Charles Joseph “Cormac” McCarthy Jr. moved to Knoxville with his family when he was four years old. Cormac is Gaelic for Charles and was used by the family to refer both to him and to his father, although he was known as Charles J. McCarthy Jr. while at UT. His father worked as a lawyer and, later, as chief legal counsel for TVA. McCarthy entered UT following graduation from high school in 1951, leaving after a year to enlist in the air force. Following discharge from the air force, he reentered UT in 1957, majoring in English, but he did not graduate.
In the winter and spring terms of 1959, McCarthy received the Ingram-Merrill Grant from the English Department to encourage the writing of fiction. The award was given on the basis of his performance in English 345 (The Writing of Fiction) and other courses in English. He had two short stories published in the Phoenix, the campus literary magazine, one of which, “A Wake for Susan,” was in the inaugural (1959) issue of that publication, and the other of which, “A Drowning Incident,” was included in the publication in 1960. McCarthy left college in 1960 to pursue writing full time.
His first novel, The Orchard Keeper (1965), received very positive reviews and won the William Faulkner Award. His first four novels were based on Appalachian/East Tennessee themes. His later novels are set in the southwest. He won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for All the Pretty Horses (1992), which was also his first best seller. No Country for Old Men (2005) was made into a 2007 movie, and in 2007 he won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for The Road. In spring 2006 his first produced play, The Sunset Limited, debuted.
In 1972 he and artist Bill Kidwell built a 15-foot section of mosaic sidewalk in downtown Maryville. In 2003 the section was moved (at a cost of $8,800) to the plaza in front of the new Blount County Library. In 1981 he was among recipients of the John C. and Catherine T. MacArthur Prize Fellowships (sometimes called the “genius awards”). He is a member of the UT Alumni Academic Hall of Fame.
In January 2008 he sold his manuscripts, papers, notes—the entire body of his literary career up to that point—for $2 million to Texas State University-San Marcos. The materials are part of the Southwestern Writers Collection at Texas State, founded by Bill and Sally Witliff, friends of McCarthy’s, in 1986.
Cormac McCarthy passed away on June 13, 2023 at the age of 89.