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Cormac McCarthy

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Couldn't Care Less. Cormac McCarthy in conversation with David Krakauer
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Cormac McCarthy


Born
in Providence, Rhode Island, The United States
July 20, 1933

Died
June 13, 2023

Genre
Fiction

Influences
William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beck ...more


Cormac McCarthy was a highly acclaimed American novelist and screenwriter celebrated for his distinctive literary style, philosophical depth, and exploration of violence, morality, and the human condition. His writing, often characterized by sparse punctuation and lyrical, biblical language, delved into the primal forces that shape human behavior, set against the haunting landscapes of the American South and Southwest.
McCarthy’s early novels, including The Orchard Keeper and Outer Dark, established him as a powerful voice in Southern Gothic literature, while Blood Meridian (1985) is frequently cited as his magnum opus—a brutal, visionary epic about violence and manifest destiny in the American West. In the 1990s, his "Border Trilogy"—All th ...more

Combine Editions

Average rating: 4.03 · 1,928,483 ratings · 152,830 reviews · 46 distinct works • Similar authors
The Road
really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1,028,823 ratings — published 2006 — 143 editions
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No Country for Old Men
4.17 avg rating — 244,427 ratings — published 2005 — 176 editions
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Blood Meridian, or, the Eve...
4.15 avg rating — 217,118 ratings — published 1985 — 186 editions
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All the Pretty Horses (The ...
4.06 avg rating — 145,273 ratings — published 1992
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Child of God
3.82 avg rating — 54,869 ratings — published 1973 — 85 editions
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The Crossing (The Border Tr...
4.17 avg rating — 47,072 ratings — published 1994 — 136 editions
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The Passenger (The Passenge...
3.57 avg rating — 37,273 ratings — published 2022 — 3 editions
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Cities of the Plain (The Bo...
4.13 avg rating — 31,688 ratings — published 1998 — 95 editions
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Suttree
4.21 avg rating — 28,016 ratings — published 1979 — 81 editions
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Outer Dark
3.89 avg rating — 25,333 ratings — published 1968 — 2 editions
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More books by Cormac McCarthy…

Series by Cormac McCarthy

All the Pretty Horses The Crossing Cities of the Plain
(3 books)
by
4.10 avg rating — 231,034 ratings

The Passenger Stella Maris
(2 books)
by
3.68 avg rating — 60,910 ratings

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Quotes by Cormac McCarthy  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”
― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
4100 likes
Like

“You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road
2798 likes
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“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.”
― Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
tags: healing, injuries, memory, past, reality, scars, time
2763 likes
Like

Polls

February 2015 New School Classic Poll

1958, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, 209 pages
 
  10 votes, 18.5%

 
  9 votes, 16.7%

1957, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, 304 pages
 
  7 votes, 13.0%

 
  6 votes, 11.1%

 
  5 votes, 9.3%

1956, Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin, 159 pages
 
  5 votes, 9.3%

1905, The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, 351 pages
 
  4 votes, 7.4%

1921, The Black Moth by Georgette Heyer, 274 pages
 
  2 votes, 3.7%

1981, The Wave by Morton Rhue, 138 pages
 
  2 votes, 3.7%

 
  2 votes, 3.7%

1927, Ashenden by W. Somerset Maugham, 326 pages
 
  1 vote, 1.9%

1969, Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene, 254 pages
 
  1 vote, 1.9%

1955, Requiem for a Wren by Nevil Shute, 285 pages
 
  0 votes, 0.0%

54 total votes
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