prose burned bright with the violence and beauty of the frontier. Daugherty illuminates this enigmatic figure, navigating the tension between the "hermit of Santa Fe" and the reality of a man drawn to the theoretical research at the Sante Fe Institute, all while exploring the cost of genius and the enduring, stark brilliance of a singular American voice.

Library Journal
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Cormac McCarthy (1933–2023) is arguably one of the greatest American authors in recent history. A Pulitzer Prize winner for The Road, he created gripping, poetic, bleak, devastating insights into the human condition and the struggle for meaning in an uncaring universe. Despite his critical acclaim and fame, he remains an enigmatic figure with a reclusive reputation. This superbly researched, lyrical book from novelist and literary biographer Daugherty (Larry McMurtry: A Life), himself a Pulitzer finalist, breaks down the literary giant into a man who is complex, troubled, and dedicated to his craft. The myth is deconstructed, the curtain pulled back, and McCarthy is revealed as every bit as compelling but now better understood. With prose and insights reminiscent of a McCarthy story, this book follows his family, his upbringing, and his adult life. Daugherty shows the influences that shaped the McCarthy classic stories that are part of the American canon. With a new understanding of McCarthy's life and experiences, readers will want to visit or revisit his body of work. VERDICT Readers interested in American literary history or anyone who's ever read a McCarthy story will be fascinated by this book.—Mason Bennett