The Latest Breaking News from Cormac McCarthy

The film-maker, who is also set to adapt Blood Meridian, reflects on his friendship with the late author, ‘a monumental artistic force’

The novelist Cormac McCarthy was suspicious of punctuation, profoundly interested in violence, respected skill and physical labour, and loved the richness of the English language. He was particularly fond of short, declarative sentences and the word “and”.

Endings, extinctions, last things preoccupied Cormac McCarthy from the start to the recent close of his 60-year career as a writer of fiction and, occasionally, drama for stage or screen. His first novel, The Orchard Keeper (1965), ends with the word “dust”. His final novel, Stella Maris (2022), allows only…

In his obituaries, Cormac McCarthy has been widely praised as a descendant of William Faulkner and Herman Melville among others, those excavators of the American spirit whose biblically influenced prose raised narratives to tragic and poetic heights