In Memoriam 2023: Cormac McCarthy (1933–2023) Tribute List

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.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. ultimate
    furthest or highest in degree or order; utmost or extreme
    War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.
    – Blood Meridian
  2. absolute
    perfect or complete or pure
    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
  3. intestate
    having made no valid will or not disposed of by a legal will
    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
  4. implacable
    incapable of being appeased or pacified
    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
  5. speculation
    continuous contemplation on a subject of a deep nature
    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
  6. govern
    direct or strongly influence the behavior of
    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
  7. disparity
    inequality or difference in some respect
    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
  8. astrolabe
    instrument used to calculate positions of celestial bodies
    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
  9. sextant
    an instrument for measuring angular distance
    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
  10. abyss
    a bottomless gulf or pit
    "The abyss of the past into which the world is falling," he thinks. "Everything vanishing as if it had never been."
    – The Passenger
  11. author
    a person who writes professionally
    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
  12. fiction
    a literary work based on the imagination
    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
  13. novel
    an extended fictional work in prose
    Filmmakers adapting Cormac McCarthy’s novel ‘The Road’ followed the ray of hope found in its father-son relationship.
    – Los Angeles Times
  14. trilogy
    a set of three literary or dramatic works related in subject
    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
  15. macabre
    shockingly repellent; inspiring horror
    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
  16. apocalyptic
    of or relating to a catastrophe
    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
  17. prolific
    intellectually productive
    He was prolific but reclusive, only granting a few interviews during his lifetime.
    – The Guardian
  18. reclusive
    withdrawn from society; seeking solitude
    He was prolific but reclusive, only granting a few interviews during his lifetime.
    – The Guardian
  19. justice
    the quality of being fair, reasonable, or impartial
    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
  20. despair
    a state in which all hope is lost or absent
    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
Created on Wed Jun 14 14:50:51 EDT 2023 (updated Fri Jun 16 13:25:44 EDT 2023)

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