Cormac McCarthy / Cormac Country

 

Cormac McCarthy

Cormac Country

Cormac McCarthy would rather hang out with physicists than other writers. He doesn’t do blurbs, book tours, or even Oprah. But with the publication of his blood-spattered new novel, No Country for Old Men, he gives his first interview in 13 years—since All the Pretty Horses turned him from cult figure into literary star.

BY RICHARD B WOODWARD

AUGUST 1, 2005

The parking lot at the Santa Fe Institute, in New Mexico, features rows of vehicles typical of American academia—S.U.V.’s and minivans, a few older-model BMWs and Mercedeses, a Toyota Prius, and an inordinate number of Subarus and Hondas. At this unique think tank, where an elite caste of scientists from around the world converge for days or months to analyze interdisciplinary problems in physics, biology, computer science, archaeology, linguistics, and economics, many of the cars also carry wilted bumper stickers (DEFOLIATE THE BUSHES) left over from the last election.

‘Whatever I was going to be I wanted to be really good’ / Cormac McCarthy’s life in writing

 Cormac McCarthy.

‘Whatever I was going to be I wanted to be really good’: Cormac McCarthy’s life in writing

Richard B Woodward, who has known McCarthy for 30 years, on the reclusive author’s love of scientific thinking, and why he will publish two novels in two months after a 16-year wait

Richard B Woodward
Saturday 22 October 2022

For the last 20 years or so, the most likely place to find the publicity-shy novelist-playwright-screenwriter Cormac McCarthy would be at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. Co-founded in 1984 by Murray Gell-Mann, the 1969 recipient of the Nobel prize in physics, SFI is a thinktank for maverick brainiacs, a flexible category that, in the judgment of the late polymath Gell-Mann, perfectly described McCarthy, his friend and MacArthur Foundation “genius” award winner.