Time.news – “McCarthy is extremely agreeable, almost seductive”, wrote critic Mary Buckner in The Lexington Herald-Leader in 1975. “He has the ability to tell a good story with humor and does not give himself an ‘untouchable’ air. that some authors seem to have ”.
The New York Times dedicates an article to the writer Cormac McCarthy, Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction with “La strada”, published in 2006, because he is a reserved author, who likes anonymity, reluctant to confidences and who, above all, has released very few interviews in his life and very opposed to “publicly analyzing his creative work”, his profession.
However, at the beginning of his career, before the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, that is, before his books became films and his name is known even to those who did not read his books, “he revealed something about himself and his trade “, in “at least 10 interviews with small local newspapers in Lexington, Kentucky and eastern Tennessee ”, between 1968 and 1980, which now some researchers and scholars of his literary work have tracked down and brought to light, highlighting some unedited sides of his character.
The interviews, the Times points out, portray a young writer “with a boyish appearance, who is serious about his work, but who does not play the precious. And they also reflect the customs of the time “. The finding of these talks with the newspapers comes a while McCarthy is preparing to publish two new novels, “The Passenger” and “Stella Maris”the first since 2006 when he published “La strada.” And we already know that on that occasion, he will not give interviews, says the Times, which must therefore refer to the few interviews filed in order to better frame the character.
On his art, the writer simply said: “My hands think. It is not a conscious process“To say that when he feels ready to write the words flow by themselves” because “I can’t explain how a novel is created,” he said. “It’s like jazz, you do it while you play, and maybe only those who do it can understand it.” Indifferent to sentimental plots and money, McCarthy then says that he has always “felt horror at the way people live” while speaking self affirms: “I am basically very selfish and I want to enjoy life. I always have fun.”
As for the writers who have influenced him, he has said in the past that there are “brave writers”, such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, William Faulkner, James Joyce and Herman Melville and in a 1971 interview titled “McCarthy, One of the Nation’s Most Famous Young Authors,” he confessed to having more than 1,500 books in his library, from contemporary novels to the collected works of Greek playwrights. But “I don’t read bad books”, he specified in 1975. “I can’t physically move my eyes on the page”.