Irish Examiner view: A literary great

Cormac McCarthy rarely gave interviews and according to his second wife, he routinely tuned down lucrative speaking engagements. Picture: AP Photo/Evan Agostini, File

The passing of Cormac McCarthy at 89 ends one of the most distinguished literary careers of modern times.

McCarthy’s bleak and violent early novels often sold no more than 5,000 copies, he rarely gave interviews, and according to his second wife, he routinely turned down lucrative speaking engagements to focus on his writing.

Still, his reputation was already assured when he enjoyed a breakthrough with Blood Meridian in 1985, and he went on to more late-career success with his Border Trilogy of novels.

Many readers will be familiar with McCarthy from film versions of his books such as The Road, in which a father and son find their way through a post-apocalyptic world, and of course the movie version of his 80s-set thriller No Country For Old Men, which won multiple Academy Awards.

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Borrowing from WB Yeats for the title of that last-named novel isn’t the only trace of Irishness in McCarthy’s life, as his mother’s antecedents are believed to have emigrated from Cobh in the 19th century.

His real first name was Charles, however, and he adopted Cormac, a nickname, to distinguish him from a famous ventriloquist’s dummy of the same name — an unexpectedly light association for a writer often inclined to desolation and mayhem.